The Cottage (Poem)

The Ivy hangs raggedly around the entrance
Shabby and dirty brown in patches
Like the unkempt, tobacco stained beard of an old man.
Once dazzling whitewashed walls,
Now dirty grey, flaking; a mould defeated skeleton.
Ancestral youth, now leprous, with the scent of death.
Empty hinges protrude, unemployed; like fingers,
Searching ghostly timbers - long since fired.
No more the ‘Slan’ or ‘Failte’ creak or click of well worn latch,
That dismissed, with a shrug, summer’s misty rains,
Defied winter’s whip lashed fervor or covert ‘Jacks’ attack.
Now natures’ soldiers stroll through, nonchalantly raping.
Within, the gloom pervades; a stagnant cloud, trapped,
Devouring memories; sucking out with fetid breath,
The hymen from the whore. Blinding the mind’s eye;
Distorting to perception; creating doubt.
Could this crumbling hearth have exuded warmth of yore?
Or is the crook replaced by common thief?
Kitchen, bedroom, dancehall, morgue or birthing ward,
Where life sprang forth with little fuss.
Suckled on the firm before the breast where tubers bubbled.
Now the flags - once buffed by trampling brogue, did glint -
Lie matt, un-set or un-half-set upon.
Was it really here the bow, drawn upon the gut did sing
And innocence, from beneath a laden table, peeked?
Tenuous in the crumbling beam, beckon the
Oxide oozing stumps that bore the weight,
Where curing ham or salted ‘Ling’ did ‘hang’;
Or butter polished skillet, glittered as the druids’ orb
Exploded through the panes, ricocheting
Off virgin film, evicting shadows from all angles!
Time, you thief! Have stolen on your endless march, the ‘now’
That from the hour-glass of my mind, was cast, into the
Sea of careless youth; to nestle in the shifting sands.
Emerging, beached as ‘then’; a mature, mangled recall;
Laying moribund, tortured and pounded
By the waves of reality; until suspicious of its own rectitude,
It retraces; hunting, seeking, covetously haunting, what ‘was’.