SUCH A SUNNY DAY

the objects
in his pocket

have lost
their identity

their significance
to anyone but him

a hairy comb
photo of an unknown

woman
who can she be

a torn-in-two
train ticket

chewing gum
much masticated

yet put back
in his blazer's breast pocket

small change
a penny and a sixpence and

a button
from the cuff

no clue as to who
he had been

before the water claimed him
as its own

the disgust and fascination
of those

passersby who continue
to pass by

it such
a sunny day

for death to
intrude this way

the miscellany of objects
ownerless now

the waters of the Liffey
calm and unmoved

*

I was just coming up to O'Connell Bridge and the bus got snarled in traffic. It was a beautiful beautiful sunny day and as I gazed idly out of the window a body, sodden and shapeless but still all too human was being winched out of the river. So we were forced to witness this before the bus finally made it to the bridge. It was startling and cut like an emotional knife through the fabric of the perfect day.

My girlfriend at the time told of a friend of hers who had sometime last year thrown herself into the Liffey so that added an extra dimension to the horror. Everyone who had met her on that last day said she seemed so happy and were amazed that she had done so because "...it was such a sunny day." She only had a comb and a button and small change in her pocket...all she owned. A human life shrunk to so little.