In an Irish pub last night I met
a man, Ryan Patrick Sheehan.
His eyes were brown, his lips were soft,
his heart was heavy with reason.

To me, he quoted an early Yeats
as if he were Yeats himself.
"The Cold Heaven" danced from his tongue
to rest on my heart's bookshelf.

He spoke of Goethe and Marcel Proust;
two hundred pages that described Combrayan
eye for detail that bordered insane.
he proceeded then to quote Swann's Way.

Of mystery and shadows his silence spoke.
His words, like kisses quite unplanned.
God speed and hope be in your heart
My brief, Ryan Patrick Sheehan.

A letter arrived chez nous
from Une Amie en France
with the correct frost code
but with slightly erroneous
address, yet despite all that
it reached us without going
to Reykjavik, apparently !!

Ryan O'Leary
31 Canon Sheehan Place
Mallow P51 EAOD
Iceland.

John Goggin worked for C.I.E.
Coras Iompar Eireann the Irish
Rail Company, we used call it
Come In Early, because the trains
were always late.

Mr. Goggin delivered barrels
of Guinness on a Dray with
Keating, his shire horse.

At lunchtime he'd park up outside
the house at 27 Canon Sheehan Pl.
in Mallow, we lived at 31.

He always put the nosebag on
Keating, while he went in for
the spuds with bacon and cabbage.

My mother collected waste bread
for Mrs Goggin's Chick Hens who
were out the back of 27 in the quarter
acre.

I used to feel sorry for Keating, shaking
the nose bag trying to find bits of grain
that he had finished long before his master
had pealed the first potato.

The hedge was high between the house
and road, so I sneaked down with the
bread I stole from the chick hens bucket
and gave it to Keating.

I never knew the horses name, I christened
him after the wrapper, Keating of Kanturk.