Ormond Quay for Seamus Heaney

The ocean mist, amassing in April above Dublin, Moistens bricks, granite, the pitch-black of a car’s Sheen. The tide-abandoned riverbed is silty, lays Bare an expanse beneath bridges, empty like an

Open palm. This muddy island has known famine, Mutiny. Twenty years ago was shallow as the Liffey, Waking at dawn to the groaning din of the lorries, But now the river’s high mark has been regained –

Or surpassed. A wailing seagull flies into a breach Between warehouses. Pavements are cracked, damp.

By the castle, the bay whispers through raindrops, Branches and time. But it’s not us who taught it speech.

Bronze by gold. The staircases are steep, bread bitter, But the pay sustains. On the quay’s corner you sight The famous siren’s den, fully packed, where a migrant Poet drinks to his double’s reflection across the bar.

It’s all the same. The brown of northern marshes; the

Ionian shore’s blue towards which one wearies of rowing.

Like Circe’s bed the old rumpled map is expanding:

Homeless Europe buries itself in a course-grained sheet.