Visiting Paris

On hills, the southern marches of the Pale, south of Dublin,

sodden watchmen tend dry timber to warn of sudden raids;

cessed burghers pay smokesilver as insurance tax,

the line of hills in one eye always, the other on their trade.

That doubt is there in the most august of places.

In that dark side-altar the goldsmiths made their own

in Notre Dame de Paris

early simplicity brought branching mayblossom, boughs of blooming thorn

as offerings called Mays in tribute to the Virgin Mary,

just as in my primary school, not all that long ago, we made an altar.

Midas ran his aureate touch, leaves and petals fell.

The goldsmiths paid for poems in her praise,

buried them in ornate coffers, left them mouldering there.

Poems say something, and that’s not always safe

so philosophy decreed a shift to pictures of the saints

gold-framed, ornate and costly, glistening in the dark.

Now public parks stock koi, surfacing gape-mouthed

and gold through darkbrown water after bits of stale baguette.

This dual pursuit marks all our middle age,

one eye raised to the hills, the other on our trade.