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Colossi

A Poem About Dublin

By Daniel WadePublished 7 years ago 1 min read
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'...bruised by rain, by rainfall's acid cleaver...'. 

When the winding sheet of history coils

Stiffly around handrail and chimney stack,

I’ll be reminded it’s no longer enough

To write poetry, to build monuments

From toothed stanzas to the splintering ego,

Or to the first, vinegary taste of love.

It will recall itself—the bruised brickwork,

Election posters slung to every lamppost,

Grimacing T.D.s, slogans promising national

Reform, dotted strategically all over Dublin.

Flakes of arctic light, a needle’s sweet-toothed

Glint, lie trampled beneath a car tyre.

Fanlights crown the Ascendant doors that I

Have passed in late-night bewilderment,

Every footstep its own keepsake. But for now,

I move with a scavenger’s subtlety,

Ignoring the chained, sneering neon, panic-

Stricken cars, the Beckett an incandescent harp,

the Ha’penny, arched like an arrowless bow.

Omnivorous-eyed drunks swigging cans

On a boardwalk bench, wastewater

Quenching the tumid Liffey below.

It’s a world apart, the volta of urban fever clotted

On wrought iron railings, College Green bruised

By rain, by rainfall’s acid cleaver, statues joisted

Like deadpan colossi: Goldsmith, eyes fixed

On a book, Burke in picture-perfect solemnity,

Grattan posing with imperious bravado

Against the capital’s daily rage: a bastion

Of multiplicity now, of manifold strangers.

All of this, and more: from the hard man

I pretend to be, to the anxious boy I remain,

Trying to know these streets better than any map

Or Sat Nav, cutting through shortcut and laneway,

Hard-earned wisdom advising me to keep

The head down. This century’s first, exhausted

Decade is over. The city’s motto,

And its Latinized hauteur, mean nothing now.

And all that’s left? The blindness of rivers.

Fanlights. Glinting needles. The sneer of neon.

Ascendant doors. Brickwork. Laneways. Chimney

Stacks. Rain. Obiedentia. Civium. Urbis. Felicitas.

This splintering stanza. Fog. Darkness.

sad poetrysocial commentaryvintage
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About the Creator

Daniel Wade

Daniel Wade is a poet and playwright from Dublin. His debut play 'The Collector' at the end of January of this year. He is the author of the poetry e-chapbook 'Iceberg Relief'. His spoken-word album is 'Embers and Earth.

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