AN IRISH POEM

As St. Patrick's Day is soon, I'm featuring a poem by an Irish poet, Vona Groake, one of the leading Irish poets of her generation.

Born in Mostrim in the Irish midlands in 1964, she's published eleven books of poetry. Groake is the former editor of Poetry Ireland Review. In 2012, Groake was elected a member of the Irish academy of the arts.

Here's her sonnet, FOLDEROL:

FOLDEROL

I have been walking by the harbour

where I see it’s recently sprayed

that Fred loves Freda, and Freda cops Fred.

Which reminds me of you, and the twenty-four

words for ‘nonsense’ I wrote on your thighs and back

(the night you came home from her house with some cock-

and-bull story of missed connections and loose ends)

with passion-fruit lipstick and mascara pens,

Including, for the record: blather, drivel, trash,

prattle, palaver, waffle, balderdash, gibberish, shit.

Thinking I had made a point of sorts, but not

so sure when I woke up to find my own flesh

covered with your smudged disgrace

while you, of course, had vanished without trace.

        by Vona Groake

        Other People's Houses, The Gallery Press