Eamon Grennan

Glimpse
Eamon Grennan


Every so often, in the appalling state of the state he's in, he comes up for air

And finds his own death like a dog sleeping on wooden steps, which may wake

And bark if he makes the slightest sound. And when he glimpses that couple

Getting into their car together as they've been doing for years—the woman

Directing the man how to back out into traffic—then the map he's peering at

Grows cloud-covered, the names get blotted out, and the roads are only thin

Rivers of blood, winding nowhere. But, buried in the dust of too much, who

Will hear the man cry out, saying this is how the story puts an end to itself?

For every corner he's brought to a kind of order, another one lends itself

To a chaos of odd socks, middens of books, trunkfuls of outworn clothes. But

Somewhere in the heart's heaving, at its tangle-toil of rage, in the wasp-nest

Of his nervous system, a small scream is gathering strength, getting ready.

Courtesy of Open City