remembering the balls in the town hall
where I’d slip in unnoticed
to watch and drool

Woodbine ash from the balcony.
And out in the Market Square,
fresh with the smell of pigs,

before the Wright brothers
changed the dreams of men—
long before spluttering aeroplanes—

those arms of empty haycarts
looked like anti-aircraft guns,
aligned, jutting into sky,

and the spit-and-polish farmers,
always gaunt in monochrome,
scrutinized the camera

that captured for posterity
their endangered species—
the Irish between wars.