Fred Johnston
Fred Johnston (born 1951) is an Irish poet, novelist, literary critic and musician. He is the founder and current director of the Western Writers’ Centre in Galway. He co-founded the Irish Writers’ Co-operative in 1974, and founded Galway’s annual Cuirt International Festival of Literature in 1986.
Calculus
: for Joaquin Roncero del Pino :
Here a drowsy burr of tyres
a demolishing sudden blast of fat buses pushing past
like fast-food bullies in a queue
here too the gasping sun pushed down
under a black pillow of cloud
like an irritating relative smothered in her bed –
it could be that we are not moving
but that the roadway slips beneath instead
a rolling and unrolled carpet
ground out by gears many earths deep
the turning of the world also, the unheard
engine at the core; it could be we have not travelled –
this is not taught in schools, the possibility
of infinite deceit, physics of the perpetual lie:
and the calculus of the lie in motion is immeasurable
a number without numbers; even as the bridges
and walkways tick over us,
a clock’s sound, the sound of a clock’s hands in mechanical motion.
To My Mind
Alice always, to my mind, is at a table
Mapped with oysters, red wine and salad
Talking when the others won’t or can’t
A sound like water from a tap on a warm day
In childhood
And behind us, waiters and a lake.
It’s a large room, the ceiling low and dark
We’ve talked past the entrées
Who introduced who to whom is irrelevant
We are locked in a rare thing of conversing
Like old friends
Someone raises a glass, we stand
Alice rises, curving like a wand
In the room’s stiffened air
There is a coming and going of dishes,
Steamy slices of duck, beef
Roast potatoes –
And a rude door bangs far away.
© 2018 Fred Johnston