Gary Allen: One Poem

Gary Allen

Gary Allen was born in Ballymena, Co.Antrim. He travelled and worked throughout Europe for many years before settling in Holland for a time. Recent magazine acceptances, Ambit, Antigonish Review, Edinburgh Review, London Magazine, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Review, Stinging Fly, etc. He has published four pamphlets and five full-length collections of poetry, most recently, ‘Iscariot’s Dream,’ Agenda Editions, and, ‘The Bone House,’ Lagan Press, both 2008. He has had selections of his poetry published in many anthologies including recently, ‘The New North,’ Wake Forest University Press, North Carolina. Also a collection of short stories, ‘Introductions,’ Lagan Press, and a novel, ‘Cillin,’ Black Mountain Press.

Snow

We waited in the kitchen for the priest:
snow is everywhere, piled high
in the gardens, at the side of the autoroutes
everything appears sparse here, the houses
spread out, as though compensating
for the greatness of this country: a lover
wanted me to emigrate to her brother
in Ontario, but what would I do there?
too warped to make anything new –
once we waited all night like this
for her father to come home. The first time
I saw a dead man was as a child:
I still remember the bloody watery tracks
where they had dragged him through the snow
to the alley at the backs, the crumpled body
the swollen head, the blackened face
a clubbed seal pup, an apology: later,
you stop talking about the dead.
I am your silent Job, like the clock
like the falling snow, the bankers
and their wives crunching towards the house
a line of black cars on the hill crest,
Snow kills here, you state bluntly
as the door bell rings. I know, I answer, I know.