It must still have been light out; he never would have done it
in the dark. I wasn’t born yet, the garden wasn’t any bigger:
still city sharecrop size. He’d have come home to see a khaki-
wearing, razor-domed intruder in his house; fatigues unworn
and military sharp. The bombs were going off in London
at the time; if not each week, regular enough. Paddy on the news
in coded warnings. In cars blown to smithereens. Now this:
after a whole day’s digging underneath the sun – hair beaded
to his head, another night’s sole-care-giving set to commence –
he finds this lickspit shithouse in his living room. At ease.
Before his dinner – so believe me, that means serious offence –
he dug a hole, ceded a square of precious acreage for the job.
He left one hand Lady-of-the-Laking in the soil: a warning
to my brother’s other toys, for sure, not to get ideas. No politics,
no Union Jacks. He’d put one little Brit below a clod of dirt,
had one inside in tears, his birthday spoil turned casualty of war.
Declan Ryan was born in Mayo, Ireland, and lives in London. A pamphlet of his poems was published in the Faber New Poets series in 2014. He co-edits the Days of Roses anthology series and is the poetry editor at Ambit.