Photo: Keith Wiseman
MARK Whelan is much more than a fedora-toting poet (and baker). He’s a pillar to CUISLE Limerick City International Poetry Festival each October that wings in laureates and lyricists, has edited The Stony Thursday Book several times, is a published poet who has collaborated with visual artists such as John Shinnors, and all the while has espoused White House Poets and a wide base of arts activity.
This Limerick man also finds time to be a charming neighbour.
Whelan has various contributions to City of Culture anthology, ‘Dream of a City’. From ‘Spanish Notebook: Section IV Barcelona’ is ‘The Man Who Walked the Corner of his Pants Off’, a meditation on the inner life of a fear an siúil on Catalonian streets.
The Man Who Walked the Corner of his Pants Off
The man who walked the corner of his pants off/ Did not walk in noonday sun/ Preferred warm shade/ Where he could dream of green and blue fish/ Weaving through a world of lost umbrellas/ Hung on a tapestry no one thought to hang
The man who walked the corner of his pants off/ Walked anonymously through the city/ Even should he learn its language/ He would remain anonymous/ Such is the way of the city/ And the man shining with anonymity
The man who walked the corner of his pants off/ Walked through doors of winged victories/ Broken-hearted defeats/ Had a window on his back through which could be seen/ An aquarium of tiny blue humming birds/ Gathering honeypollen from an intricate weaving-nerve of vertebrae on the path of his spine
The man who walked the corner of his pants off/ Became once a solitary line on a large white canvas/ Someone in a gallery of promise somewhere named:/ Man-Waiting-at-A -Bus-Stop-It-Must-Be/ The man who walked the corner of his pants off/ Drew a study for a picture/ Woman with Three Hairs Ironing A Banana/ Proclaimed That’s enough of this shit
The man who walked the corner of his pants off/ Pinned his arse to the sky Fell asleep among constellations/ Revolving through their one moment of entropy/ Dreaming a picture toward a title which read/ Woman with Three Hairs Bird And Star/ Awaiting the anonymous sun/ The shadow of its light/ On the Carre del Valencia
Astrolabe Press 2014
