His eyes were always bright. Yet they were always slightly too wide, too open, too alert. That was what gave him away. That, and the way he would tap his left foot to an inaudible beat. Then, as if self-consciously, he would roll his shoulders back, grin widely and delve his hands into the musty jacket he always wore. You couldn’t call him nervous. He was sure of what he was doing although...
“She has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her” One day you’ll meet her, like a memory half-buried. Her voice is nothing more than a distant echo and surer than that you remember the surety of her hands on your skin when she drew you up into the bright, white heat of the sun, drew you up and took your heart in fair trade for your breath. You recall her tremulous smile...
Death of a Naturalist– Seamus Heaney All year the flax-dam festered in the heart Of the townland; green and heavy headed Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods. Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun. Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell. There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies, But best of all was the warm thick slobber Of...
In the Mexican Highlands, churches sit atop a bed of clouds and etched faces harbour lifeless eyes. Up here there is a town. Its streets are always clean, washed by the interminable torrents of an unsympathetic sky. Its spires are everywhere, as if God Himself had scattered his seeds and allowed them to fruit in garish colours: yellow, blue, dirty white and grey. In this town there lived a boy...
