i. m. Thom McGinty
Good to know you might turn up
in the frieze of faces on Grafton Street,
familiar stranger surprising us
in something from your wardrobe-gallery,
a walking painting say, holding its own
gilded ornate frame, the face
white as a mask, Mona Lisa
in a black cat-suit, cracking a murky
smile.
Dead-slow, solemnly careful
among eddies of Christmas shoppers,
summer dawdlers,
tourists, street-traders, Guards...
mindful of each sound-proofed step, sure-
footed as an acrobat, spaced in, treading
your own
high wire. When we looked
at you looking through us
we took in the joke that jumped -- a
spark of silence --
eye to eye, mind to mind,
across Grafton Street's canyon of swirling clockwork noise.
You're gone now forever (back
into the box with Jack)
and scanning the quickslow, giddy, sedate
everyday street-portrait --- its procession
of invisible masks --- the eye misses you.
Old master, Diceman, conductor
of the ungrooved thought, catcher
of the thrown glance, are you still
there?
