BROWSE Columns
✕
In Günther Uecker’s garden
picture patterned
clockwise scattered glass in sand
and wood and
cord striation powered motor
reconstructing wind
from rock. Reconstituting memory as if
in Ryoanji in as if
a centrifugal hour
glass. Passing
now and then a stone
erratic left alone and fallen
back to green
the lichened roofs and the train
passing – an chéad staisiún
eile – now and then
an old stone
fort on a hill knocked down
its southern wall sunk in.
My talisman
my daughter’s ankle bracelet
tucked in
my baby boy’s first hat
tucked in
the inner of my cap.
I walk south
in the shadows of
buildings on the morning of
my last day remembering
a dead man
nothing. Written in
stone and
wood and
cord traced back through
time accumulating
in concentric
sand expanding. In
striation and in
utmost care. The atmospheric
suction of connecting
doors and people passing
carriage to carriage
pulling in
to Mallow. Westward
the horizon in the dying
light come down
in Günther Uecker’s garden.
Matthew Ryan Shelton is a poet, translator, and musician. He holds an MA from the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen's University, Belfast, and a PhD from the University of Connecticut. His work has appeared or is forthcoming, in English as well as Irish Gaelic, in such publications as Rattle, The Cincinnati Review, Asymptote, An Gael, Mantis, The Swarthmore Review, and Zócalo Public Square. His poem “Apacailipsis” wasincluded in Brian Ó Conchubhair and S. K. Fisher’s volume Bone and Marrow / Cnámh agus Smior: An Anthology of Irish Poetry from Medieval to Modern, published by Wake Forest Press. He is lecturer in Irish Studies for the Celtic Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley. He lives in Oakland, California.
