A Break in the Journey

By Anne Haverty

Infused with love, pathos, history and ideas, A Break in the Journey, Anne Haverty's new collection, is a moving exploration of the many kinds of journeys on which life takes us. Haverty has travelled great distances in intellectual curiosity as well as in the world and traces her tracks with superb eloquence, simplicity and a piercing humanity. With skill, grace and a masterful lightness of touch, these poems shimmer and float in the imagination long after the final page.

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Island
• Release date: May 25, 2018
• ISBN: 9781848406735

Anne Haverty

Constance Markievicz: Irish Revolutionary (1988) was Anne Haverty’s first book. Her novels include One Day as a Tiger (1997, shortlisted for the Whitbread-Costa) and The Far Side of a Kiss (2000, longlisted for the Booker). Her poetry collection The Beauty of the Moon (1999) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. She was born in Holy-cross, County Tipperary and was educated at Trinity and the Sorbonne. A member of Aosdána, she lives in Dublin.

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Contents

The Nun and the Greyhound

Poor Ladeen

At the Pier

India

Marriage

Strange

Grief

Oh, Our Fragile Lives

Poemless

The Dog Will Not Take Gloom

Innocence

Stricken While Out Walking With Man and Dog

Beautiful Day at Birkenau

In the Etheric Spaces of the Web a Microchip

Porn

Liberty Square

Forgetting

Far

Paradise

The Knowledge, in Armenia

Hayren

Souvenir

Tameda

Objecting to Everything Today

The Beds of Europe

Christmas Chains

I Mourn the Funerals

Train

Napoleonic

Anecdote

At the Smolny

Memorial

Those Times

Vodu

Vodu 1

Vodu 2

Vodu 3

Vodu 4

Wintering

Now in My Repertoire of Skies

Note to the Ancestors

A Break in the Journey

Acknowledgements

For

Anthony Cronin,

beloved,

as ever

The Nun and the Greyhound

A nun and a greyhound

would come to the door, one

to the hall, one to the back,

lean, ardent, lonely and sad.

Both in retirement, the nun

and the hound. She

from the classroom, he

from the track.

One found it hard to talk.

The other never barked.

Though once they were boss.

In convent and kennel,

bursar and winner,

flying down the corridor, or up

the field, alarming the children,

lithe, forbidding and cross.

That we brought out

the good porcelain

meant nothing to the nun.

The dog ignored the bone.

All they wanted now the position

of household pet – this

mute longing impossibly

greater than tea

or a timid embrace.

They came to the door

too late,

the greyhound and the nun.

Too late

to be consoled,

to be taken in.

Poor Ladeen

Each plays their part.

The farmer fetches

the mattress and the rug

he keeps especially in a shed

for poor beasts facing the cut,

makes a bed for the ewe

on the smoothest flag.

The vet is cheerful and quick,

as clever with the needle as with the knife.

And the black-faced ewe

though her belly is slit

stops quiet as they ask

and lets

them search out her he-lamb, blood-streaked,

and coax him to his feet.

They rub him down with straw

and an old coat,

and watch him go,