Francis O’Hare was born in Newry, Co. Down, in 1970. His first full collection, Falling into an O, was published by Lagan Press, Belfast, in 2007. A further pamphlet collection was published by Lagan Press in 2009, entitled Alphaville. He published his second collection, Somewhere Else, with Lagan Press in 2011. In the same year, he also published a collection in America, with Evening Street Press, Ohio, entitled Home and Other Elsewheres. A new collection, Sailing To Omeath, was published by Arlen House, Dublin, in January 2020. He has published poems in various magazines in Ireland, the U.K. and the United States, including Poetry Ireland Review, Evening Street Review, Glasgow Review of Books, The Galway Review, PN Review, The Blue Nib and The Yellow Nib.

December 2023

What does it matter now, being citizens
of the virtual matrix, the cyber-idyll,
what we once dreamt of, the glow of touchscreens
the only light we look to: unreal,
the thought of singing songs about someone
on a rainy night in Soho. Wild raves.
Fairytale Ireland’s dead and gone,
it’s with Magowan under the waves.

They were of a different kind,
the names we used to hear being played
on starlit nights long before broadband:
Sinéad and Christy, Shane; they all prayed
to God in words and music everyone
loved. The first two in their graves,
Fairytale Ireland’s dead and gone;
it’s with Magowan under the waves.

Or on the wind, his ashes spread
on the broad, majestic Shannon’s tide
to fly like geese far overhead
in grey December’s sombre-skied
cold heaven, filled with desolation
and rainclouds dulling all our lives:
Fairytale Ireland’s dead and gone,
it’s with Magowan under the waves.

Yet could we turn the years again,
that shake like delirium tremens, where
would we all go gladly but back to the pain
we’re exiles from now: a woman’s dark hair,
or quare fella’s smile, the lost dream-vision
glimpsed under streetlamps, sung in old staves?
But let it be, it’s dead and gone,
and with Magowan on all the airwaves.