Patrick Ramsey was born in New Jersey but was raised in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Educated at Queen’s University, Belfast, he worked mainly in publishing and bookselling. He co-founded and ran a small literary publishing house, Lagan Press, for over twenty years and is now retired. As a younger poet, his work featured in important anthologies such as Trio Poetry Introductions 6, The New Younger Irish Poets and The Map Maker’s Colours: New Poetry from Northern Ireland. He is returning to writing after a thirty-year silence. He has recently published poems in the Atlanta Review, Spinoza Blue, Drunk Monkeys and The Galway Review.

Hospital

Mostly I spurned love, gave it a bye-ball;      
too complex, too painful, inevitably
leading to a dreadful downfall,
shattering the self, if not irrevocably

at least enough for a long convalescence.
But, of course, love got me and here we are.
I sink into feeble acquiescence
(The day’s highlight a visit to the snack-bar)

as doctors and nurses consult charts and files,
(The only true narrative of ghastly heartbreak)
glance my way with glib, brittle smiles,
holding up X-rays to check the spread of the ache.

Soon friends will drop by – ‘You’re a better colour’,
‘You’ll soon be your aul’ self. (I play the game.)
Still, at visiting hour, I keep an eye out for her.
To explain. (Needless to say, she never came),

leaving me to the empty pill cup, the IV drip,
staring at nothing but the night sky and stars,
consciousness losing its awkward grip,
as I run a finger over Love’s fresh map of scars.

Tuesday Morning

Tuesday morning, much the same
as Monday or Wednesday morning;
the wintry squall of gulls yell and crake
like a brutalist alarm clock
set for the last scrapes of the night.
But then, just behind them, the chirrup
of smaller, friendlier birds.

Did we wake you? Did we wake you?
They almost say, anxious at the very idea.
Yes, but I forgive you. It’s your nature,
and I am too old to hold grievances.
Janet is still sleeping as I slip out of bed,
creep downstairs for Bran Flakes,
black decaf, wholegrain toast.

To my shame I am not listening
to Radio 3 (Erik Satie would
have been perfect for the occasion.) But why lie?
I’m afraid it was Everybody Loves Raymond,
with the sound low and subtitles
(No need to wake Janet. Let her snooze on)
And – yes – I find it funny
though I’ve watched it countless times before.

Yet I am not a completely lost cause.
From the front window (in need of a clean)
I watch sparrows and starlings
bobble on the top of our freshly cut hedge,
bouncy as a leg-sapping trampoline –
all the while trying to keep their grip,
their balance, in a middling winter wind.

Just like me. Just like all of us.

Charles Love, late 1950s

Too ill to work, my grandfather
wakes each day just before dawn,
careful on the rickety stair
to let the others sleep on

until alarm clock and mill horn;
edging down the dark scullery
and then the two-scrape of a Swan
Vesta – the shush-skulduggery

of getting the geyser to ignite,
its pouf, an exhalation of breath
waking to the promise of light
the household gods of home and hearth –

tea caddy; butter dish; bread bin;
teapot; the shuffling cutleries;
dish rack; strainer; rolling pin –
props for the due ceremonies:

putting on (low flame) the kettle;
raising blinds to observe weathers;
slicing baps on the kitchen table;
the placing of cups on saucers –

rituals of Belfast daybreak.
A wheezy, long-dying zen monk
almost beyond the need to speak,
he listens to the silence, sunk

in his ‘just so’ busted armchair.
Soon there will be the world – the purr
of the milk van, the day’s first car;
Cassie coming down to set the fire –

(Old Teles, sticks and Sunny Jims).
But until then, he just ponders
the growing light – aphonic hymns,
breathless with praise and wonders.

Notes:
Swan Vesta: a brand of matches
Tele: a shortened version of the then evening Belfast Telegraph newspaper
Sunny Jims: firelighters
Cassie: my grandmother

A Theology of Rope Bridges

We’re looking for portents
in sea and stars, in faces –
decrepit old rope bridges,
rickety arguments,

to prevent us plunging
to the rocks, the chaotic
sea breaking and lunging
like the angry psychotic

beyond human reasons,
so unpredictable
we crave signs and omens –
a logic to the illogical.

It’s but nature to clutch
at cables and faith, such
is our fear of not being
and lost to the giddying

madness that is falling
forever until death
(Your life but a hair’s breadth)
Don’t look down. Keep going –

ignore the sway and creak,
summon nerve and will
(though Man’s shabby mimic
of God’s hand is laughable)

The slats are holding true.
(Step by step you construe
belief – in man or God –
both, of course, could be a fraud).

And may hold just one more day
till back on solid ground.
There, we let our fright dry
and fade, until, in the round,

we can recover our poise,
smile and begin to forget.
But down below there’s yet
Raging waters, that snarl of noise.