Its Words You Want

By: Patrick Kehoe

€12.00 €6.00

The earliest of these poems reflect time spent in Barcelona where Patrick Kehoe taught English. Indeed many of the poems in this collection conjure the life of a young man abroad in that city, five years or so after the death of General Franco. Later poems pay moving tribute to his late parents and the people of his native town, Enniscorthy, as well as revisiting Barcelona. Other poems evoke in sensuous, luxuriant meditation...

ISBN	978-1-907056-77-2
Pub Date	Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Cover Image	Torre Agbar, Barcelona © Matthi \| Dreamstime.com
Page Count	94
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The earliest of these poems reflect time spent in Barcelona where Patrick Kehoe taught English. Indeed many of the poems in this collection conjure the life of a young man abroad in that city, five years or so after the death of General Franco. Later poems pay moving tribute to his late parents and the people of his native town, Enniscorthy, as well as revisiting Barcelona. Other poems evoke in sensuous, luxuriant meditations the shimmering essence of a Corfu summer.

A thoughtful and assured debut collection.

City, Like Hands

You looked for Spanish cigarettes
To feel you had arrived. The streets
Stretched away in an untapped web,
Bronze light as though everything was free.

City, like hands, washed by the Mediterranean
Pleading gold benediction through a winter;
Spring became summer, trains were crowded
With Sunday families from the suburbs.

Then later, snail-paced by calm
In the cypress grove of Montjuïc:
Its words you want, to hold you in their hands
And take the bare look off intimacy.

Patrick Kehoe

Patrick Kehoe was born in 1956 in Enniscorthy, County Wexford where he still lives. His first poems were published by the late James Liddy in broadsheets published by Gorey Arts Centre and issues of The Gorey Detail. Early poems were also published in the Irish Press.

In recent times, his work has been heard on RTÉ Radio 1’s Sunday Miscellany and RTÉ lyric fm, while poems have appeared in Even the Daybreak: 35 Years of Salmon Poetry, Cyphers, Crannóg, The Irish Times, RTÉ Culture, Poetry Ireland Review, The Stony Thursday Book, Enniscorthy Echo, Natural Bridge, The Scaldy Detail, The Level Crossing, The Deep Heart’s Core, Red Lamp Black Piano, and Dust Motes Dancing in the Sunbeams.

Patrick Kehoe’s debut collection Its Words You Want appeared in July 2011, published by Salmon Poetry. The Cask of Moonlight was published by Dedalus Press in September 2014.

The poet composed the lyrics for the Sonny Condell/Patrick Kehoe album Seize the Day, released in 2017 (sonnycondell.com). He writes for RTÉ Entertainment and Culture.

Via Augusta

Our eyes met in a basement café
Down steps on Via Augusta;
This is how we came to speak and touch
And be like mercury.

In the bright mauve evening,
In the lavender light,
In the orange glow over the rooftops.

Firstly, our fingers blindly followed
A curling vine, along the rim of a dark well
From which we drank.

Water for the asking:
Who was taking
And who was giving?

In a Darkened Room

In a darkened room
I remember the rise and fall
Of your breathing,
Like the comfort of snow
As you slept.

Forty years on
No comfort now
In the rise and fall,
Which turns me to stone
Beside your sick bed.

I think you tell me
To shed no tears
And to come with you,
Down the strawberry beds
One more time.

I see you walk backward
As though in a film in rewind
Through a twilit road,
Or standing, half-hid
In the white flowering of May.

Copyright © 2011 Patrick Kehoe

Other Titles from Patrick Kehoe

Places to Sleep

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Its Words You Want / Patrick Kehoe