08/24: for the chins

Ellen Roche
Aug 25, 2017 · 1 min read

Talk about disappointment: fair Dublin

green from afar, then gray, then fading back

into some pre-industrial chagrin,

the shades layering into vague smokestacks,

the cement dank with rain under our skin.

You resurrect yourself when she-sun sets,

with strung lights and bright twilight and the fin

of Beckett’s swung-bridge slicing at my left.

My hunger for your history’s a sin

of gluttony; I stalk your walks for signs

of ancestors, for forebears, for the chins

of fathers and their fathers’ famined lines —

I find them collapsed, cobbled on the Life

that flows, a vein, into your ravaged riff.

)

Ellen Roche

Written by

I’m writing a sonnet every day in 2018. Poetry / Portraits / Women’s History / Film Photography / Brand Strategy /Vintage Dresses / DC ellencroche.com

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