In Saint Vincent's he lay down,
spoke with effort, woke slowly,
laughed in pain. After,
my father drove me to Stephen's Green.
In Bewley's I borrowed a cigarette.
Somewhere over Nevada you pass
the dead centre of America,
the still, dry centre of the universe.
The cigarette made me feel worse.

I thought of all the people -
Grandpa Dick, the tiny, stern great
great grandmother whose wedding dress I'd worn -
were they gone? were they anywhere?
Grandpa Owen's last words on a note in the hall,
'the skirts are winning'
after a neighbour's second girl.

Now my father's brother, robbed of sleep,
brought his book to light
down the end of the long, restless corridor
of night; and in the afternoon,
watching the sweatered players on the tamed green,
he drove his salmon life upstream,
the days took on a different drift, he learned
to fall, and get up, and walk away
into another dream.

Alone on Grafton Street I panned my thoughts.
It came out on top; love, the heaviest truth.

Sara Berkeley was born in Dublin in 1967 and now lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is the author of several books of poetry and short stories. Her first novel, Shadowing Hannah, was published by New Island Books in 1999.