Raglan Road Or Near Enough

Raglan Road or Near Enough

I always meant to write a song for you

on Raglan Road. Then winter came, with its long

johns and bold cats and forty proof. I entertained

almost unidentifiable feelings in the basement’s

blackout. It would have been better if I had left

some feelings unidentified, but that was never

my style, or rather lack of it: everybody knows

I’ve got no game. Anyhow, if I did, what would

we ever laugh about? I don’t believe everyone

loves a winner, but I do believe we all crack

up sooner or later for a dirty joke, a groaner —

everyone loves a class clown, at least once,

at least briefly, because everyone loves a punchline

or a punching bag; everyone’s punch-drunk, one time.

On Raglan Road, your hair started to go grey,

I want to say prematurely, except we weren’t

so young. Mature is a polite word for it; but you

might say we skipped that part, headed straight

to rotten. I skulked around those mold-drowned

rooms in your rotten longjohns and felt a love

for you so perfect it was indistinguishable from

mourning. My love was so much more impeccable

than any human man, you may as well have died.

One imagines how it felt, in the crosshairs.

I missed you, daily, in plain sight, on Raglan

Road with the lost leaves of January shuddering

above your head in its permanent cowl of smoke,

and the unimpeachable soprano winter light sifting

through the wind’s tin whistle, and the holes in your

socks, and in your shoes, and in that thing I called oh my

heart. The sky was a series of holes closely woven

as a sieve. I saw you straining through the winter’s pores

into piebald tomorrow, halfdead with the life of it,

and your greys like the fuzz on stale bread or a

butterfly’s wing, your woolen foureyed glare

all bergamot and black ice and brandy exhale,

and the smell of the numb, simmering earth and your

coat coated in cedar dust undusted and your safflower

skin, and I could see myself, as if from a treebranch

or a crow’s nest or a copcar peeling past

on Raglan Road or near enough, at the edge of the

frame whistling “Raglan Road” out of key, fading.

                                                                               

                                                                     -Eva H.D.

Raglan road or Near Enough first appeared in Typishly. 

Reprinted here with author's permission.

E H.D. possibly referencing P. Kavanagh's Raglan Road.