Park in Pescara

the insects like helicopters
 hover the pond
no-one is nervous
the fountain is electric
sanitary towels float to the top

and the hot dog stand will open
at 5 o’clock

over there joggers
go by dying
in 35 degrees

there is a long concert tonight
in the square of popular symphonies

helicopters pass
over the bandstand
fat like the insects

the chief of police and the Order of Malta
discuss the weather again

the children with cholera
in places far away

The Empires Meet in Tobolsk

Though he never saw the bell from Krakow
the freshly painted car park spaces
or renovated golden rails  
outside is the street Lenin named
Strange he might have thought
to see by the wooden houses
(horse prints and bottles scattered around)
those concrete imperial lines
the collars and grey tunics
hands twisted in patterns and signs

Though unprepared for developments
in fundamental religious fever
or the counter revolutionary trends
of dead monarch tourist markets
(floating in on archaic flags
like Ivan on his magic carpet)
he left his mark    
identified this provincial posting
forever historical    a staging point
on the path to the future

that it would begin
from these monasteries falling to pieces
on hilltops looking over
the old settlement of Tobolsk
a simple transfer of belief
to statues and facades they promised to build
on broad utopian streets
and relieve from the people
the burden of heaven
promise each one of them soon

they too will reach the cosmos and trace across
the dark fossils of gods

To Peacefully Conquer the World: An Introduction
(The family history of Alexander & Dimitri Moore)

In the city of New York in 1851
Isaac Singer established his firm
and began the process of patenting
his straight needled sewing machines
(being as they were an improvement
on the previous way of doing things)

We all begin in some way similar:
through desert treks or clinging to vines
we arrive on islands, inlets and coastlines
construct our huts and hunker down
pretend to be natives of some place

So in this 1851 of European upheaval
Peterburgsky Station opened in Moscow
after a while becomes Nikolayevsky
(named for a Tsar of course
who cared very little
about the transport of plebs
between the first city of his empire and the second)

It was renamed again (as is the way
when you get to naming things
after the temporary power of people
over other people)
Oktyabrsky
and then
when a man needed to be reminded
where he was really going
they named it Leningradsky

The Prussians around this time opened up their Ostbahn
from Berlin to Gdansk and on to Kaliningrad
(In 1851 probing the borders of the Soviet Union)

In Hyde Park enterprising Victorians built a crystal palace
and at The Great Exhibition of the Works of the Industry of all the Nations
displayed selections of faux Irish jewellery
(in the Celtic Revival style
that was fashionable at the time –
the Irish bourgeoisie believing
they were mostly descended from kings)

Anyway
a brooch that had been buried beneath the muck of Meath
for over a thousand years was found by a peasant woman
They cleaned it up and named it for royalty
(As we know by now
that’s the way with these things)

As for us
your antecedents of course were scattered still
still finding places, making their way
from Halberstadt, Galway, Astrakhan and Naples

except in Dublin in 1851 our namesakes
enter onto streets that have folded since
back into the city

and from tenement windows in the North Dock ward
they stare at the skeletons coming forth

and curse them for having lived