(Mark 10: 46-52)

Though I could be blind,
sitting on the hard earth, back against the wall,
with an old-time enamel cocoa-mug at my feet,
or a fair-day peaked caipín upside down and gaping –
and I’d be listening for the clink of coin or the soft whisper
of a ten-shilling note, while the clattering of hurried feet
went by me –
or I could well be sitting on a hard chair in the crowded accident
and emergency ward of the city hospital, waiting, hours
after the giving and taking of samples and bloods,
nurses and cleaners and orderlies scattering by
as I hoped for the steps of the doctor to arrive, the smile
of diagnosis on his lips –
but I’m not; I’m sitting
in the certainty of my living-room, eyes shut,
palms open upwards on my knees, my mind willing
for the prayer of silence: but plagued by the huzzahs
of the myriads of snattering thoughts, like gnats, all
the tomorrows and the yesterdays, listening when I can
for the whispers of the One who is passing by, who will ask:
what is it you would wish me to do for you?

John F Deane’s latest collection, Jonah and Me, is published by Carcanet Press in December