Late Voices

Tom Sheehan

1.
Daniel Shanahan

That night when you found my war poems alive,
My still retreat from the Korea hills,
Chinese who spoke with brass banging clamor,
When my voice went down in ravines like cairns
Hollowed in the old country, we tied roots . . .
Blue eyes, blood type O, alliterations
That roll like candy off our Irish tongues,
God images that ply from sea and bog.

Whatever it is that pervades your voice,
Gives gunfire to thought, answers upright stone,
Soars over Benbulbin’s head, rolls down Rs,
Is flaked with a megalithic laughter,
It rings as true as bells in that hallow place
Where song and poem find their sanctuary.

2.
Michael Hood

We share such dogged difference, or is it
the other way around, different doggedness?
Our tenancy at poet’s bare retreat or dark
rooms where we dream proper echoes,
is never lonely, but nobody’s there.
What’s over your shoulder is not my eye,

but I would be there by choice. The music
of your gearing up, shift of syncromesh,
piston pop of words, sounds through your letters
like a magnificent engine’s full hum. You drive
through half the counties of the state, alert,
absorbent as green neoprene, finding dark
corners and dim passages. You touch them
with your words, give life, nee poem.