Eccles Street
It was the silver age of the sepia print.
From Eccles Street
the wanderer set out in the heat of June,
to take the epic route,
to make a day of small detours
with cronies in the meeting rooms
and hostelries.
Journey-man. Pilgrim. Tenant
of a creaky house
that after slow decline was gone in time,
I retrace your path
from the precinct of the dispossessed
to the dunes in Sandymount
and the round Martello with its climbing
steps and assonant echoes
that echo still, a hundred years since
Odysseus prowled his Dublin streets
and bawdy-house.
by Gerard Smyth
from The Mirror Tent
publisher: Dedalus, Dublin, © 2007