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Nicholas McGaughey
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the poet
Nicholas McGaughey lives in Wales. He has new work in Lighthouse, Poetry Wales, And Other Poems, Bad Lilies, Stand and The London Magazine, as well as in Like Flyering for the Revolution: The VERVE Anthology of Protest Poems.
the poems
The Ring
The old ring was lost or stolen,
bought on the never-never
on the eve of our empty chapel.
This new band has been forged
out of many declarations, spilling
from a box of old commitments
to be smelted in a crucible of clasp and chain:
one eternity, a keepsake that lost its charm
and the uncoupled links of a gold wristwatch.
Tokens given at font and altar,
that glowed on clutched pillow and sheet,
chucked or soaped-off by morticians …
All the muck of life is veined there
in the circle of surname and children.
A century of unions, paper, silver, ruby or gold.
I twist its weight from my finger,
another ring is left: a transparent tattoo,
which heals, then disappears too.
der Stollen
A town has slept in a hillside
for a century. Men who left
their livings for the Kaiser:
butchers, teachers, a clerk of works;
some two and a half hundred
stooped in feldgrau, where blue firs
have canopied the craters
and spoil that tombed them.
There have been looters here
bent on old coins and trench-art,
on watches that looped on
a week after the air expired.
Deep in the dug-outs, pictures
of kinder, they never saw marry,
watch over tables set with benches,
tin steins and chargers for a meal.
A strop hangs under the mirror
in the latrine, where a bone razor
brush set and a nub of soap
anticipate a morning.
Anthem
They stand for Wales in wind and rain,
impervious to elements that might
conspire to quell them. He, strumming his lyre,
she, sturdy, plaited, our Lady of Verse.
In a town renowned for its bridge and song,
these monuments are springtime flocked
with daffodil and druid. In black bronze,
they wait for The Prophesied Son,
on the green acre of Ynysangharad, churned now
like a battlefield, limbed with trees,
where something dear was almost drowned.
After the flood, a nation stirs in a park.
Publishing credits
The Ring: Scintilla Magazine (No. 23)
der Stollen: And Other Poems (Issue One)
Anthem: The London Magazine (March 1st 2023)