Books: Never So Close, a poem by Dermot Bolger
Never So Close is from Dermot Bolger’s new collection, Other People’s Lives, published by New Island on April 7 at €12.99. For more details, see: newisland.ie/poetry-drama/other-peoples-lives
It is strange that we never seem so close
As that afternoon when you cease to know my identity;
A long dead brother perhaps, but certainly
A welcome visitor for the whiskey I manage to smuggle in.
We sit in a sunlit courtyard of a nursing home;
Two men finally with much to say to each other, because
While I spare you the distress of my news,
We now share the fate of having lost ...
