Young Lovers

 Young lovers

Young lovers hold hands on park benches

Early spring round Merrion Square

The sap is rising in branches

New growth thrusting each day. 

Old ladies walk old dogs round in circles

It’s time to catch some fresh air

The city is returned to its people

Now that Covid is everywhere. 

The Square is awash with fresh bird song

Rising above handsome Georgian houses

Holles Hospital sits neath the white clouds 

Where new babes turn in their sleep. 

Number seventy five Merrion Square

Beside the Catholic Library

Home to Grassland Fertilizers

Where we worked through nineteen eighty 

Parking the old Triumph at seven thirty

Across the road with accounting books 

Preparing for exams each half year

Forty years on now back to where we worked. 

Dublin is quiet this Tuesday

It’s vigor subdued for a year

But its life will come back to normal

Of that I no longer have fear.