Written by Lorna Shaughnessy. Directed by Barra Convery. Cinematography by Daniel Keane. Editing by John Margetts. Acting by Alan Mulcahy
Venial
I cannot face open spaces today
nor the windmills on the hill,
their arms waving in persistent distress,
reminders that our lives will loop
from the first and hardest thing we do
to the last.
I cannot bear to hear the green creak
of new growth or the lark’s fanatic song,
desperate denial of its own quickening ebb
and I dread the razor-edge of tooth and claw,
the sight of another fledgling
in the cat’s maw.
I need to walk in a peopled place,
take comfort in the venial commerce
of shops whose shining surfaces reveal nothing
of the creeping truth beneath our clothes:
that we are all survivors, for now,
of the body’s ordained assaults.
Lorna Shaughnessy 