JOB WILKS AND THE RIVER (Michael Coady)

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"...of the 56th regiment, who died accidentally by drowning, at Carrick-on-Suir, 17 July 1868, in his 28th year."

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I feel that I know you, Job Wilks -

No imperial trooper swaggering

these servile Tipperary streets

before my grandfather drew breath,

but a country lad out of Hardy

drunk on payday and pining for Wessex,

flirting with Carrick girls

in fetid laneways after dark

out of step on parade to Sunday service

with comrades who loved you enough

to raise out of soldiers' pay this stone

which would halt my feet among nettles

now that jackdaws are free in the chancel,

Communion plate lies deep

in the dark of a bank vault,

and spinster daughter of the last rector,

in a home for the aged,

whispers all night to an only brother

dead these forty years in Burma.

.

How commonplace, Job Wilks, how strange

that this should be where

it would end for you, twenty-eight

summers after the midwife washed you.

With that first immersion

you took your part

in the music of what happens,

and an Irish river was flowing

to meet you, make you intimate clay

of my town.

.

On a July day of imperial sun

did your deluged eyes find

vision of Wessex, as Suir water

sang in your brain?

.

I know the same river you knew, Job,

the same sky and hill and stone bridge:

I hope there were Carrick girls with tears

for a country lad out of Hardy,

drunk on payday and pining

for Wessex.