Molly

In defence of Molly Malone

Leave Molly alone.
What’s she ever done to you?
What about those songs she sings for you?

From the gentlest rippling finger-taps
to those glories when there seems to be
just one thunderous heartbeat
that should be terrifying.

And you’re not sure why,
maybe that’s your problem,
you’re not sure why or how or what
and God, at the centre of it all,
you’re not sure who.

What about those tales she inspired,
all those poems?
The countless daydreams
anyone could have,
the countless paper-planes
anyone could throw
into the endless sky
and let glide on inspiration
to the Liffey’s blood-thick surface

to float
like so many prayers
for the end of one day
and the beginning of the next.

A city is not a maze
of hand-scraped walls
nor a zoo, a zone,
a set of slurred rules,
but a story of its people.

And that’s what she is,
a no-one who became someone
who became everyone.
An endless ghost
forever blessing
past, present and future,
a life creating life—

Alive, alive, oh.

TJ Matthews lives and works in Dublin. Over the last 25 years, he has had poems published in Shop, Crannóg, Black Mountain Review, Lantern Review, Southword, and elsewhere.