‘Kathe Kollwitz, National Gallery Dublin’ by Cliona O’Connell

after W.H. Auden

About suffering she had no time for the Old Masters:
there’s nobody here on the fence of it,
no cameos, no tourists;
nobody dreaming of the quiet life,
of picking up a cup or taking in a line.
The etched and woodcut citizens
are women who know the heft of it,
the full moon bleed and reach of it.

In Working Woman (with Earring) for instance:
the long lines chiselling the rigid forehead
hardening the strong mouth,
unsparing in the strokes
and shadows of androgyny,
the small and simple earring
the awful stoical dignity:
it is relentless

and so I have brought you a bangle,
a bauble, some bling and shine
to slip over the air of your ghosted hand,
ten silver spheres on an elastic line,
so that if Brueghel should choose
to sacrifice a boy
in some quiet corner of this room,
you could be distracted by the curve of it,
by the generous stretch and lightness of it
and could marvel, even for a moment, at its give.

From issue #8: spring/summer 2019

About the Author
Cliona O’Connell’s first collection of poetry, White Space, was published in 2012. She was winner of the 2011 Cork Literary Review Manuscript Competition, runner-up in the 2011 Patrick Kavanagh Award, selected for the 2010 Poetry Ireland Introductions Series and was shortlisted for the 2009 Hennessy Literary Awards for Emerging Poetry.