The Carlow Bowl, 2
Wandering idly through the museum
dust motes fall so faintly in frail light beams,
the past here carefully arranged,
some things familiar, others seem so strange,
glimmering beyond our understanding.
Old bones, exotic as a dragons wing,
extinct deer like any other old thing
gathered safe in here that we might see
them. Nearby soft clay turned pottery
work of human hands, thousands of years old,
whispered of such tales that could be told
until I saw another china piece
with many stories which this time shrieked,
with us, in here, you do not want to come,
this, from Carlow Lunatic Asylum.
This is my response to the item in Carlow Museum first written about by Mel Perry, Wales and to be followed next by Derek Coyle, Carlow. Together we shall have created a trio of responses to the same relic of the institution once known as St Dympna’s, Carlow, Ireland.