Looking Up, Sandymount Strand

More clouds, I'm afraid. And more sea and ships too. But at least there is a man in there to anchor things a bit more. The Pigeon House is a cliché of course. Photographed no doubt from every angle, those giant Man U-coloured goalposts magnetise any roving eye.

They are built on a massive landfill. There used to be a huge city dump out there in the 1970s. I once rode pillion on my friend's old Yasi, bouncing down the muddy lane, into a blizzard of seagulls, to check out the scrap metal business (one of his many schemes). Nothing came of it. But I've always remembered a certain encounter we had. Here's what I wrote about it recently (a section from a longer sequence called HANDHOLDS):

Screen interference of gulls -- the old Ringsend Dump --
rag & bone dunes combed

by shadows, jumpcut scarecrows -- uncountable
a handful, a whole company --

stooping and eating, bone-pickers -- one of them
out of his scratched silence:

-- gorra fag? -- mouth full of white...
-- Here! -- fumbling your pack to draw out

two trembling Players Navy Cut