THE MAN WHO ATE SPAIN

By Cróna Gallagher

Johann Sebastian Lunasa was a man obsessed.  His devotion to crisps, or potato chips as other nations prefer to call them, was second to none and he allowed no other food to pass his lips, ever.  Naturally there were side effects involved and the high salt content of the crisps caused the inside of his cheeks to permanently pucker up and change texture, like that of an octopus near a rock.  At this stage, his blood pressure was sky high and his digestive system was destroyed from all the years of insulting it with such disgustingly delicious foods; but he didn’t seem to care.

The first packet he had ever tasted was as a small boy who could not yet speak.  Evidence of this important event was to be found in a black and white photograph taken in nineteen sixty eight, of a cousins’ birthday party in which Johann Sebastian was pictured tucking into his second bag of ‘Tayto’ crisps, while all the other children were gorging themselves on cake and jelly.

Mealtimes became a source of strain for his tormented mother and she made valiant efforts to entice his taste buds with farmer’s market sausages and homemade fish cakes that would melt the heart of many a child.  But she was wasting her time because; as far as he was concerned there was no going back.  He was a purist now; it was crisps or nothing.

He remembered some seminal moments.  The first time he tasted roast chicken flavor, for example, had been on a school tour to the Adventure Port theme park in the North of Ireland, when he was just seven years old.  All of the children were impatiently waiting to experience what a zero-G roll was or a vertical loop and they queued up excitedly for the biggest thrill of their lives.  But not Johann Sebastian.  He left them to their rides and their folly and could still remember to this very day, exactly where he had stood when he opened his first ever bag of exotic Kukudrulu crisps.  It was next to the 36 metre long track inversion of the Serpents Tail rollercoaster, and the blur of terrified students that screeched past him as he began to crunch on the delicious snack would forever be melded to the waft of scented chicken dust that drifted out of the bag and mingled with the speed and the terror. That moment had felt like he had just opened a tomb full of gold.

Johann Sebastian was acutely aware that the zeitgeist of entire decades could be clearly defined by nothing more than a single type of crisp.  Taking the trophy for the early nineteen seventies, for instance – and a unanimous winner it was too -, was the legendary prawn cocktail ‘Disco’ by KP.  This was the crisp that launched a thousand copies and its influence can still be seen, from design to content to this very day.   Not strictly a crisp of course, more of a moulded potato disc that resembled a desiccated jellyfish, one of those purple ones you’d find shored up on the beach during childhood summers, and one that was doomed to meet with a humiliating end.

Thanks to the blockbusting television soap opera ‘Dallas’, the early eighties saw sales of smoky bacon flavoured ‘Rancheros’ (also by KP of the United Kingdom), shoot through the roof. Everyone walked around with bright orange crumbs on their lips and breath that smelled of a fake char grill.  This unassuming snack food was the very key that opened the door to the late eighties trends of line dancing, power dressing and stadium rock featuring the likes of Garth Brooks,  Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi, where empty packets of the aforementioned ‘Rancheros’ were to be found littering the ground when the show was finished and the decade done.  And so it went on.

He had interesting thoughts on the keystone flavours.  It was a well known fact that ‘cheese ‘n’ onion’ and ‘salt and vinegar’ were the Adam and Eve of the potato crisp world.  But which was male and which was female?  And why did they abbreviate the and to an ‘n’ in ‘cheese ‘n’ onion’ but not with ‘salt and vinegar’?  He had a sneaky feeling that the abbreviated ‘n’ suggested hourglass corsetry and the feminine charms that came with it, giving the snack food a womanly air and leaving no doubt as to the gender of  ‘salt and vinegar’ with its rasping masculine attitude and the splash of old spice aftershave.  He noodled with the idea that character and intellect could be assessed by whichever flavor was preferred, like one of those Rorschach test cards where you’re supposed to see things in the abstract shapes; but a test that could be eaten instead.  He reckoned that creative types always went for the ‘cheese ‘n’ onion’, whereas people with a more mathematical mind liked ‘salt and vinegar’ better.  He himself had spent years as a ‘salt and vinegar’ man, when suddenly, out of the blue he changed to ‘cheese ‘n’ onion’, putting paid to his psychoanalytical theories.  This also led him to question his sexual orientation and his intellectual abilities, so he raced to his analyst in a startled mood.  The analyst had of course, been a useless waste of time and eventually Johann Sebastian had to move on with his life, and file away the whole dilemma in some cupboard of his brain.

After this came a flurry of crazed debauchery, with Johann Sebastian sampling every new version on the market.  Sometimes he even chose opposing flavours deliberately, and ate them both at the same time just for the sheer hell of it.  At this stage he was in his early twenties and had moved to the city of London, where the melting pot of cultures and cuisine could offer him a more compelling choice of flavours, none of which he turned down.  These became the lost years.  Inside a short period of time his palette was jaded and he had rings under his eyes so deep, that it looked as if they’d been sucking on jars. Johann Sebastian was burnt out.  Friends and colleagues called around bearing packets of the latest batch fried, kettle cooked, rough cut crisps, but they were turned away at the door.  He had no truck with any of that rubbish anymore.  The idea that anyone would actually pay good money to eat a crisp that tasted of aged stilton, now made him feel physically ill.  The madness of a bag of ‘mayonnaise’ or ‘consommé’ flavour by Calbee of Japan was suddenly a boggling thought, or what about that golden cow of all crisps; the infamous ‘hedgehog’ flavor from Phillip Lewis, (now, sadly out of production), which was packaged in 50 gram black and tan bags, with little plastic windows in them so that you could view the special product before purchase.  This was the crisp as trailblazer.  A crisp which led the way to the modern flavours of ‘Cajun squirrel’ and ‘Builders Breakfast ‘ by Walkers, the biggest crisp manufacturer in the U.K.

There was nothing really to be said about that, so he flew himself off to the warm climate of Spain where he took to his bed and purged his soul.  He tossed and turned for weeks and weeks. He blushed at the memory of a 1992 ‘Branston pickle’ crinkle cut crisp, which he had encountered while Mc Jobbing on the Isle of Man.  He balked at the bag of ‘rabbit and oregano’ puffs by some long defunct operation. These he had bought at Camden market during the hazy summer months of 1997 and had remembered at the time being suspicious of the sell by date, the vendor and most importantly of all, the jarring flavors.  Soon after that, Johann Sebastian got out of his bed, opened the windows to the blue rinsed air and dragged it down into his wretched bowels.  It was then that he realized with a jolt of inspiration, that an ordinary packet of ‘plain, ready salted’ in down to earth packaging was the only choice for the true connoisseur.  Eating these would become a meditation on the senses to be reflected on in solitude so that each unit could be appreciated as a work of art in its own right.

He was on his third crisp of the evening one windy night when something caught his eye. As usual, he lifted up the crisp up to regard its rugged beauty.  And it was then that he noticed something familiar about the shape.  He turned it around, looked carefully at every angle.  What did it bring to mind?  Crisp as poppadum?  A shard of monkish vellum?  He wasn’t sure.  He put the crisp aside and ate another few before coming back to it again, a little lightheaded now because of the blood pressure.  This was when the Spanish outline focused into view as though he was observing a gold coin through the water, and he realized that he was looking at a map, a perfectly described image of the country of Spain. ‘Well, well’ thought Johann Sebastian.  He scanned the surface again.  Indeed, there were the Pyrenees up at the top, beautifully illustrated by a lucky run of bubbles.  The lack of Portugal was an amazing stroke of luck, but the Galician nodule now jutting out on its own was completely unsupported, and would become a source of great concern and possible restoration at a later date.  Because of the uneven surface, there were raised cracks all over the crisp, the veins and the arteries of the potato where he could now clearly see the routes to Madrid and Barcelona beautifully draughted out in burnt sienna.  It was extraordinary.

And so it was that Johann Sebastian Luanasa found himself on a plane bound for South America where he met with a Lord Crispin Solanine IV, and they drove through the night, to a hotel in need of a paint job on the outskirts of a dusty town.  There was a bar at the back, so they settled there for the night.  Lord Solanines’ tailoring was immaculate although he smelled a bit rancid himself.  A well worn silk scarf by Hermѐs had been carefully attached to his breast pocket with a safety pin, and there seemed to something of the blankie about it.  They spoke long into the darkness, and Johann Sebastian learned many new things.  Lord Solanine told him about a childhood spent in all these draughty piles, surrounded by priceless artifacts that he was not allowed to touch, so that when it came to him leaving home and finding his own way in the world, his only desire was to begin a long apprenticeship in antique restoration, with a particular emphasis on ceramics.  To his total surprise he discovered that he was brilliant at it, and Johann Sebastian knew that this must be true, it was all in the hands.  Lord Solanines’ hands had a porcelain quality to them.

But there were only so many Rococo statues you could take and after a while Lord Solanine picked himself off to the Far East where he worked on the salvation of funerary urns from antiquity.  Handling these had felt like handling broken skulls and feelings of great awe came over him when he gazed at the restored pieces and at the perfection in imperfection, the individuality of each flawed thing.  This was what he had been after, but the world of antiquity was filled with mischief and for reasons not made clear to Johann Sebastian, Lord Solanine fled the scene one moonless night and tip toed across the globe, resting only when he arrived in South America, his spiritual home. ‘You see, the restoration of a crisp’ he explained, ‘was something that called out to you’.  It was a vocation.  He remembered when the path had first spoken to him.  He was down a back alley, some garlicky man with a sweaty nature had escorted him there and what happened then, was not at all what he had expected.  He was taken into a room behind a curtain made from an old sheet.  There was a glass cheese bell on the table, and under this, an image of the sacred heart of Christ beautifully burned onto a triangular slice of white toast.  The image was damaged, quite badly, with mould sparking at the edges, threatening to destroy the piece altogether.  Could he do something?  With a flick of his arm, he waved the man away and immediately set to busy work.  Hours swept by until dawn appeared in the red thread veins of his eyes and he walked out of the room exhausted; but he’d managed to save the piece.

This was the start of an illustrious career and his reputation grew and grew.  Soon Lord Solanine was booked up for months in advance and was consulted with on a regular basis by dealers of international importance, who represented only the very best auction houses.  Generally though, the most lucrative and interesting deals were to be made far away from the public eye and Lord Solanine found that the world of smoke and mirrors, of cloak and dagger, was a far more intriguing place than the auction rooms and the markets.

At this stage, he had worked his magic on a variety of food items such as dried banana slices and even sheets of nori seaweed, but eventually he specialized only in the restoration of crisps, preferring them for their transience and delicate Raku quality.  They reminded him of the funerary urns of antiquity.  Once he had made this decision, his career soared.  It was Solanine who had brought the famous Mona Lisa crisp back from the brink  (‘cheese ‘n’ onion’ from Smiths of England, purchase date and location unknown but it is probable that it was somewhere near Dorset).  This was a lithophane, very rare, with the image only appearing when light shone through it.  Thanks to carbon dating, the piece was found to be almost thirty years old by the time he encountered it.  It was a masterpiece.  Lithophanes were adored by the Asian market in particular and they commanded high prices, but they were almost impossible to find, and invariably disappeared back underground once the repair had been completed.  He remembered the international symbol for wool that was found on a 1980s sour cream and onion Pringle, bought at a deli in Queens U.S.A.  It was auctioned after restoration and bagged by a famous French designer known for the cut and fit of his beautiful wool suits.  (The Solanine family were customers).  There was another example of a bird in profile, which had started a bidding war and was finally secured by the patrons of an operatic society and presented in a midnight blue velvet box, to a favoured singer; on the night of her retirement. 

Charred images with a religious theme were by far the most popular, and brought in big money.  And it wasn’t just lay people wanting to get their hands on them either.  Priests and nuns were willing to part with shocking amounts.  The Virgin Mary was the likeness most in demand, followed closely by images of Jesus Christ circa the Turin shroud.  These crisps were taken very seriously; many of them had been officially blessed in churches and Basilicas.  Some were mounted and framed behind glass with little red or blue lights lit underneath them, depending on who was represented.  Investors were rigorously encouraged to use these lights only on special occasions and for a limited amount of time, as interference with the sensitive oil content of the crisp could signal disaster.

There were many categories and sub categories, but it was ‘States and Countries’ which really fired Lord Solanines passion.  Maybe it was because of all the travelling; who knew?   These were crisps that were prized not for any amazing image depicted on them; these crisps were prized for their shape alone. The Country of Italy had an almost mythical status and was considered the El Dorado of the crisp collecting world.  An intact example had never been unearthed.  The heel, of course was the responsible party.  It was so fragile, and too delicate to last any length at all.  He had come across a few phony specimens in his day including the 1974 version which had always been considered authentic until it came up for auction a year ago, causing a furor of excitement.  Only one previous owner.  But after two days of thorough investigation overseen by experts in their fields – including Lord Solanine- it was proved to be a total fake.  Its gentile owner was charged a heavy fine and banished from all associations.  Large land masses such as Australia and Greenland were ten a penny, with the United States cropping up all the time; the southern states always caused a stir.  Americans were big investors.     

Johann Sebastian wasn’t sure where his own crisp fitted into the whole scheme of things, so eventually, when the time came to reveal it to Lord Solanine, he did so with an unsteady hand.  Lord Solanine watched as he took a small handkerchief out of his pocket.  He lifted it as though it were a bird, and placed it carefully on the table.  Lord Solanine looked at the package with a taut, anxious face and as he moved the parcel a little closer, he could feel his heart bleating nervously on his tongue.  He opened a leather doctors’ bag which had been beside him all along.  He fetched out a small square of green baize, the type normally used for playing cards with.  He lifted Johann Sebastian’s’ handkerchief and placed it with great care, into the centre of the baize.  Then he unfolded a pair of wire rimmed glasses and fitted them snugly onto his nose.  He fixed a disposable surgical mask over his face and with slow finesse, fitted on a pair of white cotton gloves, in the manner of a butler.  Finally, he opened a suede instrument roll and scanned the delicate tools before deciding on which ones to use.  He chose a padded pair of tweezers and a cotton bud.  Johann Sebastian’s’ breathing was shallow and light.  Using the padded tweezers, Lord Solanine gently opened the handkerchief.  Inside, there were two sheets of bathroom tissue printed with a blue scallop motif.  They were slightly blotted with grease, a true signal of authenticity; and there, resting quietly within them, was the beautifully formed crisp.

This was a flawless piece, mint condition.  He stared, for what seemed to Johann Sebastian, like an uncomfortably long time.  Lord Solanine was entranced.  It was all there, everything he’d been told.  He looked at the nibbled coastline from San Sebastian all the way to Santiago de Compestella and it was an exact match.  The lack of Portugal was a major coup and the Galician outline reminded him of the gallery above the Captains’ cabin, turning all of Spain into a medieval ship.  He even noticed the dip at the bottom near Gibraltar, seeming to be a keel of sorts, and Catalonia, the beak.  All the urban routes were perfectly mapped out,  guiding the viewer from Madrid to Barcelona, down to Seville; and there up at the top, crowning the  whole thing, were the Pyrenees, just like he’d heard, dotting the landscape in a lucky row of bubbles.

Lord Solanine then selected a petite magnifying glass on a silver stem, a mini measuring tape, and a yellow HB pencil.  He examined every single millimeter of the crisp, with his face very close and intimate to it, and he gasped quietly to himself every now and then and shook his head slowly, then he took up his notebook, licked his pencil and began noting down every single detail in his slow as a river handwriting.

It was very late at night when they went up to lord Solanines room.  It was obvious that he’d lived in this hotel for a long time and the rancid smell that was now familiar permeated throughout, but at this stage Johann Sebastian didn’t care, he flopped into an armchair strewn with newspapers and laundry, and immediately fell fast asleep.  Lord Solanine undressed carefully.  He hung his woolen suit with the worn silk scarf on a rack beside the bed; he folded his trousers into the press and hung his shirt behind the bathroom door, then switched off all the lights except for a small bedside lamp.  He sat criss crossed on the floor beside the bed with the lamp behind him and began carving out a piece of polystyrene, while referring over and over to his beautifully written notebook.  He continued through the night, working like a cobbler until he’d created a custom made mould for the special crisp.  He fitted the polystyrene mould gently into a cedar wood box, kept specially for such precious cargo, and then placed a layer of fine linen into the mould.  He lifted the priceless item out of the handkerchief and placed it in its new casing, folded the linen over the top of it, set the cover piece of polystyrene in place, sprinkled a few of those drying sachets you find in biscuit tins on top, and closed the box.  He put the box into a drawstring bag and placed it on a high shelf.  Then he crawled onto the bed and fell into a deep heavy sleep, and the two men snored calmly for the rest of the night.

Morning came quickly and far too early.  Things were busy from the get go with lord Solanine already walking around the room, talking rapidly into the phone.  He was arguing in quick Spanish and before you knew it, they were speeding down the road in a clapped out taxi, with lord Solanine clinging on to the wooden box, as he shouted orders at the greasy driver.  Johann Sebastian had the tool bag on his lap along with an eight inch squared, silken pillow; he had stopped asking questions by now and just did what he was told.  After about half an hour, they came to a small town and stopped outside the gates of an old monastery.  A large uncomfortable looking priest was standing there waiting for them.  He was shiny from the heat of the day and his face was the colour of a beef  tomato.  There was an agitated air about the priest as he brought them towards the cloisters and his heels flinted off the ancient stones as he panted like an exhausted dog.  A portable silver host box from the 18th century swung on a chain from his watch pocket, and its quality was not lost on Lord Solanine, - the priest had excellent taste. After a while they came to a row of small rooms among the cloisters, facing out into the courtyard.  The casement doors on each of these rooms were flung wide open to the yard, giving the impression of a choral embrace, and the three men made their way towards one of these.  It was a prayer room, as were the others.  There was a large oil painting hanging from the back wall of this one.  It depicted a saint on horseback, holding a sword of sorts.  There was lots of heavy gilding everywhere and brocade cushions on the floor.  The men sat down on a low upholstered bench, and a little table was brought over with refreshments.  Soon they were sipping on cups of black coffee sweetened with honey that the friars themselves had harvested.  A silver platter with slices of avocado, watermelon and cherries was offered, and the conversation was easy, with the priest generally taking the leash.  He was Irish, he told them, over here to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the founding of this very monastery.  He’d worked with one of the older friars years ago, on the missions, and he explained how honored he was to have been invited to this important celebration.  He told them how he wanted to mark this significant event by giving the monastery a unique gift. ‘And what?’  he asked them, ‘could be more exclusive than a crisp in the shape of Spain?’  He went on to describe how poetic the giving of such a crisp would be.   It was the potato returning home; he told them.  ‘A potato transformed into something new.  Something old brought over from the new world  to the old as a new taste, a new flavor, only to be brought back again centuries later, to the original world from where it came, in a new format, a new presentation, by the old world to which it had been new’.  It was potato as art, he told them, and then he went on about the physical presence of Spain in the very architecture of this South American land, particularly here, in this old religious building.  Johann Sebastian and Lord Solanine agreed that indeed he was right.  He slurped his coffee and sat back on the brocade cushions.  Physically, he was far too big for himself.  His chin spilled out over his collar and even the teeth looked like a photo finish at the dog track, with all these hounds bounding out of the gates and across the line.  Indeed, there was something of the hare too in the bucked tooth of his priestly collar.  Lord Solanine found the priest engaging enough and was listening intently to every word, but Johann Sebastian found himself drifting off as the priest droned on and on.  In a nearby room, he could hear the slippery sounds of an old friar, praying deeply, as the elderly do, to a beautifully embroidered statue.  Every time he said a word with the letter‘s’ in it, his dentures whistled like a kettle. 

After a while, a small stout woman came into the room to clear away the coffee cups. She left as silently as she came, with the nod of her head being the only communication between herself and the men. After she closed the door behind her, the priest pulled at his collar - it was time to do business.  He closed the casement windows and kept rubbing at his nose as he folded down the shutters to keep the light and the heat out.  The room was sealed shut and the warm air inside did not move.  Johann Sebastian looked up at the painting of the saint with the sword and wondered what it might have seen in this room over the years.  He was beginning to feel a little sleepy.  Lord Solanine leaned forward from the low bench and lifted the wooden box he had been carrying all this time onto the little table.  He then took the cushion from Johann Sebastian and placed it there too.  The priest knelt down by his side like a dog coming to heel.  A surgical mask was offered and a pair of the starched cotton gloves.  The priest followed Lord Solanines lead by putting the mask over his mouth and nose, then fitting on the cotton gloves with studied elegance.  His fingers bulged through the cotton and some of the stitching came loose.  When they were both ready, Lord Solanine slowly opened the wooden box.  Using the same tools as before, he guided the crisp very gently out of its berth and onto the waiting silken pillow.  There was a moment of absolute silence.  The priest feasted his eyes.  He was not allowed to touch, but he didn’t need to, he was astounded by what he saw.  The piece was outstanding, even better than he’d expected.  After a while, they discussed the minutiae of the object and spoke in low respectful tones, with lord Solanine using the tweezers as a pointer to draw attention to one area of the crisp or another.  The priest nodded sometimes, rubbed his chins or laughed gently.  Everything was going well.  After a while, the crisp on the cushion was put carefully aside and the men sat back on the low bench.  They needed to talk money.  A confessional scene was set up then, the priest listening with his ear cocked sideways as lord Solanine spoke with earnest conviction.  Johann Sebastian listened to the mathematical chatter as his eyes glazed over, and the sound of the Friar in the other room continued to soothe and relax.  Numbers were bounced over and back.  Heads shook and then heads nodded and eventually an agreement was made that satisfied all parties.  The men shook their gloved hands vigorously.  Lord Solanine turned around to Johann Sebastian and the look on his face said everything.  It beamed with glory like the sworded saint above them.

The priest was very excited.  Garnering such a prize was a huge deal and he could not contain his delight.  He began to pant a bit more, as he paced around in the tiny room waiting for the two men to seal the deal.  Johann Sebastian couldn’t keep his eyes off his delectable crisp on its silken bed.  He would miss its simple beauty.  The tiny qualities of allure.  The priest looked at the crisp too.  He could not believe his good fortune, his incredible luck.  He wiped at his face and his mouth, they were dry and sticky in the thick air, and he pulled at the collar around his neck.  Lord Solanine took off his gloves and instructed the priest to finish the deal as Johann looked on.  The priest coughed, grabbed his cheque book and fountain pen from an inside pocket, then knelt down again at the little table to begin writing out the words for a very large sum of money.  He was sweating hard by now; heavy drops of moisture fell from his brow and plopped onto the paper below.  The man shook with such anticipation that he had to stop for a moment to gather his wits, and to blot the cheque with his cotton gloves before going back to finish the job.

Suddenly; from deep within, there was great discomfort.  Something in his throat had begun to move. Something that had been living in the silt of his blood, and was dormant all these years, had awoken now, was uncoiling inside him; began to constrict and flex, to block the airways, to take purchase.  The priest staggered to stand, he leaned heavily on the low table, but his knuckles gave way and he stumbled beneath his own enormous weight.  Lord Solanine instantly understood what was taking place and bolted out across the courtyard in search of urgent help.  The priests face was ablaze with alarm, he scrambled for air with arms flaying about, tried to escape the pressure inside him.  Johann Sebastian stood stock still beneath the painting. He was completely dumbfounded and his mouth gaped open.  The priest gaped too, could not breathe the hot air in, could not catch a breath. His pulse shot bullets through his arteries and up into his temples.  He panicked, grabbed his livid throat.  The eyes bulged out, the mouth sprang open.  ‘Jesus Christ’ he thought ‘Jesus Christ’ as he crashed against the wall and fell heavily to the floor.  The room spun above like a wake of waiting buzzards.  Some awful device, some awful grenade was exploding inside and there was no escape route out.  His eyes rolled back.

The old friar rushed in with his tapping stick to find a priest wheezing for breath and in full cardiac arrest. The friar knelt down, tore the collar from his throat and opened the man’s shirt.  He pumped at the chest with his well worn hands, urged the man to stay alive, for God’s sake stay alive!  He gave the kiss of life, blew into the priest’s lungs for all he was worth, but it was a useless effort.  The friar sighed deeply, and leaned forward to administer last rites. He spoke reassuring words, blessed the man on the forehead and the chest, turned to feel for the silken pillow, and lifted from it, the sacred Eucharist with both his trembling hands. He whispered to the delicate crisp, the reverential words “body of Christ”, made a slow sign of the cross over the priests face, slotted the communion through his mouth and onto his variegated tongue, whereupon the desperate priest closed his dying eyes, uttered one last regretful groan, clamped his teeth into a rictus grin; and bit. 

The Man  Who Ate Spain

The Bedroom Upstairs
By Cróna Gallagher

Just to let you know, 
that as per tradition, frosts visit the cottage 
every new year to clear away the winter bugs 
and keep the place in order.

They thaw and freeze with muscular constriction
until all the bugs are dead on the ground and the air, 
free of sickness.  

As always, a key is kept under the mat and by the back door 
near stone steps down to the garden, you’ll come across the flock 
of sheep-hardy snowdrops droving across this cold young year 
fearless of the frost.  But pay them no mind.

With a shepherds’ staff in each hand, they’ll stoop past you
on their Turas way with faces, grave as the black faced ram 
and fixed to the ground as donkeys looking into the ditch.

Shawls of heavy ice will hang from their shoulders
like wicker creels of eelish wrack, collected from the sea pink 
gums of a long-receded shore and strapped to their pioneering 
backs, as they walk the long acre of frost-bitten grasses 

for the cosy shelter of the crippled orchard with its grove 
of bearded apple trees that wait still near the mossy gable 
and the lights now not lit, in her bedroom upstairs.