“Snake Eye
1.
Pyjamas, the first thing on the list
when they said hospital. You chose
the pattern yourself, whorls of snakes
in blue-greens, intricate.
I packed your bag crushing
the pyjamas under apples and books.
In pyjamas I do not know you.
In bed I wake.
The moon threads the curtains,
the brasseyes of the bed stare.
The dream-serpent wakes me.
2.
In the leaves of the jungle—
gummy greenness.
Netted against mosquitoes,
I watch the snake’s guerrilla
colours slide from under the Virgin’s
foot. No. I will not move the net
to look. In the fabric of your pyjamas,
in the cross-hatching of my skull,
he has found a home.
3.
In sudden winter
the house lies
down in snow.
Fear sloughs off
his skin and lodges
in my eye sockets;
the guest, shifteyed
ophidian, secures
his habitation.”
--Clairr O’Connor, in: Pillars of the House: an Anthology of Verse by Irish Women 1690 to the Present (ed. A A Kelly, 1987)
