Poetry 4 November 2020 The NS Poem: Mist on the Curragh A new poem by Steven O'Brien. Getty Sign UpGet the New Statesman\'s Morning Call email. Sign-up My grandfather as a boy Combed his hair to be good And tidy For his mother’s burial. Mirror above the hearth, Dim as a bog pool. His reflection moved under the smoky glass But over his shoulder, much deeper within His mother walked down the stairs behind him, Formal and pale And went out silently Into the mist on the Curragh. A story repeated surely as Sunday tea With the clock ticking at his back, To my sister, my brother and me Sitting along the sofa. Each time grey eyes shifting between ours, The same troubled look, And his open mouth Asking us to go with him, that long ago morning On the gravel path towards the grave – To see what he had seen But scarcely could believe himself. Steven O’Brien is the editor of the London Magazine. His poetry collections include Scrying Stone (Greenwich Exchange) and Dark Hill Dreams (Inpress Books). › An expired laptop is yet further proof that Fortune’s Wheel still has me in a spin This article appears in the 06 November 2020 issue of the New Statesman, American chaos