Christo's
Two Workmen were carrying a sheet of asbestos
Down the main street of Dingle;
It must have been nailed, at a slight angle,
To the same-sized gap between Brandon
And whichever’s the next mountain.
Nine o’clock. We watched the village dogs
Take turns to spritz the hotel’s refuse-sacks.
I remembered Tralee’s unbiodegradable flags
From the time of the hunger-strikes.
We drove all day past mounds of sugar-beet,
Hay-stacks, silage-pits, building-sites,
A thatched cottage even-
All of them draped in black polythene
And weighted against the north-east wind
By concrete blocks, old tyres; bags of sand
At a makeshift army post
Across the border. By the time we got to Belfast
The whole of Ireland would be under wraps
Like, as I said, ‘one of your man’s landscapes’.
‘Your man’s? You don’t mean Christo’s?’
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