I slept through winters of dawn and blue fish
David Fisher

When I was a child I slept through the night
except when Father lifted me to see a sputnik
pass or when a mouse, anxious to build
a nest, nibbled to noise my copybook.
Later there were times sleep deserted me
'til the hour of the wolf had been swallowed
in a swathe of pastel beyond the pane.

It was then I thought of sputniks and mice
and an aquarium set in stone, smuggled
across the border, where blue and red fish
darted, like those of every hue who stared
from the page my brother was forced to rip
from a magazine so that he could sleep snug
in knowing their scales sizzled in the hearth.

Celia de Fréine is a poet and playwright who writes in Irish and English. Luíse Ghabhánach Ní Dhufaigh Ceannródaí, her biography of Louise Gavan Duffy, has been shortlisted in the Irish language category of the An Post Irish Books Awards 2018.