150 contemporary poetry
such an act betrays nostalgia. The closing brutal image is of the
speaker’s own effects being cleared by a person ‘who enters / our
silent house’ performing ‘this perfunctory rite’ (p. 9 ). Jamie’s
poem pinpoints an anxiety of relationship: how objects frame our
environment and remain as an elegy or fractured narrative on our
death.
Meehan’s poem sequence situates us in the park at the centre of
Dublin: St Stephen’s Green. ‘Six Sycamores’ was commissioned
by the Offi ce of Public Works in 2000 on the occasion of a new link
between their offi ces at 51 – 2 St Stephen’s Green, and was accom-
panied by a wall sculpture by Marie Foley. This immediate public
occasion for Meehan’s poetry places it in dialogue with civic space.
A note at the opening of the poem informs us that: ‘The original
leaseholders around St Stephen’s Green had to plant six sycamores
and tend them for three years’ (p. 28 ). The six sycamores serve as a
framing of the space of the Green and bear witness to major histori-
cal acts as well as acts of love, confession and dispute in the poem.
Broken into six small subtitled lyrics, ‘Six Sycamores’ depicts dif-
ferent modes of relation within this space, and framing these indi-
vidual narratives are six loosely constructed sonnets. Juxtaposed,
these different formal strategies create different perspectives and
voices. The opening sonnet, ‘The Sycamore’s Contract with the
Citizens’, is framed as a public document. The sycamore agrees to
‘look up in autumn’ and to release seeds ‘helicoptering lazily down /
to crashland on paths or on pads of weeds / when you were a child’
(p. 28 ), The sonnet is immediately followed by a lyric with a time-
monitored heading, ‘ 09. 20 First Sycamore’, which details a school-
girl late for school, smoking a cigarette, listening to Bob Dylan on
her Walkman. These shorter lyrics delineate the fl eeting instances
of encounter, mobility and exchange in the city park. ‘ 04. 26 Second
Sycamore’ chronicles a drunken lovers’ argument; ‘ 12. 53 Third
Sycamore’ records a broken man asking for change; ‘ 14. 48 Fourth
Sycamore’ grants us a perspective upon a woman’s anxiety over
the birth of her fi rst child; ‘ 06. 17 Fifth Sycamore’ records a youth’s
ambition to win the Lotto and leave his ‘McBoss with his McJob’
(p. 32 ); and the fi nal ‘ 19. 38 Sixth Sycamore’ recalls a man’s admis-
sion that he hid behind the tree on his fi rst date waiting for ‘her’ to
arrive.