Setting The Type by Greg Delanty

I pick a magnifying glass from your desk
& hold it to a haze of men
bowed over the jigsaw puzzles of galley trays.

You confer with Dan Hannigan.
I wonder at the results of a half century
of nicotine on his right index finger.

Through zig-zag bars of an old-fashioned elevator
I have just spotted the ascending head
& Humpty-Dumpty body of Donnie Conroy.

He will be broken by drink
& his daughter's death.
Her face is now smiling from his desk.

You turn & escort me to the letterpress.
Mr. Lane punches my name into shiny lead
& declares hereafer it is eternal.

The names of Dan Hannigan, Owen Lane, Donnie Conroy-
I could go on forever invoking the dead-
were set deep in a boy

impressed by the common raised type on the 3rd floor
of Eagle Printing Company, 15 Oliver Plunkett Street,
in the summer-still, ticking heart of Cork City.