Poems by
Bernard Gilhooly
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At 30,000 feet

(1956)


A fleck of silver against the darkening blue


The hollow cylinder rockets under the sky’s dome


Unavailingly pursued by the thunder of its sound


Until that final scarlet reverberation;


Like the telegraph's words burning meaninglessly


Upon slip of yellow paper, and the explosion


Of grief within the mind, this fire and thunder


Do not quite coincide:


The eyes of the watcher see the disaster


Before its voice awakens in his ear.





Nothing that has meaning descends again to earth;


The lighted runway waits vainly



To feel the screeching tyres;


Customs officials will not search this baggage


That downward flakes in dust on silent fields;


Hands cannot clasp, nor lips press


What is now blown weightlessly about the sky.





There was a moment when they drowsed


Deep in luxurious chairs;



Read magazines, wrote letters;


When stewardesses served coffee and liqueurs,


And dirty dishes were neatly stacked



In the bright kitchen.




No other moment followed;


Time stopped. There was nothing…


No doubt there is a meaning to this event;


But not one that can be read


On the white face of the farmer


In mid-furrow gazing upward from his plough


Nor in the burned minds of those who wait


At the airport barrier.




Note from the author
About 'At 30,000 Thousand Feet'
The idea arose when I was walking across a golf course one early Autumn day (in the early 1950s), hearing a jet aircraft and experiencing for the first time being unable to trace it from its sound, which was coming from another part of the sky. This led to the idea that a shocking experience like the act of opening and reading a telegram of a loved-one's death, is only followed later by the explosion of its meaning. I hasten to add that the aircraft did not explode and of course, Lockerbie was much later.







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