The Passport

The Ulysses is all but empty, this low afternoon.
I am crossing again an Irish Sea
the same granite as the sky,
only a thin line darker between them
to pull from Holyhead to Dublin
the journey I thread twice a year.

Homegoers. Stragglers. Lorry drivers.
All of us cupped in the same three hours
of Sky news and one-armed bandits
in a café otherwise numb;
Full Irish on all-day special,
cheaper bought in Pounds.

I lay my head down on my bunched-up coat
like any traveller; thinking in waves,
in engine throbs, as the small hum of all I am
(car keys, body, passport, phone)
slips into the background hymn
of all that I am not.

Which is where, eventually,
I will have to account for myself;
pinball my way, passport in hand,
through the sin a bhfuil of the shibboleth
and the inquisition of Immigration
where a uniform behind plexiglass

will hold the sight of me up to the fact of me,
and permit me pass, or not.
Where a machine will calculate
(this much nation, this much age,
this much fingerprint)
how much I resemble myself;

Or where I’ll be led off to the room
by the man to checklist the jist of me:
how I take my coffee, who I love,
what I’d choose if I had to choose
between a banjo concert and an ice bath,
my favourite Beatles song.

There he will set me to pronounce
Cobh, Domhnaill and Caoimhe;
sixth, Mousehole and Worcestershire,
and make me to declare where I call home.
And there we will sit in our various silence
while voices outside spill from door to door.

Oh, Passport, that has the measure of me
(fact by truth by certainty)
remind me, Who goes there?