Inspired by Paula Meehan's 'Six Sycamores' 2

The poem – or perhaps sequence of poems - that I’ve responded to  is ‘Six Sycamores’, which moves through the history of St Stephen’s Green, including, in Number Fifty-One, its pre-history.  I think in a way I’ve just reframed a certain ahistorical tendency in the use of the park which Meehan has already indicated in the wider poem.  I’ve followed the form, more or less, of The Sycamore’s Contract with the Citizens but to a much less resonant effect – I suppose unsurprising given the that the focus of what I’m doing operates explicitly on one, immediate level.  I’m not sure of the efficacy of using a sonnet to reject history, there’s a contradiction there, but Meehan’s sonnets in this sequence are so lovely, it would seem churlish not to acknowledge the formal dimension of what she’s doing.  (I am interested to ask her about her use of form, here and elsewhere).