Poetry By Daragh Fleming

The Person Who Helped Atlas

Listen to Daragh reading his poem:

Atlas holds up the sky just so you can exist beneath it,

your shoulders are always sore, you tell me, stiff and strained

like there isn’t enough skin to cover all your bones

you stretch against the wall in our new home,

as I tell you that you don’t need to hold up the world,

that’s someone else’s job, a role already claimed,

and all you do is smile, a gentle, closed grin, and say,

it doesn’t seem fair to let him hold it all by himself, 

so you continue with your pained back, it acts as a shelf,

every person adds their burden, lightening their load,

weighing you down, your mortal back scarred and lacerated

This is my purpose, you say, we don’t get to choose the road,

the path is carved, my place is with Atlas beneath the stars

and I am captivated, you smile still, the weight gets heavier

So much suffering, the years roll on, so much pain, your back

distorts, you can no longer walk, and still you smile, you smile 

and I weep because it’s unbearable to see you like this, the totality

of the world upon your back – all the war and death and tears and blood

tattooing your back in blisters, scabs unable to form, your skin is ever moving, 

a field of lava, burning, boiling, breaking, and you continue to look up at me

your eyes still glisten, your face still so sure of itself, and eventually, 

at a time when our home is crumbling around us, when the end is near, 

I ask you why, why did you do this, how could you endure it all?

You smile once more, the final smile, something secret laying beneath it:


Suffering becomes endurable when it finds its meaning

and I was able to take their pain and give them space to breathe,

to look upon the stars and wonder, 

to live beneath the Atlas sky

and feel alive.

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Daragh Fleming is a writer from Cork. His debut in non-fiction, Lonely Boy, was published in 2022 by Bookhub Publishing. He has work appearing in several literary magazines including #crannóg, Southword, Stand, Gutter, and more. He also high commended for both the Patrick Kavanagh Award and the Fool For Poetry Prize in 2023, and shortlisted for the Alpine Fellowship Poetry Prize. His next collection of essays, A BRIEF INHALATION, is being published by Broken Sleep in March.