in a lonely ditch with a nagging bitch
domestication overcame me
my sad eyed lady of the lowlands
half-cut, leaning leftwards in the breeze,
bouncing off trees, losing
the run of herself
oh! oh! entirely
so I went to the pissart convention
straight down the old red lane
with stout Cortez, an eagle of a man,
or was that Pissaro
gazing goggle-eyed,
rehearsing
on the Hill of Howth?
We were
half-cut, leaning in the breeze,
leaning and linking serenely,
floating over the flushed and happy faces
of the lusty multitude, singing,
loudly, lovingly,
their anthem at the races:
there were four and twenty virgins
at the Ball of Inverness
and when the ball was over
there were four and twenty less
and in another corner of a foreign field
young Jimmy the Bollix and Gaston Grey
languished
among the lazy langourous lilacs,
gesticulating, interpolating,
Wolfsbane
Sinn Fein
and fifty feckin reasons
to kill your mam
and love your dad
the only peace I ever had
was seven past mental
alone in the flat in Islandbridge
but with two suns in a blazing sky
closing in, approaching,
there was this ... apprehension
(a temporary illusion)
of permanent impermanence
and I thought (that was then)
Mr Death was not worth dying for:
because like any sensible man
I was all for a bit of silence
but, Jayz, Mr D went a step too far
in the other direction. Beyond the gallows,
you may discern
the psychological centre
of the healthy happy human mind:
pre-Revolutionary
pre- Communist
pre-Fascist
pre- American
prelapsarian
as when in days of innocent youth
we laughed with girls and told the truth
but let me
put some interpretation
upon your scalp
and rub it in with kneading fingers
as the needing lingers
and
the clocks
tick
on
Shantih ... Shantih ... with a dull sound at the stroke of eleven.
