Irish Epic Poem in 33 Cantos (Part 13)
CANTO IV (continued)
A verse true to the dawn
smiles from deep in labyrinth,
shines through the chatter of competing insects
taking off from the surface.
"Massage me Man,
muscle in to crevices,
loosen the memory within:
was "Anam Chara" written by a fool?
MOLESKINE’s faith in you rests secure:
these are early days,
I can see you pick your way with care.
Roll on the day you’ve more to say
when the pen won’t pause
for the sake of the cause
this body of work feels
every hesitation as neglect.
Get "On The Road" into your system.
Jack’s journey was on paper too.
You might put that in your pipe
Smoke Smoke Smoke.
Why are all the smokers gone
from drink-filled rooms?
They kept me going with material and pungent participles.
It is your task to write me.
Space me out. Give me a tributary of the Grand Canal,
a Lido or two satisfies that want.
If you can’t space the Shannon,
the Mague, Deale, Feele will do.
I can be getting on with your version of the Heimlich Maneuver.
Whatever about you, I’m still tipsy from sleep."
‘I waddled homely as a crowd
that boats on sky
o’er rakes and pills…’
Will that do?
Only a first draft Dorothy,
come sit on my knee.
Attend to my Muse my dear.
If we could only stride the MacGillycuddy’s Reeks
as over WaspWater,
I’d have invented unnatural verse,
and you could have married in Tintern.
We are the gravediggers, the light relief,
Yoric and what’shisname, our gods.
Go up to Mount Saint Lawrence
where Uncle’s still asleep in a double poster
and you can’t hear yourself for the dead
beneath their crosses.
We’ve ferried across from Tarbert.
Kerried-out you may say,
swapped the intelligence of mountains for salt on bog.
Dearest Dorothy, where would I be without you?
‘Aloft, while on thy bed we lay,
those cute whores flashed
on the leeward eye
that is the piss of solitude.’
Did you get that down in notes?
Will you be able to reproduce me?
Wordsworth a dream,
the sister of mercy
crossing the Mersey
into Hades.
I’m with Dante on this,
Cratloe Woods before me,
dullest night, moles about,
the rumour is Lenihan stalks the copse,
and when he’s exhausted by the civility of servants,
he assignates with Daniel O’Connell’s ghost -
the bold O’Donoghue
who brought the good news from Bruree to Ennis
via Killarney where he swam in Lady’s View,
built a Taj Mahal to Red Rum, Arkle and the boy racer
that Twittered from Kerry to say he met
a Monk in a Beehive
who smelled honest.
I wouldn’t be believing such a claim
before a 360 degree appraisal by the people… [to be continued]
