CANTO XXVII (all here) 

Designer drugs: Day Nurse, Night Nurse,
you find all the Nurses in Boots.
Why do drugs not work on me?

Why not a little freedom?
A moment of relief?
Unbusted flush.

Hush now, there are dealers on the road,
Crystal Meth should stop the flow of complaints,
look what it did for Aghassi.

Give it to Cowen I say,
give it to the whole Cabinet,
Labour and Fine Gael.
Sinn Fein in pain,
the PDs rotten fleas.

Only the Greens are saying
"we told you so.
You listened to us too late,
the gates already open,
the flood already spoken.
I’m proud to be Green
when global warming has its way." 

There are twenty thousand sandbags in Ennis,
each from an outsourced source.
I know the fella with the contract to fill them…

And his brother with the stone,
the cousin a locksmith,
and the other one the electrician.

We believe in sustainable sand,
it’ll all be grand.

McWilliams twitters,
uses all the technology,
gets the message out:
I’ll be in Eason’s at 6.30,
come by if you’re thirsty for ideas.
Was it all a con-trick?
Really sick?
Perhaps I’m thick?
I thought followers of David
would be spared the lash
of a soaking
on the road from St Paul’s
to the statue of Father Matthew
outside Marks & Spencers.

Is anyone an individual anymore?
- or are we all personas,
constructed images of half-promises,
like the half-rhymes that hold your attention
without you recognising it? 

A syllable in a haystack,
homeopathic creatures
that secrete a smidgen of DNA
sufficient for the reconstruction of a personality.
‘Brand U’ called out Tom Peters,
the man in search of excellence.
Is that so much easier to discover 
than honesty?

I’m having to wade through the spin-doctors
looking for spinnakers,
the Radisson opens its showers
to those with towels on Little Island
- the masses invited in to wash
"the least we could do".

Maybe some of this is true.

The night is in,
cloud low, stars shut out.
They all snore in this part of the world,
the language they understand.