Irish Epic Poem in 33 Cantos (Part 62)
CANTO XXIX (starts here)
The ALMIGHTY moved,
all the Heavenly Host moved in consort…
"We’re in deep shit.
Our man on earth has five days.
I am an ALMIGHTY joke,
if he finds not a single honest sinner
in that god-forsaken country.
He is no puppet,
I have no string to pull.
He’s alone.
Come, wife of this perpetual disappointment,
use your intuition,
lay down your hope that I’ll reform.
"The wife of the ALMIGHTY
is almightier than words,
grander than all full stops.
I am paying the price
demanded of me
in return for the free will I sold
to the highest bidder.
"But one would suffice,
We could clone a race of honest people,
a sustainable race,
if we could trace
that which is hidden from the face."
"Stop it, you old fool,
this is no time to give up.
I love my thrillers,
this is a page-turner.
I bet your Siegfried will cross the bog,
brush back the nettles,
scale the rock,
and tear back the disguise.
I bet we’ll have hot lips yet."
With that outburst, she withdrew,
cut-off, finished the conversation.
The wife of the ALMIGHTY left him to stew.
She resumed her knitting,
he went back to sleep,
the heavenly host dreamt on.
The atom was in two minds:
"Fuck it lady, got out of my way.
Will you fuckin well overtake that tractor,
Jesus, you’d think we were at a poxy funeral."
The procession into Waterville was slow,
the roads seemed to know
the hitman was abroad.
Newspapers full of revelations
from the Dublin Archdiocese,
as the curate prepared for a mid-week celebration:
he’d eaten the body and blood of Christ
many time, since he’d been transferred
down from Glynn.
He was a sleeper, well-embedded
underground,
his secret never shared.
I must get out of Kerry,
Cromwell never got here,
Connacht is calling, the brown bull,
The Táin is calling me.
I like to walk by the salley bank
In the puddles of the grey and the climate so dank
At the edge of a forest on a mountain green
At war with myself, a mind fit to scream.
When I looked at the Dáil, my heart grew fright
Tarred lands and waste in the evening light
Builders in rows with crimson debts
Peering over neighbours’ buy-to-lets.
The heart that has never known such grief
I’m a lonesome young man distraught, a thief
Without money or home or friends or ease
Would stumble to see beyond, and please.
The mallards drift on a mistless stream
And a swan beside them sang the theme;
A feckless trout that in their track
Leaped in the air with turning back.
The brown of brook and the leaves around
That turned into loam with a crushing sound;
The pack rang out in the beagles cry
And the NAMA march while the fox slipped by.
(Canto 29 to be continued)
