Daniel (1982. rev. 29.vii.87)

Death is too simple to be believed.
A brief block to your air-supply,
and there you were: still warm,
unmarked, so beautiful, so dead.

Later, so cold, so calm, a placid
smile upon your pale, pale face,
and when I hugged you, such a deadly
sigh that whistled from your useless lungs.

The crumbled clay uncrumbles now,
and settles on the small white box
that holds a part of you, and all of me.
Oh, Daniel, Daniel, Daniel!

If love could make you live,
you'd live forever.

Gilt by Association (28.vii.87)

Some people have trouble with the Song of Solomon
because of all the jewel-like thighs.
Their toes curl up and their juices thalamine
surge right up to the backs of their eyes.

But my objection to this brief little book
is not the lithe black keeper of the king's vineyard,
nor even disappointment about mandrake-root,
but the boost to the price of spikenard.

Not to mention pomegranates. Two pounds each!
The trouble is that, since Solomon praised it,
every little dog thinks that his little bitch
will adopt the position as soon as she tastes it.

The First of July (28.vii.87)

The undulating plain of Picardy has a district called Santerre,
variously interpreted as sana terra, sancta terra,
but most convincingly as sang-terre,
for its hedgeless fields are sodden with the blood of centuries.
Great cavalry country.

The worst Irish disaster since the famine happened there,
at the hot, sunny start of July, nineteen-sixteen.
The Ulsters perished for The Crucifix, north of Thiepval,
yelling "Up the Boyne" as they went down.
The Twelfth was the First, old style.

In all, that Anglo-German war took
forty-nine thousand, four hundred Irish lives,
and maimed in proportion.
My history book said little or nothing about that.
It was the wrong war.

I found that out, when I went to investigate
a crumbling, rubbish-strewn, weedy, overgrown
memorial in Islandbridge, which brotherly hate
and bitterness had consigned to neglect
and dishonour.

There is a tribe of seagulls on Lambay Island
that scream for every Irish death.
They've been at it for nine thousand years,
since the first landed Irishman drew breath.
Banshees to us all.

The birds cry out for the lot of us,
and they don't wait to ask:
Was he a Teague? Was he a Prod?
If he was a man, it's enough.
If he was a man, it's a lot.

The Good Food Guys (28.vii.87)

The wandering Jew must needs subsist
on vegetables and scaly fish,
and soon you hear him sadly wish
for a knife-slit, white-bled kosher kid
and the fleshpots of Israel.

It used to be that, once a week,
On Fridays, we could have no meat,
and so we thought it hard to eat
the harvest of the Dunmore fleet,
except, of course, for Salmon.

Saint Peter, on a Jaffan roof,
was shown a sheet of living things
that crept and slid and plopped and slithered,
and sported every kind of hoof,
cavorting in the gloom.

In Ramadan, the muslims fast
from dawn to dusk, and feast at night
on sweetmeats, that sharpened appetite
sweeten all the more. This last
scheme seems a better way to mortify the flesh.

On warm spring evenings, round the town,
the muslims sit in doorways munching,
chatting, laughing, singing, loving
life and company, and smiling at the frowning
faces of their betters.

You may not like their politics
or the small print in the Koran,
but as faiths go, it's not the worst,
and it has the virtue catholic,
that anyone can join.

Still, there's not much use hankering after
that kind of thing, when I'm stuck believing
the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost,
and wouldn't be easy with a monopersonal
mighty indifferent God.

Not to mention His prophet.