#2 (A Stream in Ireland)

The water runs down the side of the hill,
a stream in Ireland, on rocks, brown,
peat stained livelihoods.

A rowing boat out in the sound,
full of coal in the misty morning light.

Down the lanes amongst the green, a police officer cycles in his cycle clips and waves hello to someone.

I was young when I first propped my bicycle against your window, the fruit it turned by the time I got home.

A mother’s harsh tongue would scare you to Sunday, wind before bedtime and a moan about he war.

Work was always left until the night before incept. Your grey eyes danced by the fire and the television football match roar.

Blue capped in boiler houses, cricket crawled and sorrowful, the ache in your side never went and your books saved your life.

Construct a song for me now, over the water and safe from destiny, write a song and sing for the remainder of your life.

Faded the photograph, gene pool recommended, the morning is coming and you’re far away.

As if looking for someone the sailors kept their watch, over the ice floes in this huge, enormous North.

A calm morning saw the seals return, sleeping in the water below the stern of the ship.

The captain was in his cabin, bunked and probably still drunk from the night before.


Drank on Tuesday night:

Cask of rum

Bottle of French brandy, best quality

Absinthe and a quart of sugar

Some peculiar old shit the Inuit brought aboard

Whisky from Galway

Twenty two pints of porter

A lot of tobacco

One bottle of chartreuse and a glass of gin.

A trickle of water ran its course down through the rocks and peat, cutting its time and pleasure through the shapes that jut and pierce the land.

A drunk mans path that leads to the inevitable path, home.

No knowledge of its trials, tomorrow you will wake again, the world shinning like a golden orb, for you.

Lake sided and dived amongst the water plants and ducks, the morning creatures watch as you dump your bodies.

A genocide in Technicolor, remembered only in the monochrome of history.

Sligo

Cork

Dublin

Donegal

Bristol

Lowestoft

Newcastle

Upon Tyne.