Ancient comedy
See it playing out at quarter-speed
Drawling punchlines strike fear,
not amusement

We'd cross the sea at will
Grasping for the things we'd killed
Now a broke-up world just wants to
freeze our allegiance without our agreement

Seagulls shriek 'til hoarse through the empty ferry port
Blood flung on the wind
honouring the bagman
indemnity

You're never going back

The rooms where I was born
midwife townhouse, now bedsits careworn
burned its books, no welcome even if I
could flee there and plead just to sleep there

You're never going back
you stayed too long where you don't belong
now you're locked in, broke,
when you should move on
You're never going back

Orange skies on Meath
as November stooped to lay its wreath
Fairyhouse to Plank Spire Park,
land speed unofficial,
death-day interstitial

Could she sense the room,
the love-borne sleepless few?
Did she sense the closing hungry frontier
just up the road?

You're never going back

The Bow said to the Fetch:
"You know, I like this stupid peacetime much less
than that time we battled to Trieste, wailing in new death, wailing in new death"

(NOTE: the entity known as The Fetch was called to mind by Patrick McCabe's fine novel The Stray Sod Country for The Bow we thank the County of Wexford, in Ireland)