Ireland's Song

Pecking at his cobbler sat my grandfather far

and rereading Conrad in an empty car

of a holy widower, breaded dreaming cold,

all sopped up with vinegared, olive oil gold and

it must have been the heroin in Elliott’s voice

that shattered the Parian of late mother’s choice

and cannoned her entity down twelve velvet stairs,

raising my last elegy and staining rug hairs.

The children would never see Christmas again (instead, 

they’d sprout into three dinged village ornaments) 

with every last lamp darkened to a candle’s orange,

we’d head to the yard and feed the puppy’s grave porridge

made of faux flowers and stems who lived longer than her,

but whose sourness was split with her bedridden mother.