Capped coachman holding court to a wall
Fuck all happening this evening
If Harold’s Cross I must be fuming
Smack lacking few men I know
And where are they now? Cowper
Or Dundrum in fairy tale gaffs, eating escargot
Quoting Descartes o’er cards, some ego I cogito.
Today, in the rain, done three laps of Phoeno
And am I in by the fire with me feet up? No
Out here breaking me bollocks
Now missus you’re saying it’s to snow
Says I’ll go so I will, far from here
To Morocco or choco Belgium’s Congo, therenear
Oh dear I feel the mercury dipping like a rapt bard
Better wrap up tonight, missus
Lighting a candle’ll be hard.
All my so called mates failed to follow me up to Carlow
They are sleeping, perchance not to wake from Bardo
I only know that word from Theosophy, where me ma goes
Here I am, drenched, hauling the most precious cargo
In such a wind as teased Lear’s tearstreaked face
I cannot light me smoke.
He calls out, knowing to no one
I’m bored as Estragon!
His voice as through trainless tunnels carried
Out beyond Carrick and Rathmines, to Stillorgan
Where stopped hearts have not far to get a Dart.
Hands crossed at lumbar, behind rested on frosted bollard
Sodden feet lifted above ground, an highchaired Umpire
Or changeling upon dotted toadstool perched in Elfland
He fetched a noiseless purse, proffering Lamberts
He lit one and said, lying, it could be worse.
He saw tips and spikes, probably Christchurch
Where crowned they kingaday young’in Lambert Simnel
Smashed a pretender battling at Bosworth, he was put to work
In King’s grim kitchens, and married a woman fitting that rank
King a day, slave a lifetime; such is the way
At life’s end, no more day, last firsting.
God, isn’t it an appalling day he’s missived
I’d be sacked delivering work like this
He takes pipe’s thumbful, thumbing flat into the puncheon
Closing then with turtle snap, clasp which fastens pungent pouch
Furling shank raises to mouth’s lips, toothtips tracing the bit, nipple.
The Orb tonight like a clear marble smoked-filled, a dread pall of fright
Wreathes the ball, all chaos, malady, mistraffic; misrule’s night
Cinereal slategray as might paunch staunch old bears, grey in the pool
Catching only the aged Salmon, who themselves cannot endure
No more than five four, by malnutrition pollarded
Doffs tweed flatcap to a strumpet in blue, Our Lady of the Roadside.
Having cause with gents of the gentry to palaver upon entry to his cab
Saw kitchens like Muirias’ eating horn, stocked duck to Durian
Heeded voices grown to fury at prurience amongst household servants
He has seen sorrow, fury and freely-given charity amongst all humanity
It cannot be said that one coinless miser unsmiling is an angel disguised
And another man for his ties, for his wealth prideful, is unkind
Such modes with two facets only are inadvisable, lacking nuance
We all play the biter and feeding hand before our act’s ending
Such are the sentences handed out long before knowing
Some men to holed shrouds, others to golden thrones
Fairness is not among the metrics for those chosen.
His hands closing, entwining fingers like a string trap, form a scallop
Heat as from one cloven doth oven out from some open window
His hungry snout like two growing caves lengthens
Pies of that widow prize-winning, pride of diet
If I was her husband, says over his pint, I’d n’er ha’ died.
His horses without whinny, gavelling cobbles rapid disappearing
Snow’s coat unravelling, a hooked string travelling to the Minotaur
His horses within gallop, hi-yah up javelin over the palisade staves
Thoughts frantic, anxiety’s hot ashes from old antics now mind’s maladies
If he was not stood out in it, it would be a romantic evening
One for courting sweetlings to spend rind sampling, pampered
Trees moonbeams moving between
Like you would see in Green Cinema picturehouse
Searchlights trained on escapees
As if operating an oar one arm’s shoulder limbers, tongueclick sound.
Freak thirst on me abominable
Where a goodly man keeps Bible
I hide a flask high with goodly liquid
Toasting skyward, shriving to ere-watching eye
That safe I would be on icy roads driving
I glug once for warmth, once for joy, once for tiredness
Which falls swift and sudden like a nightraid, smiting
As if a Titan in exile sat the rock of my eyelid, I squint
As one watching a solar eclipse, head toward shoulder tending
Cuddling into myself, the puddle of me collar-nuzzled
Before shooting awake suddenly, effort must redouble
To sustain sentience during my sentry, lest my empty coffers
Remain in surfeit, I run my index finger along roof rim’s rainbeaded surface
A banshee screaming placelessly, a vixen dreaming vulpine Edens.
I check the horses’ fixings, hand to blaze by misting breath
Though cutting, such weather provokes mystique in the city
All Dublin’s lead to gold sifted, moonhit snow all aglitter
I could drain a hogshead, a butt and two barriques
Without belching, and still call to have my thimble refilled
A oft-chewing Pentagruel or an insatiable Tarrare.
Snowflakes trenchmoring guiltily, sticking to the courtyard floor
Like mallowed mithril
Snow fills bowled hollows, going as pleases a bold Horus
Like fae tales told on midnight grave, face-paling inclemency
Increasing at length in depth and strength.
Fork ort below like dottle in a pipe, given to a dog
Fog mustered, mustard-dyed with gaslight winding
Four-horse cart hauled be two, none alighting tonight
Wind like a form-shed snake undulates incorporeal
Taking air, testing delighted, sin arrived to Samarkand
Horsebreath pluming drake fumes acrid
Reigns grasping leads them around the square
Eight knocks, Sleipnir trotting
Treats well nags ignoble, they are his home and abode
They win no championship, afford him neither pineapple nor poker chips
But they have made him very happy, smiles applied to bowing lips.
“My, you are handsome things mine
Little man in your eye
You are a sable diamond, grown of the stable
Grown of the same stuff as gentle Abel
Before a horse came, man hath no measure for speed save feet
Hardy and capable, though slow
Man’s allying with horses fateful almost
You like us loving war, crack of powdered charge
Discharging rifles witchcackling, bombers like flighting gaggles
Undoing the valley with fragmenting missiles
Kinship with beasts suchlike, brave and kind, seems duty prideful
Beauty heavensent besublimes you, aureate beams climb your level spine
Mansome in eye and temperament.
He arouses whinnying wiggling fingers through manes spiral-knotted
Tamerlane should be pleased well to come across the dwelling
Plains of wild bays as thee such I behold, it is only hard life
That stops at your glory my limpid eyes welling
You my friends through every trial have sometimes felt to me as Fathers
Do to boys perhaps, I had neither father nor youth nor baptism
When at day’s end lapsing, shutting trap lid which me hides inside
Many trials faced we, triumphal emerging
You loved me, whore and virgin
You prized me, a dullard, a Virgil
You alone stirred, love uncontainable, at my arrival
My heart turgids, shaking such as breaks cases
Such hastening of faithful feeling
Clear, ’tis graven to mind like miner’s names writ upon mine walls
Mind’s targe with arrows staved
Flooded by noble instance past.
Prizing you as Scythia’s Tamerlane prided his finest destrier
He knew not Athena’s name but well knew her deep feeling
In his lofty dreams, he dwelt away from endless steppe
To the west which was east, his veed fingers congressed fletch
Stretched back the string, released, it left whizzing singing
Rising climbing higher spiting angels unto a zenith
Before crashing back to Earth like a church-blasted demon
For a moment hawklike seeming to hang
A leaf suspended, dangling, on an occulted web
Completing a parabolic arch’s angle
Where it sank
Thereto rode, many roadless plains hence in deepest citiless Scythia
A pitiless sun shines brightly, treasonously close to midnight
A spurned Selene her tides sets tantruming
All will dream dark tonight.
Alchemisland 
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