Smithereens Press Chapbooks The Sea Path by Ciarán O'Rourke | Page 23

Man Kneeling in Grass
(Francis Bacon, 1952)
It must be good
to fall like this
in some dark space
of the mind, and find
your body feeling, after all,
the total metaphor
of rushes and earth
grow to softness
across your knees
and rise, furring your arms
to the elbow
with the swish and smell
of meadow-grass
and elemental ground.
Or perhaps
the swilling wish persists,
in this rectangular
corridor of night
I catch you in,
to sink through earth
and ache forever
in the well-deep nightmare
there, like stone.
Such grief, I think, could
only animate my own
small weight of need
in watching you: to send
the breeze of light
already trickling
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