Smithereens Press Chapbooks The Sea Path by Ciarán O'Rourke | Page 29

that you’ve sunk into:
the blood-shut eyes, the unresponding mouth – what can I do?
And since you’re gone
from fact and life, if not
from dreams – what god,
what murmur-loving listener,
in room or cloud, am I
forever speaking to?
Will your words repeal
the river? Your hands
scoop out
the springsuggesting ground?
If not to bring him back,
cleansing the hair,
the blinking skin, then
to lower me down,
down to the black, halfempty, sleepless place,
where I might join
my brother, and
the disembodied others,
in the lonely heaven.

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