Smithereens Press Chapbooks The Sea Path by Ciarán O'Rourke | Page 31

his head adrift
with grief, or sleep,
but not dead yet
on the killing march.
Against all murderous
decrees, and against
the unreturning cities
razed, the angel
drowning in the bricks,
the roads
where beggars roam
and drop, it’s true:
the oak trees
still are breathing,
and the fist,
which ice and metal
hammered once,
can furl
to feel the winter
easing,
in a luff of rain.
So it is, poet,
in this barbaric language,
built from pain,

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