It was observed today
by the wily crew and me
that the lowest rent in Dublin
is for two metre plots
in a place called Glasnevin.

So Val, now I guess,
it's Val Donican for you.
You've given up the goat, and now
you're walking taller than all of us.  
You're guitar strings are silent,
yet my heart strings still ring for you,  
but no amount of cod liver oil
can bring you back.
So Val, rock on.

The biggest union flag
stands one day longer,
atop the important building,
*****, for its mistress.

By communal agreement -
they rattle on another day -
or else for *******, and fear,
of the alternative thing.  

Down in the earth,
trains are sometimes delayed.
a commuter curse and swear,
a spectre passes Waterloo.

I went to Dalkey Island in a 14 foot boat,
and there stood on a granite slab,
which formed the cap of a granite wall
built by the colonial administration.  
I saw the tracks where the canons used to be and pivot,
and the collapsed vaults of the officer's quarters,
and the fire they had there, in the fire place.  

I pronounced the words,

'Come at me, Napoleon,'

from the cradle of a big gun,
and provoked the dead man's spirit,
dispersed throughout the seas,
to later wet my socks
on the slip in Bullock Harbour.

Erebus

I walked along the shore,
from the coal harbour to seapoint,
and the lands beyond:
Blackrock, Dollymount, Asphodel.

There I weighed a sufferance,
against the others there,
and found it, for all that it is,
comparable, equivalent.

I weighed my unmortal parts upon the winds,
North to Northeast, falling slowly,  
held my frailties, and failings on the tide,
and presented a show of petty wrongdoings,

Some done, some undone,
some imagined into being.  
I put mercy to sea, and waited
for the shipping forecast,

To tell me what I thought could be,
carry that far barque to regions far,
bring profit from those lands,
and make solvent my life.

They replaced it with a thing.  
It's called the N6.