Oh ye men of Greece and Rome,
Too long have ye laboured,
Feel you not what is to come,
the grass by the wall of the ruin?  

Leave ye down your tools, ancient peoples,
know you not what is to come?  
See you not the pass of many years,
the grass through pavements old?

Great enterprise never sprung from a fertile land,
Go ye into the desert, and there build your temples,
Amongst the sands and beneath the sun,
where grass can never grow.  

Here the  lines and here the verse,
Here the vaults and chimneys,
Hark the turning of the days,
eek the tall and terrible days.  

Lo, the falling of a chimney,
Lo, the crack of stones to splinter,
Lo, the old oak tree stands yawning.
better to build from bushes and thorn.  

Have at your lawnmowers, ye council men,
And see what good it does you,
Think ye can halt the rise and fall,
of strong towers left to ruin?

Have at your anoraks, and have at your coats,
Clouds gather above and rankle the parapet,
Here stood a roof, here a joist, here a beam,
blackened in the soot and flames –  here falls the rain.  

Have at your sickles, and have at your hammers,
Go back to steppe and sod from whence ye came,
And never more disturb the sepulchral vaults,
where lie long dead men of Greece and Rome.

I hung up my hangups on a coat rack.

It fell over,

squashed this, my earthly cat.

When Michael Collins came, first from the courts of England,
which in low and lofty Londoun lately were helde,
while Thames there with treachery and treasoun did truly ring,
was Ireland ill split and beset with ignoble stryfe.  
Yet there a land lately formed was, where still folk lyve on mydllerde.

Though it is not in this warlike time of Dev that we our tale do set,
after these tymes of troubling stryfe, contentioun salted still the land.

Fine Fail and Fine Gael, then foes many yeres remained
till noblest amongst them, in qualities none lacking,
did do battle in old Dublin and vanquish the dred enemy.  
That mon who dreded nought, nightly then held his court in fair Dail Eirinn.  
Enda was called that man, and everysince has his noble courte endured.  

There, as Chrystmasse came, was assembled his cabinet fayre:
there Sir Wilmore the red, who waited on the grete lorde in readiness.  
There with grete courtesey, the kings coins to keep, sat Sir Noonan the balde.  
There Sir Reilly, learned in lore of leach and herb, who on erde had little left to lerne.  
Eek Sir Varadkar the gaye who granted was, the grete kinges horses to groome.  
Laste, the lovely layde Burton, who, the rede rose of Wilmore would long after carry.  

Other knyghtes numerous were there, but of these now, nought will I
tell,
for fallen to feasting were this fayre companye al and fayne would I not,
in tedious trials of descriptioun, your patience for to trye.

There was a young man from Brazil,
his name was Dickie.

Things happened.

A great many people cross the Liffey and dance on the shore,
At Ringsend the Pigeon House falls to earth, the dust settles,
Cuchulain leaps from Bull to Bull and retreats into the mountains.  
I linger for some time watching the waters pass beneath ha’penny bridge.
I’ll find me a garret, and in that garret,
Curse in undertones Windows Vista,
******* to the **** stanzas of Homer,
Drink cold coffee with the blood of a nation,
Finally, say with surety,
Here is a poem which has taken everything, and given nothing,
Here is everything that meant something to somebody at some time.

without socks is bad for the general health of the World, and should be avoided.

In God's Holy Trousers

With sticks.

Just about.

A wild cow defecates in the waters of the fledgling Liffey,
as it eeks oozes and seeps from the sheep **** of a Wicklow Vale,
running to the loo through the coronation plantation.

The descendant of the brown bull of Cuailnge moves on to the next waterway of Ireland.  What fun.

The hazy natural poetry flounts with airs and graces.
Let the humans out to air, and hold yesterday's darkness in sunny relief.  
Bring in capacity to strike down the dimness of the mass.
Do a little dance for the lame people, and bless the prodigal sun.

Take it to Glasnevin,
and write IHS on the stone.  
That's what I'll be saying,
IHS with the voice in my mind.  
After Michaelmas is gone,
IHS, pleadingly, a lamb of God,
and a little after, exaltingly,
from a rooftop garden in the city centre,
where I can plant flowers.

'The,' 'sod.'

To escape for a moment the flagrant mediocrity of hummdrummcommutertaxreturnquiltedjacketfilingcabinetcivilservants­pellcheckingcontractsigninghandshaking, oppressively banal, repetitive, shitness of everyday (notomittingthedayindayoutsuburbanlivingwiththeparentssingleprete­nsiousartsstudentdogpissinginthevegetablegarden blandness of this awfulcrapshortanddissapointing) life?