Tenth Earl of Kildare
The teeth are dry.
It is Silken Thomas
muffling for promises
among the rats in his straw,
jostling for a hand,
once wielding but now
scratching the toes of power.
The tongue leather bitten,
studded with the supplication to You.
A lament of request,
where a crumpled
cluster of bones saddens.
We can’t only touch the fingers,
it is the dust that we pray to.
Skellig harbours the aping of Him,
the attempt to elbow and impress,
to crack a languid smirk somewhere, somehow.
Bless us with crusts and drinking water,
a hard bed and no doubt,
for these thy gifts.
Tertullian calm in Tibet,
Cork bet and the hay saved,
a good death for the Blackfoot Shamen:
all the islands of possibility
chipped in Easter heads.
There are nebuli in half breaths
and in the vacant thoughts of man
we spawn vaticanus, Giza, Picchu.
A rattle of stones stacked by bones,
their names will sometime hurt us.
Poor half naked Thomas,
breathing on the kindness of strangers,
with his five uncles shivering
on the whim of one.
We are drenched in his fear,
in his fall, in his beauty cracked to stink,
in his soiled fashion.
Our guts rejoice like a pleasure sickness,
vomiting lechery. 10th Earl of Kildare,
loved by the wrong ones and too young,
your prayer is heard,
though it throbs at your heart like a wound.
Our school story is brief,
your prayer echoes still.
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