I never laughed harder than that night alone.
It was as if the sky had an accident
and out came the land
like a silver and yellow glandular
oil along the estuary.
You were in the old hotel in Miltown Malbay.
And I knew both you and the servant from Doolin
who brought you tea
would form a twosome I would never see again
in any sense as faithfully as then.
My brother took a train with a view of mountains
as soft as blue rain
out of Limerick Junction
to Heuston Station where Wittgenstein
tried to discover emotion.
He hit a horizon.
“Philosophy should only be written as poetry.”
The monk is a single
and so am I
but which kind?
All of them
from young to wild
and the boyish one
(mine) cared for the weak
until there was no one
to care for him
besides an old woman
who lived as a she.
I became a brother
sequentially:
first in sandals
then in boots
then with a hood
and bare feet.
Now night-bound, now nude,
Another brother led me around as one of him
to a ship heading for the country where they edit the best films.
There was a city on deck: residential with pleasing evening trees
and then a downtown area until we couldn’t tell the sun
from the portholes on board.
The ship would transport us first to Iona and the monastery.
I would lose my luggage from the twentieth century
(though its particles and buckles were forged in eternity)
and make my private vows to the creators of film
in every harbor we entered.
