TheLastIconoclast

There is a house upon the corner Which we all know right well Yet shut up our eyes and ears And never glance when we walk by. No soft words hang out its windows The door is crooked, bad-toothed home Is this, and forlorn eyes of windows Filled with the dim light of children's rooms. Stubborn halls and dinners filled with rancour And resentment makes itself a little god within. How terrible, better a fire gutted this wound, Seeping wound, better still all should die Than make a half dozen other corner houses When their time to bear children is nigh.

Down the mighty hills came Polyphemus, Broad-bellied, broad-eyed, full of song and sound Blind to faults yet wise in trickery. Came he down by Acis’ side, simple boy Known since a true boy, and mad in love. Galatea, thistle-blood white and clean (once), Noble in form, clear in voice, was bound And yet unbound- for Polyphemus offered much. Rotten goats, sour milk, a cave to hide from mighty Sol Invictus, so they joined and fled beyond the sea. How the boulder now sits on conquered Acis, Poor wretch, who cannot move to scratch his nose. Yet no Heracles will come to lift the weight.

Pen does not give succor Nor book a balm for mind Not in this bleak winter. The sun has died of shame. I buried it, down by Atlantic way. I saw it sink, not to rise again. Leaning, by sludge and smoke Was one white beam of light. Sad and tired, suffering and still. It couldn’t burn a candle, this light. Recoiled, longed for soothing dark And never see this light again. Walking past, quickened in the blood Free and easy, should have been the name.

Sing! Sing the Song of Tubal-Cain! Grandson of Murder! Grandfather of War! He instructs the world in bronze and iron And every artifice of slaughter! Cleverness of angels, wickedness of devils And hands of man to build the world of battle. Sing! Sing the Song of Tubal-Cain! Instructor of brass! He who hammers Out the rivers of copper and tin! Before the rivers swept the earth of sin Ruled Tubal-Cain, half brother to music, For his music was screams and sorrow Not the warbling of reeds and pipes; And brother of all who dwelt in tents Under felt and hirsuite garb, sing! How he loosed his forbear's wrath Upon the Abels of the world entire! S

In the Celtic Tiger's golden days, when money was no object A gambling man and proud I was, and banker's greed still unchecked. A wager I would never miss, by Fortuna I was appointed And never was my trust in her disdained nor disappointed. This is the story I will tell, every dog shall have his day, sir And even though I'm fairly skint, I still will gamble in Bray, sir When I was a CEO and Roulette held my affection I thumbed my nose at the odds and thought my dice perfection The gambler's life in Vegas did fit well my constitution And I would be a millionaire but for my destitution. This is the story I will tell, every dog shall have hi

Behold, the giant sags a little now, Twin headed with many more besides, Bearded and bald, great and small- Chanting hosannas to the sky. How many children borning Out from Galilee? Can heaven hold all their mansions? When Yahballaha, the Mongol Monk Came shuffling from Beijing And wiped his wondering eyes at Baghdad Long since purged by Hulagu’s horsemen- What could he expect, having come From the court of Prester John? Bickering brethren and bitter rancour. How the heads snap and spit! Torn they are again with petty dispute Look and see the thirty thousand Scattered as seeds upon the barren soil. How they dry and die, and flinch

I stand with all my brothers On the swinging power line “Poor flies today, says Maggie Down by still water. The sea-birds Have come to war again, but bereft Of all the panoply of battle!” Comes now the white clad segull To our murder of Crows. “How wild the sea, how terrible Come the dark waves, the rage of the Living God is upon it!” We give shelter, grudge forgotten For all are equal under threat Of lowly death. I watch as wind knocks geriatric leaves Down to death, as trees older than memory Struggle like old drunks against the wind. Will they see the winter out? Will we live to nestle in their arms? Old One-Eye,

Maelstroms of lamellar and mail have faded Beside the mighty void of Kharakum Felt tents and flags beside the blasted waste And shrinking seas are not remembered. How, when bow-legs and beasts of burden Dragged gold and pelts to Danube-side And touched head to dirt before the crib Of the Scourge of God, could man have seen Such a great horde be shadows and mist Before the hoof beat of bearded Temujin? The blood clot is a broiling speck in oceans Maroon and stinking, yet to wash the world And grinning, leering heads aside ashen rivers And burnt out cities left to mark his mighty passage Swollen bodies, swollen bellies, announce to the world

There lies Adam, amidst the well watered Wall-girdled place of figs and fire. And, ignorant, tends the ferns Under the circled blazing heat Of near-hanging God amidst the stars. Oh how we yearn for Eden, Half-wild and half in chains That rest as light as dust. Now comes the cold woman. Woman, man-made, made for man Descends with snake adorning neck And proffers death and wisdom And doom of all and sundry. Now dug deep in soil and ashes Weeping, yet living truly, Comes Adam over the hills of Nod. Judged and cast, yet free to die And free to live, Paradise a prison No longer.

A green eye, unblinking, glares Past blue and black bangs once held. Where sweet potato and sweeter thoughts Grew bountiful, is the dusty wreckage Of my loitering enemies, cartoon forms. All are ugly, oily, second rate and worse Yet no green eye stares at these petty words. Between the sea and the sea, Between the war and the sunshine, The yell and the Youghal, was the garden, Tended, birthing glass and brick out of sand. Heaving in the sun, shaking in the darkness And reading borrowed words by nightfall. No longer; there dwell ogres now, squat men Sallow and greasy like diseased droppings. The New Sun has grown old. While once it danced am