Kilcolman, Co. Cork
There is nothing left. The monument’s a ruin His poem was to be, its allegory broken off Like a partizan. He sat inside this tower, Or walked beside the Awbeg’s illuminated Page on which a sweep of sky’s reversed, And under these alders’ small-branched virtues, Putting a fantasy back together. The kingdom’s Come to nothing, too, his poem was to celebrate, Its sovereign power a vellum-scaled garrison Disguised as law. From this tower he looked Down on the shawls and glibs of the vagrant poor, Anatomies of death who made their meal Of other corpses cut down from the English gallows.
