“First we feel. Then we fall.” 
 ― James Joyce

   

The bell jar of innocence
heaven forfend
creates, too late, a world
without end

Look! Look! Just around the bend
such faery stories
took the life of my friend
in the cramped minds
of lean-faced men
with heavy stubble
who shuffle down the road

Nothing happens
no looks are exchanged
mothers bend down
warn their children.
one old man falls down flat
dead unburied

On his raggedy back
while another man,
the whiskey priest, if you please,
staggers into the park
to finish it now.

So look you boyo, look you through
a glass darkly
this acrid smoke and the heavy dew
help me notice what time could
so easily do to you, too:

Sans teeth, sans hair, sans everything
this man, the whiskey priest
clothes thin, thread bare,
tears salty, stumbling there:
flops onto a wet bench
drifts into a past life
they said would last:
weighs things up
brings all to mind
time to come, a waste of time
time to breathe, a waste of breath

float away 
like a beautiful swan
he heard her voice calling
“Come! Come!
Be gone! Be gone!”

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