A Love Story
Last night we camped
on Boss Croker's acres,
tonight we cross
a river in spate,
in the miles between
a white-haired man
carries his gospel of brake-
pads and corrugated iron
like the sheets of asbestos
which we found to our cost
when we tramped
through Kippure and Ticknock.
We cough in unison,
we argue over direction
and though we had come
in search of rue des Favorites,
to take on the low down
of its honky-tonk bars,
we bear witness to unnamed
toxins, the domestique
who gestures like a friend,
as the halting ambition
that dithers and skews
and is brought to its knees
lets us gaze again
on brownfield and edgeland,
with all the aplomb
of Mir's captain.
Gerard Fanning
