Aporthetos Poem by Niall Lawmile

By chance one morn I wandered south, gently lulled by gusty thanes

and sipped from yesterday’s brimful cup, lusty and dripping on today’s;

As if in some dream, sun-stroked paddock. Where night turned to day, and never the two in loathsome pact would trade.



Salvation lies in a bird’s wings, not queued for in robed brimstone

And bricks entombed, nor credence given in paltry prayer,

To ears unlobed and lidless stare.



While birdsong, oft forgotten, in sermon from the oaken spires,

Fortifies my senses in the starved shadows,

Through chirpen’d verse snuck canvassed meadow



That I might simply breathe, and sit merry with my spectral kin,

Unchained from pallid woe and binary thought,

Fain submit to time stream caught



Thou were not taught to save souls through easeful melody, but in

cooed innocence dwell’st such ceremony,

And truth untold; to return again in body, and bound now too in soul.