Don't talk of graves at your tender age
Not until your rickety rack is a trembling wreck
Till your white-film eyes are all but blind
...
He's sitting awkwardly, set aside
Dirty hands holding one stained leg
Grey beard grown to a point
Wide-brimmed flat-cap anointing his head
...
So old these grey bones; so old, and so alone
Shrugging loose their soiled coat
To dip the salt caress, its wet brush
...
In the thrall of tiredness
This hoeboy glowers out his ought ait
A blunted oik forking the topsoil
...
Will you, Lunacy, pledge
To take me ere the end
Bend my final days to wonder
Bereft of reason's clarity
...
These boys are born for fire
A pagan desire to set the world alight
Searing the starkness, blackening skies
...
Twitter: @raeymaj Instagram: @raeymaj)
Grave Talk
Don't talk of graves at your tender age
Not until your rickety rack is a trembling wreck
Till your white-film eyes are all but blind
And your toothless head is utterly deaf
Until each day blinks and the world is a ghost
Till you're grimly emaciated, decrepitly thin
Mind overthrown, no recollection of anything
Wait until the wake's wet tears have tried to dry
Till living memory is pickled in uisce beatha
All pain shrieked out to a hellish rattle
Don't talk to me of graves until you're long gone
Till clods are covering your coffin-wearing bones
And a lyre plucked to softly lament your soul
Until the headstone has reached weak anonymity
Till its lichen-eaten rock cracks and drops
Lengths of grass coiling tight in a strangling coif
Don't talk to me of graves at my slender age