The Last Nights of Ailil

For one night in seven,
I give myself fully,
To the brief pleasure of escape,
Granted weekly, by my need to replenish my supplies –

_____Fuel and fruit, meat and seeds,
_____Potatoes, pulses, and bushels
_____Of dark green leaves –

And in escape I also satisfy a deeper need,
A need that sates my eagerness
For the familiarity of boot-heels clacking on stone floors,
And stout-fed laughter loud enough to drown out your voice,
And music, for some three score thrice, in the autumnal hall,
Watched over by those ministers of thirst, in white shirts,
Serving ale long before even the banns of the Senchas Mar.

And the music, always it veers from lament to comedy,
From Marbhna Luimní to soldiery that scours the town –

_____Tooral looral looral looral loo –

And the music it is full of spirit talk,
Of old kinship, and kenning, too,
And most of all it heavies with the kerygma of another place,
All sung in a holy lavishing of exhaled air.

And last, of course, my journeying satisfies that other wanting, too,
That wanting, which leaves our bodies pulsing, as they endless do,
For flesh and spirit, to be flesh and spirit-drunk,
Beyond these hours we know to be our last.

Irish poet, doctoral candidate, and journalist, Oisín Breen, a multiple Best of the Net nominee and Erbacce Prize finalist, is published in 121 journals in 22 countries, including in Agenda, North Dakota Quarterly, Books Ireland, Door is a Jar, Northern Gravy, Quadrant, Southword, and The Tahoma Literary Review. Breen has two collections, the widely reviewed and highly praised Lilies on the Deathbed of Étaín, a Scotsman poetry book-of-the-year, 2023, (Downingfield), and his well received debut, Flowers, All Sorts, in Blossom, Figs, Berries, and Fruits Forgotten (Dreich, 2020). Breen’s third collection, The Kergyma, is slated for 2025 (Salmon).