The Stranger from Next Door
Stranger from a distant shore
found alien to his cause. We spoke at length you and me of times long since
passed left shrouded by memory and its mournful loss. I know not of the matters
in others hands you so erudite explain. The walk thus continued round and
about. Day clashed as night fell among the Stars to reveal naught but the
rising of yet one more frondescent Moon.
The greeting was wholesome.
Genuine, unfettered no burden of the words that were not of your origination
provoked my Soul. The hunger thus sated in excise-hall echoed from tribal
tongue of highland lass betrayed your solitude of mirth. Grape of vine and leaf
of Plant combined to expurgate the distant tone of battles yet unsought. The
demon left within concluded your debauchery and altercation devoid of joyous
sin.
We sat for a while along the way.
Drank coffee but did not smoke cigarettes nor decaffeinated leaf. Safe from the
thought of dying and its construct laboured breathing unto death. It was a Saturday
night I recall. Youth blossomed abroad upon the neon-lit streets. Long of leg
and short of skirt mindful always of its effect. Conversation passed time
warped the warm hearth ablaze we stood to demand our rightful ingress.
To the east lay Babylon
to the west Connaught to the north lay Hell
and to the south lay our indifference of things already of the past. I stood as
he did at the top of the stairwell. I turned to the abyss and threaded silk
scarf through hook and plaster. I wore the scarf in triumphant will of matters
over his mind; and wondered of the fall of Rome .
On mornings light we bade
farewell. The rain fell lightly on this holy ground. The Sun rose and the Sun
set before the body was discovered next door and dispatched to the morgue
oblivious to the presence of a stranger nearby once traveled from distant
shore.
© Séafra Ó Ceallaigh 2013
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