TO THE LEFT HONOURABLE ALLEN GINSBERG (in his knifeless realm)
1
to the night zenith to the knifeless realm
I have to follow
the nightwatchman and the beetle’s hum
into a
poet’s
O
blivion
to be examined in the lens
of a magnifying-glass
moon
for indebtedness and pettiness a
celtic-catholic
lack
of thousandmind
of beetlehum
and the silver rims
of
nightlights
of firebowls
of honeywax
of hum
2
I have to cough a London toxin
in thanks
who made the ball of London roll
brought to the apex of Primrose Hill
by the glass-eyed Merovingian
adding to the lore
a lore
too big? too elite? to be added to?
or at Blake’s deathbed in back of Savoy
with the boy subterranean
discarding the holy logos
from his un-American paws
3
but in the night zenith
when I look at the thousand-windowed hospital’s
invisible stars degenerating into mad gleams
somehow free in physical and metaphysical health
I feel the gold gratitude again – in lieu –
for thine Alvah Goldbook-cum-Carlo Marx
diagnostic of the doom the drone
come from the city as dragon-noise
or the hum of
the thousand CCTVs under Eros
you as Leo Moon Leo Rising
to heal
knots in godly shoulderblades
and flower the tombs
of Dies and co.
4
I wish your furry ghost could do more for me
like fix my teeth or deal or slash my gibberish
but the courage you lend
is mightier than alcohol’s
in the midst of the bow-tied emptiness
of space
your book is
International Space Station
sized
bordello-ish
red-lit
thumbed a thousand
years from now
so
thanks
leonine and empowering and tendered
for appearing the way
you did
not at the embassy
not frenchified
but naked
as
vocal
a
trash-city
cherub
baptising
and
anabaptising
our toxin-rich lungs to a many-childed
hope
at the beginning of our gangplank
our
‘queer’
careers
Niall McDevitt