THE BIRDMEN OF TALLAGHT by Alan Patrick Traynor

And the Birdmen came
Like a light across the river 
For the sake of their children 
 
In the fields
Like an Icon
All flesh stopped 
 
Where dogs bark the alms of morning 
In their lone cathedral bells
 
Frontal fangs of edacia
A dark type of ink 
That travels through the heart 
 
To the hardened forewings
An exlex of dry beaten joy
In their working-class eyes
 
Stained glass windows 
Of pure green blue
 
Like a Peregrine Falcon
 
A god of gothic sorrow 
A sculptor of moths
 
From the borstal olden streets 
Orphan Owls who sang the romanesque
Hymns 
 
Of freedom
 
Exorcists of the fields 
That read from the trees
Of the River Dodder
 
Where blood, wire and anger preach the rhetorical leaves
 
In the Psalms 
Of nocturnal temper
In the sunlight's beauty 
 
Where de Buitléar
Once cried for the currach
 
But the Birdmen came from the trees
Where the gurriers are the lords of the field
 
Where everything that flies
Must eat
 
Even sorrow
Like a heart amongst the leaves
 
So moves the Enlightenment
 
Of trees
Of love's open gate
 
Where a red dog came 
Bleeding 
From its face 
 
A 
Feral 
Sorrow 

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