Irish Prayer

Bless the rich sweet Jesus for they are as graceless as whores
My father proclaims this truth as if God's own as we walk the streets of Norfolk.*
  Is this an Irishman’s only prayer?

Brownstones the city's gentry squat in neat rows,
milk legged dowagers position themselves on rubber gardening mats,
the brushing of sweet gums is song.

‘Tis nice, I say.
But my father cannot hear me for he has gone back to sleep
in his childhood beddy in Kilcar*
snug in his woolens where the landlord comes to toss him out,
A house in a wheelbarrow
The last guinea at his Da’s feet
Give us a jig, Paddy
Give us a jig! The young prots* call

And my father watches as his father — the big man
turn up his heels like an idiot dog caught on a clothesline.
Ah, history turns so easily, I hear my father cry out from his past
when your only hope is another man’s dance.



* Norfolk is a large city in Virginia.
* Kilcar is a village in South-West County Donegal.
* prots is shortened slang for Protestants.