These Unreal Days

 

Cultivated flowers of cultures far off
and long gone have faces upturned
to some yellow charge of sun. We eat
at Belfast’s Botanic Gardens,

where the imperialist sun many never set

 

spend money we both earned years ago

and for nothing. He is some phantom,

or slight of my imagination,

in these unreal days, his white hands shake.

He cuts into his steak, It still seems so raw.

 

Blood haemorrhages;  butter and herbs

bleed on his plate. This city concentrates

on the craic  of today. that old sayings true,

he intones: grass does cover all.

Some deaths he can't discuss but I can see

 

how his desperation made him cling

and flee in successive white moments.
If we could only walk through the garden,

or stand, unthinking and free  under the veranda,.
Just do… something, make yourself move on.