Corpus Christi

In memory of Rónan Nadaraja, 22nd April 1973

Sleep, would sleepless nights sublime.
Sheets, the fevered sheet!
Time's arrow wrought with fractured thought,
Incarcerates a mind - Me.
Pretence permissive by indulgent lies.
The hanging drop that ever lingers by,
Eternal ebbing on the hidden eye,
Inciting tie-dye, daisy days, bye-bye-baby-ways.
In smoky rooms - Hah, gin! Another hand?
Where stuff-nosed apathies beg no demands.

Sleep, would sleepless nights sublime
Feats, the fallen feat!
Retreat men, sound retreat, unto your liege!
Before the siege, to subterranean, to earth for what it's worth.
Already tried, high treason, still I flail,
The tower and wave and seek the star by sail.
Mind your step - Father
Why have you forsaken me?
Tasteless mortals steeping, sleeping low
With Rex Mundi in the olive grove.

Cold slab, clinical, marbled, perished corpse.
Iced tea for too, surreal, don't you think, thank you!
Race to a pyre, long coats, sombered Crombey attire.
Hushed chapel tones. The Idiosyncratic moans,
With sullied choice, reason's lazarethian voice
Indulges so, indeed a poor man's hell.
But more that oft will serve its master well.
Magnanimous clasp long past, alas,
Now clouded eye and sutured mouth and god what else?
The follicles and nails persist to grow, or did you know!

A taste for life and death.
While Jesus wept, I laughed,
And so too you,
Save in the end, a bead of hope
And cross to steer your course,
The stolen child's recourse.
Which slaughtered innocence.
You have my thanks for that (and hate),
But how as youths recall,
We took the solemn oath of Pan,
To stall the pain of madness in the man
And you in dying on that tree,
Left Peter to the legion's legacy.

^

Biography

Sean Nadaraja is a doctor living in Dundalk, County Louth.