On The Star Fort Elizabeth

On The Star Fort Elizabeth

On The Star Fort Elizabeth

We pass
(no shebeen this) Ireland’s
oldest licensed premises,

barely glance
at the plaque that says
Dukes of Wellington

and Marlborough drank here.
We are going to stand upon
the northeast limb of a star.

Wellington, Arthur Wellesley,
never was at ease
with his Irish nativity:

“Of course,
sir to be born in a stable
does not make one a horse.”

We stroll a rock solid star
that might have grown from the ground;
our gazes for each other

yet also over the parapet
at Shandon; the summits
of the river valley; the sun-warmed limestone.

Your arm crooked through the elbow
is where we stand
however ambiguously we feel

about this fort,
its antennae in five directions
we’d not want

to lurch along Barrack Street
singing tribal songs of a Saturday night –
beamed in and thumbed,

our signatures
to our confessions
written with fishbones.

Arthur Wellesley
was not a cut of beef in a boot,
nor was he a horse,

nor – born in a stable – the Christ.
We’ll come down off this planet.
Have a squeeze and slow kiss first.