The top-sky there is well-managed:
bluffs of white cloud rank the channel
past earlier gainsaid ports, along
to where reeds, set left and right, halt
winter’s hibernatory
route to Ireland.
They run to the Shannon Pot,
where the artists extract their inks.
This morning is a mammoth, digging
soil up beyond the sun, afar
to heights where breath
becomes clouded,
and strings its hairs there like comets,
signing off on white, untelling skies,
blank, diplomatic skies, like those
columbined ceilings in Europe’s
largest rooms, after which
treaties are named.
The argument is, in essence,
bicuspid, mooring its vessels
sleekly at the waxy shore, whereof
this borough of wick-stiff reeds
is the original
calamity.