A kind of remittance man from northern Dublin
he was easily a character from a Behan play
or a late song by Thin Lizzy, sent to live in this city
of grids and ghosts: duking it out with an ineffable
darkness after his first marriage ended.
-----------------------------------------------------A black dog.

A Celtic duende. A man who proclaimed to function
best in a state close to coma. He was accountable once a week
(usually on Sunday) to suspicious questions fired
down the phone-line in a thick brogue,
---------------------------------------------------‘Have you a job yet?’
‘Were you in Mass today?’ ‘Your fahdha knows you’re drinking.’
-----You hated Kerouac. You nicked my stash.
I took your smokes. I ran up toll bills pining to ex-lovers.

Our good intentions forked like the tongue of the same serpent.
I’ll remember you best when we were at our best----
on that Christmas Day we shared a stolen quart of Ballantynes----
driving a borrowed Superminx up and down the street,

estranged from, longing for, the intimacy we talked of happening
behind those closed and wreathed and silent front doors,
or the time you just burst into the lounge: home from the doctor
with a valium script (filled, of course) a bladder of Chasseur
and the Oxford edition of Ulysses stuffed down your trousers.