(Catullus 101)

To fling your death
on the hundred winds,

to recite your dust
in the lapsing wave,

to loose your bones,
to lieve your lips,

to stand in a sun-dim
mist of prayer,

to be
without you, brother,

a shadow gnawing
on the vanished air,

my voice the rain
that journeys here

continually, to sing
the dirt, to lift the seas,

to bring the ancient
gifts to ground,

like the urn upheld,
and the aching throat,

the buried breath
on the risen road,

the stone in the heart,
or the golden cup,

which now
I proffer, brother,

raise to greet
your dark embrace –

to meet your sightless
silence with my own.

---

Ciarán O’Rourke was born in 1991. A winner of the Lena Maguire/Cúirt New Irish Writing Award 2009, his pocket pamphlet Some Poems was issued as a Moth Edition in 2011. His poems have been published widely, and a digital chapbook of new work is forthcoming from Smithereens Press. He is based in Dublin.