Sacred Duty

After Giraldus Cambrensis

I was sucking your dick
and I’m sorry I was thinking about herons
the ones down in North Strand
staring straight down into the water
watching plastic wrappers float by bicycle wheels
as if they were some new kind of colourful fish
the poppies and oxeye daisies
bowing their heads
as the wind whistles
through the crumbling railway buildings
and empty apartment blocks
in gusts across the fairway
bending their red and white crowns into the murky green
of the Royal Canal

But the heron doesn’t move in the wind
nor with the wrappers and the flowers
poised above the water, waiting
just one grey
unruffled
triangle

Last time I was there
somebody had spray-painted ‘up the resistance’
on the concrete canvas by the bridge
just one unruffled triangle

And be, like the stone, ready to drop
the mind, being inured to its habitual occupation
resumes it like one awakened out of sleep

I was sucking dick again. I love you by the way
I have a friend — they say
that dick tastes like avocado when it’s clean
and I know what they mean
smooth, warm, pure, still clinging
to the stone, a Swiss-lake, nothing-taste

But your dick is more than clean
it tastes just like the sea
and I probably would have told them that
but I was thinking about herons again
and my friend told me that when the English came
they made the Irish eat them

The heron in Fairview Park who goes for walks at 9:30
we meet while I’m searching in the grass
and she’s heading to Lidl
and I can see her in my own side-wise way
and the world makes me look 800 years old
in my tattered grey mantle
green glass shards
airplane trails
tangled nets
proxy wars
blue and white
balloons

floating towards the horizon

Arthur Norse is a queer poet from Ireland and Switzerland. They write about love, violence, and birds, from a den made of reverence and confusion. They live in North Strand, Dublin, with the love of their life, Fintan Thomas Smith, to whom they have unsuccessfully proposed marriage at least five times.