The men have brought us a lamb entire,
bones for the breaking and a throat-shine of bleating
stunned for Greek Easter tenderness.
We watch them watching it drip on a spit,
our hair stirred by a hilltop breeze. A young wife
in skin-tight jeans comes forward to wipe a spill,
or a sister – nobody’s asking, these are the men
who arrive in boats from Albania that land at night,
biding their time. When we talk of the heat
that never cools we are talking of mouths to feed
and others to starve, of babies that crawl
too near to the fire but are not our business.
Our host wears a cape and hangs his gun
on a wall so nobody gets ideas. He knows
how it all turns out, his body’s an oracle,
and the men will outwait and outwit him
if he sleeps too well in his lonely estate.
Once a woman lived here who did for him
what the men now do, but he sent her
away and she fell from a temple ledge,
or she fell and he said that he sent her.
He says, she had a good body. We arrange
our faces in sorrow but he calls for more wine,
then reminds us who owns the vineyards and sheep.
The men who lean over our shoulders to serve us
are sober as mercenaries at dawn. He says,
she should have known better than to climb so high.
Find it at Southword (Winter 2023): https://munsterlit.ie/bookshop/southword-45/
