Immigrant by Séamas Carraher

from: Dub(h)lin(n), a Poem,

–for niall quinn

i’ve come back from the dead,
back from the land of the dead.
How the emigrant returns
to stink with the smell of money,
not religion.
Now there’s no drink or smack anymore.
Not even a cigarette to spare.
Like a headless horseman
i’ve come to visit
i’ve come to kiss this city
with my deadly night-shade kiss,
with my theatrical Shakespearian kiss
with my aids and ecstasy and gonorrhoea kiss,
my kiss of “peace and prosperity”
(this cocaine-cursed-kiss),
for i love this city silly
like a rock i’ve gripped for life
a rock falling headoverheels
into the burning sun.

My city of the underworld.
Mad suicide city for all these dead-end kids.
Sad rock of a friend with alleys for veins,
their girlfriends pregnant at busstops,
a rock that now will never weep
for the burntout kids and the gangster-proud kids,
for Darragh dead in the speeding car
or Thomas Connors another dark day
lying at the side of the road,
for Cyril who sleeps in an English grave
and my lost mate Colm from Ballyfermot
and a hundred other homeless kids
selling their arses for the price of a drink.

O, i’ve come back from the dead
back from the land of the dead.

i see now
even the statues should have wept
but no one not one single fucker
was there,
not an angel wept
and this
fucking city
won’t ever
weep
neither!