Séamas Carraher was born in Dublin, Ireland. He lives on the Ballyogan estate, in south County Dublin, at present.
bare head under her recession.
but from – profit!
Today her falling, mute as his knife, whispers.
On this day his knives are riddled with arithmetic.
- by facts!
cursing like triggers this puslike sense.
Welcome, then, human, in all our undigging.
Holding her poor roof, like skulls, in these hands.
Today all slavery is free and chosen with elections.
Such building, like a religion, excavated from air!
Building it charred. And skeleton.
Building it blind. And victim. And deathlike.
Then build all his burning with your sad stare.
in this deluge. Its smell like art! Like culture!
but. still. it. sickens.
Teach them this, conscience, in your corruption.
Once it was field or hill or sky.
more object in our subjects.
In each disease of words we have been contained.
Here but for our whispering we are butts.
Stubs. And stubborn.
We sink like stones. Like misters. We bleed.
to be solemn, to be mask.
he thinks for his missus.
To be drowned in all our uprising.
This then another struggle.
Them lakes are ours.
each mineral, fish and drowned corpse.
gut and spirit.
Here is a science fit for us workers.
This is a sorrow fit for drowned men.
angel and myth, labour and pain.
to be eaten. Like soup or dust.
More to be murdered with nourishment.
i see no saying in this, gratefully. Yet.
such is suffering, and its cause.
It is here, today, and unheard.
These lips are determined to tell nothing.
Sealed with god-the-spirit, like cement.
after all this, even this peace sells blindness.
but for another miracle or a deluge.
both hard, in our change, as a stone.
It is rain, mother, to be human and quarrel.
It is history and it is here.
It is today simply.
of our war.
grandiose in our liturgy.
sky to all human inadequacy.
for you, grandmother, and our stolen children.
They are falling on our emptiness.

Such is necessity.
railroads and convoys, in our emptiness of labour.

Both left and right in our absences.
to be filled with chains. More woman in our slavery.
in its profit. Criminal with righteousness.
gunbarrels. These doors are not doors in their mystery.
More universal in their hard skins.
“Talk sense, man!” in its inflamed mankind.
as a swimming pool.
To be weak as air and hard as shrapnel in my comfort.
Furious with each passing famine.
building between these hard sick knees.
falling, once more, like the stock exchange.
and beaten heads.
half withered in our yearly whispering.
Today it is cold enough and blind enough.
This is, similarly, the costs of the rich.
More flesh than voice.
this skin like a fashion.
humble and sly as a hymn: this is a landlord.
even in its exploding celebrations.
almost like an artery our of the unknown.
His money can unbake bread!
This man can bare his nothingness like a cap.
this money is more like a disease.
Like a cancer. God in all our unnatural eruptions.
Still we are washed with our whispering.
Still he is a man with bare head among brothers.
With him, we are each other in our clothes.
we swim like sheep in our sorrow.
To be burst in all that bloated wealth.
To be so close to myself like a smell.
Object and process in the price of your hands.
i turn her child in your undoing, inside out.
you don’t know this yet.
both beginning and end labouring to our extremities.
Here at the border we are all the same.
Tell the priest that. Or the jailor. Or the sentries.
more air than heart in them knives.
Human, we are always on some verge.
It is this falling, your beating, our whispering.

 Like lice. Like sheep.
to die like a fly in the wind.
Man, you are always on this verge.
Your redundancy no greater than nature or words.
You are meat to the bullet or worse.
Also to the undertaker’s bill.
This is a man with my genitals sown on.
A human man falling from skies.
his sky also shattered with birds.
Brother, listen here.
We are bent with your crippling.
Brother, please listen.
We are amputated with your progress.
Brother, you have a choice, at the end of this tongue.
Your knives are contagious with philosophy.
Maybe he don’t want to be free.
Brother, this home is seizing in its mechanical stomach.
i prefer this cancer in my brain.
This howling without interpretation.
to be dead without dying.
we are all, on this uphill march, disappeared).
he is left to words like mad dogs.
Your hands stare at this half imaginary construction.
where we delay.