The Last Poem

’s strangled at birth

with a cable stripped

from the last ship named

at Harland & Wolff.

 

All that is left

of the dead Island language

is Garmoyle and Dargan.

(The spellcheck insists

 

on gargoyle and dragon.)

The incompetent shade

of Thomas Carnduff

snarls burly doggerel

 

while posed in his sash

on the Linen Hall roof.

This printer’s devil

turned Rotten Prod

 

in an archipelago

of bankrupt shipyards

says ‘Bite your tongue.

The Magheramorne

 

Manifesto’s

as good as a nod

to the land’s minor poets

and court fools.

 

The choice, in Belfast

as elsewhere, ’s between

being made redundant

and downing tools.