Drinking to the Liffey

I hear that delicate tinkling
Ice bells ringing my return
Upon the limits of the glass
Tip me tip me they tap 
Come out and play with us
Twirl us sluggish to release the phantoms
Who hang in heather and treacle
In ragged robes perfumed
Of briny esplanades
Grassy moorland and breeze
Or orchards of cherry
Where petals snow cover cocoa roads
Oh kiss us fickle lips, insatiate yen
Then bubble in the bygone
Fizz in the flute
Wisps
Memory
Whispers of youth
Hiss in the sip

Fermented you grapes
Into something finally palatable?
When changed I from Satyr to Silenus?
Riding bald upon my ass
Maybe I’ll pull a portent from there

I reminisce 
Tipsily traipsing peace walls
Unlettered of Ulster
But erudite of dram
Past murals of the Shankill
Muddled of the mad color
What is this jungle?
Who haunts this gallery
Girded with balaclava
Hallowed of paint
To the steely tip of ordnance?

Before these thoughts were stewed 
A fiddle reached out quick fingers
And pulled me into the cave of a pub

Here the dark pints bloom
Titanic fists eclipse faces
In belly of ship wood and shady
Chants and shanty melodies
Stompings of the citizen
Stared at by one mad eye
What’re you doin in ‘ere?
Who are ya?
I’m nobody, nobody
I could eat your men alive 
You don’t have to prove it to me
I believe you
A hearty guffaw 
Then pint after pint in potlatch
Standing through some poor lad
Getting glassed in the gob
To the roaring of the myopia 
With red lips dripping stout
Giants housed in toppled ruins
And I slipped out 
On the belly of a Parliament
Disappeared in a puff of smoke
And spit in that one eye
Nobody blinded me, he yelled
Nobody blinded me
Be it then malaise and plague

Down the southbound rocky road
I asked, and what of the times?
Doing the rapparee and Rory of the hill
A florid citizen replied
Toward toward to war to war
To warnings all along our cobblestones
O take us quick to a dawn o’ hues
With a hundred blood red cigarette suns
Laughing to pipes in the alley
We need that mourning in the glass
At times to reflect on angry seas
On others brilliant blithe or blinding
Or buried sometimes hurried down 
For the dark to drink a part at ease

You roiling tide O you spate you Liffey
You fill you flow without me!
O fuck you you flow! You tidal!
You without me O! O fuck!
O damn! That so swift beneath
Tha Ha’penny I cannot see the breath
I cannot here with you there and me here
Cannot the breadth expand
Cannot hear the diddly dear
The shadow me own Spancil hill
O puddles of my poesy
How salty hold your scummy rocks
O’er all the end and the other
It all goes on and on and ever
I miss that dirty old town
And will do forever
And ever
Amen