Homosexual, by Marcas Mac an Tuairneir
Wigtown International Poetry Prize Joint Winner
Homosexual
I need this word,
to recount the fall of dusk,
the progressive shift of the light
suffusing the skyline, lilting into
lilac. The silence of that night
where nothing but his name
reverberates inside my hollow mind,
of the weeping inability to speak it.
I need this word
to explain that mourning,
the shedding of skin
and a self, preordained.
My child unbegotten,
my fatherhood un-maled.
I need this word
to speak of hands unheld, the leap
across the pavement flags
bathed in streetlight yellow rays,
lurching from lamp-post to
lamp-post, long-jumping
the shadows of creeping violence.
I need this word
to sing midnights, the swing
of the neck as the head sways
to its new-found music, the hands
raised to guide the feet
in their nocturnal gambol.
I need this word
to spell the cerulean dawn,
the last kiss snatched as the
dancefloor disperses into daybreak,
the knots knocked out of the shoulder
sinews, the space and time to find
the path and walk it, make it mine.