PO E T R Y
Rundown Town Nobody cared about the priest in Rundown Town, not even when he whispered help through his porous front door, so he got fed up and pedalled the hundred miles or so to the city. Shabby enough to be a poet, he gulped long drinks and settled great questions by reiterating: the road is an end in itself and no one travels without purpose. Some critics were confused, but helped him into bed with Pinkie, who hated curtains – but got him his first bursary.
She took to women and he became the prophet of a dark place – men were mentioned. In one interview, he insisted he was never far from a bullfight, a battered bike or poker game, and he adored brown bread.
Time did what it does to priests, cats, poets, bats and bankers, and with his final wish – to be borne the hundred miles or so to Rundown cemetery – granted he gulped a final glass and passed on, smiling.
His funeral was the largest ever seen in Rundown Town.
©Terry McDonagh
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