Copyright © Gerard Smyth; All rights reserved.
Through Oxmantown
I walked but saw no ancient lights
or herdsman with his fattened cattle,
no trace of those who were founders
of the place, who had to cross
the watery divide, build on soft ground.
And now new blow-ins have arrived
but there is still some vestige of the days
that time works hard to obliterate.
An old Dane haunts the parish, a renegade
from the annals whose axe
broke stones on the stony road.
That Old Dane, a mad-eyed stranger
in wolfskin and a mask, came to taste
the Liffeytide in Anna Livia’s mouth
and stayed to live a second life,
perfect the art of exile, cunning, hatred.