Two Poems by Oisín Breen

So be it, unto us all – Written in memory of Eadie, my wonderful rabbit, died aged 11, Feb. 13, 2022.

Show me a man untrammelled by loss,
And I will show you grief,
Beneath the burden; beneath being;
I will show you loss bereft of its object,
Seeking, in itself, a panacea for its pain,
Finding, in itself, only the steady melody
Of discontent and time.

Show me a man untrammelled by loss,
And I will show you what he has lost:

Heartache, more constant than bursting
Ear drums, in which lingers the death rattle
Of the loved;

I will show you:

Soul sickness, more splitting than pierced eyes
Under blood’s pumping ministry, when tremors
Of racked bodies, pass vigil.

I will show you:

Shock, more lasting than failure compounded
Years into seconds, in which hearts can not quicken
Faster than death-knowing slows us.

Yet I will also show you:

An infinity of heartbeats, exultant, bonded,
Full of purpose, love, and shared being,
Kin in power only to the fusion of stars.

And I will show you:

An understanding of the little meaning
The word amen does sing.

It sings not of endings And ‘so be it’,
But of the birth of being: ‘Amen’.

And now, as I wrestle,
Once again, with loss,

I know there is nothing to be done,
But tell you how much I love you.

I know there is nothing to be done,
So I will sing you through to paradise.

Libretto in the First and Last Frost

The wind splits on each side of the slope,
Spilling the sounds of its transit,
A prelude to an annual libretto of frost:
A text that sings of aerial flight,
And syncopation of colour:
Brightly thrashing yellows, reds, and greens,
Forerunners all to crunching spines and glistening veins,
Co-mingled, a future feast for spores, and a vast nexus
Of alveoli, and sacs of spent breath, gobbled,
Their canopic raiments giving lease to tunnels of light,

Yet with time, and with pressure, too, and restraint, this ends
In an instant, when, prompted by changes in its amber coated form,
The slow beating heart of the meristem opens, again, to spring,
It opens in pink and white blossoms, yellows and hard-worn greens.

And, as its new life breaks into being, it does so in thrall
To the first in service of its once dappled tongues,
An organ of sense long fallen, daubed in brilliant gold,
In red, and orange hue, crisp-edged, but tired and bending.

And to this passing belongs the grace of form through life;
Life as it is meant to be, and life as it is written.

Oisín Breen’s latest collection, Flowers of all Sorts… was published by Dreich and is available here.

Learn more about Oisín on our Contributors’ Page.

(Photo: Ib Aarmo/ flickr.com/ CC BY-ND 2.0)

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Oisín Breen

Irish poet, academic, and journalist, Oisín Breen’s debut, ‘Flowers, all sorts in blossom …’ was released March 2020. Breen is published in 89 journals in 19 countries, including in About Place, Door is a Jar, Northern Gravy, North Dakota Quarterly, Books Ireland, The Tahoma Literary Review, La Piccioletta Barca, Decomp, New Critique, and Reservoir Road. Breen’s second collection 4² by 5 is due out later this summer through Dreich. His third, the experimental Lilies on the Deathbed of Étaín will be published by Beir Bua Press, January 2023.

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