The Day Stephen Donnelly Joined Foster and Allen

While gutless others shivered

alone in wardrobes of their own making,

debating whether to kill

by strangling, or have sexual intercourse with,

themselves;

you strode into our national crisis

stage left stylish

as a string quartet about to fiddle out

on viola, cello, Stradivarius

something by the late Benjamin Britten;

a set of implausibly perfect teeth attached

to what sounded like a brain.

Your intelligence so vast

you had to get the builders in

to extend the dome of your skull

to accommodate a Masters

degree from Harvard.

Not content to be the usual

slight disappointment, you reveal

yourself to be the thinking wing

of the Foster and Allen Party; politically flexible

as a cross-community Belfast brothel;

slick as rubbery bacon; aesthetically pleasing

as a Chicken Snack Box thrice reheated

before nine o’clock in the morning

or a third hand pair of trousers grown

pungent with badly digested cabbage;

but destined tonight to be wildly applauded

in darkest Arklow by those who’ll have

the shirts torn from their backs

when next the market crashes.

KEVIN HIGGINS