he lived, I expect,
the life he’d expected –
like a witty side-character
livening somebody’s book;
he was shaped very literary
with round bottle glasses
which rode on his cheek-
bones like horsemen.
and he moved off to places
like paris and brussels
with beautiful women
who smoked and wrote beautiful
poetry. very poetic, so beautiful
and sad all the time.
and he gave bike tours and lounged
with long books in small cafes
and chatted with people in bars.
and then when you’d see him?
some story from europe
where not much had happened
but a sense by the tone
of things going unmentioned.
his tattoos were all homemade
and his friends were all artists
and writers – all skinny,
all very good looking
and round bottle glasses
from all over europe
and living in paris in garrets like the 20s
sitting in the soft butter sunlight,
by montmartre on the stark paris skyline
and smoking cigarettes they’d roll in stained fingers
with long gray coats that stretched at the elbows
and accents made rounder by the need to be understood.
he came back to dublin after five years or so,
with no money and not much experience
beyond bicycles and hitting on tourists
and expected us all
to be very impressed
that he’d managed to do
so not very much
for such a very long time.
DS Maolalai has been described by one editor as “a cosmopolitan poet” and another as “prolific, bordering on incontinent”. His work has nominated twelve times for Best of the Net, ten for the Pushcart Prize and once for the Forward Prize, and has been released in three collections; “Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden” (Encircle Press, 2016), “Sad Havoc Among the Birds” (Turas Press, 2019) and “Noble Rot” (Turas Press, 2022)