Before I learned that the universe is laughing, my brother died in a fire just a few years after the death of my mother, and I determined the world to be a merciless adversary. I resolved to be fierce and fearless to match this foe, and I tried to put that resolve into this poem. The poem came as a sudden spasm a couple of days after my brother’s death, and I have never tinkered with it.  It was edited once, by Derek Mahon, who suggested ‘be numb of’ rather than ‘numb of,’ which was essential to the meaning. He asked does the speaker identify with the wolves?

It is hard for me to know how to feel about this poem.  It describes a position that I no longer hold, though I held to it for thirty years. Book 2 of A Man without Talent describes the unravelling of this credo.

Our Dragon Prow(for my brother)

No. I’ll never be numb
of dirging you.
This sorrow will not wilt
with the voodoo bouquets
that were once
beautiful like you.
May there be staying
of the sad strong dirge
that brings weeping
for how we once walked glad
together to where
the land became grey sea
that stretched forth
like hunting ground for wolves.