Of the Irish, Paris
THE Lombards having gone back to their land,
We, who might never flock to native land
Except like birds that fly like fugitives,
Desperately, in a wind across the sea,
We drew our brood to their forsaken nest.
The Lombards- halls became the Irelanders',
And charity was craved for us 'twas given
In names of Almantza and Namur,
Cremona, Barcelona, Charleroi
Fields that our soldiers bled on for a cause
Not ours, under command not ours.

Our order broken, they who were our brood
Knew not themselves the heirs of noted masters,
Of Columbanus and Erigena:
We strove towards no high reach of speculation,
Towards no delivery of gestated dogma,
No resolution of age-long dispute.
Only to have a priest beside the hedges,
Baptizing, marrying,
Offering Mass within some clod-built chapel,
And to the dying the last sacrament
Conveying, no more we strove to do
We, all bare exiles, soldiers, scholars, priests.