Red-Haired Boy
that one
—hair the colour of dried blood—
latched his mouth
to your swollen breast
—that hair
that mouth
made from you
from his half-foreign father—
drank you into himself and grew
that child
every portion of him the promise
of a king
—his father the beautiful
his grandfather the Good God
his mother
goddess of word and craft—
how could he not fall prey
to those who twisted
turned him
how could he not wish
to please his father well
yet how
how could he come before
his mother’s people
before the smith who loved him
beg of him a splendid spear
seek to cut him down
when the spear refused the service
when the smith wrenched back his
arm
hurled the weapon home
how could your son not fall
before him hundreds died
born again in the Well of Wholeness
that well now shattered
Ruadán remained
as he fell
lay screaming
on crimson ground
till
silence on the land
and you
how could you not upwell
as the divine river before you
broke its banks
and all the horror and all the
sorrow
of that awful scything
not emerge in ululation
the birth of keening
at the slaying of your son
