When Wittgensteins cottage in Galway was unlocked He had outwitted his critics: thousands of comics
Rose up among mice droppings where they had wanted
To find folios from an Ubermensch, not Superman.
And Yeats, dying so intently on the Cote dAzur,
Read Westerns while he worked on his obituary
Though lariats turn to cinctures in the last verses.
Cú Chulainn was present, but also Bat Masterson.
Which is to say we aim at shoddy rapture.
The trash of dailiness has warmed us like newspaper
Down through the years inside our vests and jackets
Against all weathers. When we must manage naked,
Some sheet of it may seem less print than parchment
From the event of its being bodily sheltered
As if the humdrum could become papyrus
Because we had touched it and held it close to us,
The breastplate of the tramp, the thing that lasts.
Aidan Mathews