Irish poet Niall McDevitt lives in West London. He is the author of three critically acclaimed collections of poetry, b/w (Waterloo Press, 2010), Porterloo (International Times, 2013) and Firing Slits: Jerusalem Colportage (New River Press, 2016). His work appears in Wretched Strangers, an anthology of non-UK born writers; Urban Shamanism, poets from north, west, south and east London; Diamond Cutters, poets in Britain, America and Oceania; and the STRIKE! Anthology. He is a walking artist who specialises in the historic poets of London, particularly Shakespeare/Blake/Rimbaud/Yeats. He blogs at poetopography.wordpress.com. In 2013, he read at Yoko Ono's Meltdown in the Future Exiles: Poetry and Activism event. In 2016, he was invited to read his work in Iraq at the Babylon Festival. His book BABYLON (a neoliberal theodicy) And Other Poems is forthcoming from New River Press.
Photograph of 'Southwark Needle', courtesy of the author.
THE HEADS ON POLES
(a masque)
Francis Bacon: As for triumphs, masks, feasts, weddings, funerals, capital executions,
and such shews, men need not to be put in mind of them; yet are they not to be neglected.
1st head:
why hanging? why drawing? why quartering?
what for?
the national self-interest?
the holocaust of the poor?
no
it was for Christ,
well
the schism of England
my entrails
eviscerated like a fish
in front of thousands
my privy
parts enflamed
2nd head:
this failure
this head pinned on
as badge of defeat
by a peeler state
uprising, underground
die in the grimace
I once smiled through
this show
of teeth
this toothlessness
3rd head:
the living heads look at me
dropping tears of pity
retuning to their meals, their indenture
I have no followers
now
who would follow me
here?
4th head:
I behold the vaults of power
freed
not praying but hating
their schemes their stratagems
the 'little ease'
of their religion
please hate them too
crossing the garden bridge
carting me with you
into the bowels of Rome
*
Wiliam Blake: Bacon supposes that the Dragon Beast & Harlot are worthy
of a Place in the New Jerusalem Excellent Traveller Go on & be damnd