You sailed out on the Prinz von Oranje,

Sporting the azure and orange of the

Dutch Army,

To carry its flag through a sweltering

landscape

(good-bye to Europe, anywhere will do),

Under the smouldering crest of

Krakatoa.

Months later, you signed on The

Wandering Chief,

A lean deserter, living off tropical fruit,

You took the name of ‘Holmes’,

heading home;

(did you swim to Napoleon’s bleak St

Helena?)

Finally you docked in Queenstown,

alias Cobh:

But what befell you, that lost day in

Cork?

*

Bemused by a signpost reading

‘Charleville’,

Rimbaud stumbles into the Long

Valley,

Meets Humphrey Moynihan, and

staggers back:

‘This man has deranged all his

senses!’

He stays long enough to sign the

Visitors’ Book;

Then in the Corner House, surrounded

again

By those petulant accents of Cork

(a chorus of aggrieved doves), he finds

Gerry Murphy,

Who slaps him on the back, buys a

round of Murphy,

And brings him to meet McCarthy in

the Library.

At long last, the voice of sanity!

‘That Charleville signpost leads to

North Cork,

And not your famous French

birthplace.

Better leave for Waterford or Wexford,

To embark again for the Continent.

If you get lost, look up Dorgan in

Dublin;

He’s a sailor himself, and knows the

ropes.’

*

In the attic of his Cork B&B,

Is there still a dusty sailor’s trunk,

Impounded by an angry landlady?

‘That skinny Frenchie had no English

money.

There’s nothing in it but a scribbled

Notebook:

Hallucinations,I think, says the cover

of it,

Tomorrow I’ll burn it, or take it to the flea market!’

• John Montague