Anthony Keating - Third Prize

Lorca

The olive groves are silent now
Brittle earth lays a powder shroud
As regiments of ants compact the butchers' work
The roots of trees slowly embrace
The vanishing heroes

Dust is dust
Yet the trees buckle and twist in homage
Drawing the moon to their very ends
Projecting into the skulls of the dead
The roads that Gypsies and Jews
Will walk, again and again and again
No matter how often they change
Their names, skins, or tattoos

Tears are no alchemy
Yet poets pay whores to fuck
With a shadowy philosophers' stone
A poor trade this
Yet look at the beauty and treachery
Of impossible quests.

Anthony Keating lives in Dublin, Ireland.