Senachas.
Bury him, deep.
First, he is the prince.
That's all.
Blessed, cursed,
strangled and thrown
into the deepest bog
down among the peat,
the reeds, and the copper shields.
Then, he is the saint.
Buried alive in Iona,
a druid, perhaps,
damned by Columba's dreams
to breathe dark earth for eternity.
Next, he plays the martyr,
different from the saint,
mostly, killed by men in red
serving a foreign, Saxon crown.
This poem took a Fenian turn.
It was not meant to.