The Hosting

It is a king’s work, this hosting

of all of Adam’s seed,

and yet is it no work, nothing

at all, and it proceeds.

No sooner do they know

than they study to forget

where the hosting goes –

no one is ready yet.

When you are called forth,

if you refuse to leave,

in whose house, whose fort

will you stand siege?

After 'The Last Call-Up' (from A Golden Treasury of Irish Poetry, Ed. David Greene & Frank O'Connor), an anonymous poem of 17 stanzas originally published in the 15th century Book of Lecan.

First published as part of a short sequence, Departures (long after the Irish, AD 600-1200), in my collection Fade Street (Salt, 2010).

Photo: Stéig, an iron age (AD 400) fort in the Ring of Kerry.