I was nineteen the year I lived there. I had gone north for someone already gone — lost to London the spring before — and followed him anyway, into colder rain. I never took root, and the weather bit. I left before the year was out, and have thought of it kindly ever since, from a long way off.
A lorica is a breastplate, a prayer worn as armour. Christ before, Christ behind, Christ at every side. The old Irish saints prayed them onto roads they had to walk and could not walk safe. This is one for a city I could not stay in.
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Christ over the Mersey, grey and moving.
Christ in the wind that comes off the water sideways and finds the gap in every coat.
Christ in the rain that does not stop.
Be the warmth the city kept for its own and rationed to me in doorways, on the last bus.
Be the hardness too — I needed some of it and could not grow it.
Be in front of me, where he used to be.
Be behind me on the road south, the day I gave up and turned back.
Guard the wound in me that went looking through the cold,
Guard it let it be healed.
Christ in the cathedral they call the wigwam — concrete, Irish, unashamed.
Christ in the chip shop, in the docks, in the gulls turning over the water.
Bind round me what I could not carry alone at nineteen.
Bind it now, late, from far off.
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I left, and the love stayed. I could not live there, but I will not let it go.