What Made Kevin Drink (Poetry)

Sometimes they’d find him
face-down by the road
my best friend’s brother
who’d never been one
to refuse a drink

All the neighbours knew
his reputation
from that night he wrapped
his first car around
a local lamppost

It must have been the
luck of the Irish
he wasn’t killed there
yet it didn’t stop
your man from drinking

What secret sorrow
had him lose himself
deep in a bottle
no one seemed to know
he nursed it nightly

Maybe a clue in
a book of poems
Kevin lent me once —
‘The Spice-Box of Earth’*
It’s telling, I think


(*1960s collection by Leonard Cohen)