Life Passing

 

Stand where you are,

absorb the view;

a full life, fully lived,

is a regarded life.

Otherwise it passes

like a train; waved at,

saying goodbye

even as it arrives.

Statement

 

I cannot tell the difference between fire and

ice nor love and hate when I am with you;

I suspect there’s none. All is passion, life a

storm, and in that storm, I am tossed, battered

and reawakened over and over to you, life, lover.

An Alien Invasion

 

Today seeds claimed the city.

Millions, perhaps billions, drifted

through the streets like an alien invasion.

Nonchalantly they floated past pedestrians

and traffic, heading eastward towards,

perhaps, some pre-ordained location.

Each achene, purposeful, carrying its seed

under a sunlit pappus as though returning

a nature forgotten through the ages;

reminding us too, that, in time,

they will return to demolish the city,

to recolonize, restore.

The Touch

 

I touch the surface; it touches me, my finger.

The worry of water passes through me as laughter;

the whole world convulses and becomes still again.

And now I am aware of the world below,

the depth, the increasing murk, the blackness;

that otherness beneath my shimmering self.

In that sky I must be no more than a cloud;

remember the delicacy of this touch

and the eyes that watch my boat’s hull passing.

Barnesmore Gap in Poetry and Pictures

 

Recently I had a query, ‘Anyone have a copy of a poem by Fr Leo Muldoon published in 1952/53 called the Desecration of Barnesmore Gap?’ arrive into the blog. I passed the question on to my neighbour, Kate Slevin, and she very kindly came back with the following information which I hope will be a help to my correspondent.

Yes, the poem is supposedly about the installation of the pylons there. 

1. 

There is a poem written by L Mullen in 1911 but not sure if the L is for Leo. Part of the poem is as follows.... 

‘You’ll search in vain on any map

From China to Paris 

To find the peer of Barnes Gap

The pride of Old Tyrhugh;

Where Nature’s beauty thrills the soul

And ravishes the mind 

Where grand majestic is the whole

Unscathed by age or wind’

 2.

Another poem which I found on google books by Leo Muldoon... published 1961 in one of the Donegal/Derry newspapers, don’t know which one. 

 “It’s discussed around the fire,

And it’s talked of round the town,

Sure the customers in Biddys

Mix it with their drinks going down....”

An enquiry to those papers might uncover something.

3. 

I think Fr Muldoon was Parish Priest in Hamilton, Scotland. 

4.

There is a Barnes Gap in Creeslough, another outside Strabane but most likely it’s down the road from us. There are pylons in all three areas... 

5.

There’s a Historical Society in Ballybofey and Stranorlar, link below, 

(https://www.finnvalleyhistory.com) and also in Frosses. An enquiry could be sent to them.

Barnesmore Gap beyond Lough Mourne © Kate Slevin

And this gives me the perfect opportunity to mention Kate’s website, Kate Slevin Photography at <www.kateslevinphotography.com>

also her Facebook page at <https://www.facebook.com/kateslevinphotography/>.

Co. Donegal is a county of extraordinary beauty, still unspoiled and, for the most, part non-commercialised. Its coast, pounded by the Atlantic is carved into spectacular cliffs, headlands and bays or pulverised into magnificent beaches, swathes of pristine sandy shoreline that gleam in the sun. Inland the county is a glorious mix of mountain, lake, river and pastureland. 

Photogenic doesn’t cover it. Its special magic comes from its ever-changing skies, the unpredictable light that comes with that, the colours vibrant or muted as the clouds or the time of day dictate. No one has captured the moods and the ever changing beauty, allure, of Donegal as successfully as Kate. Her love of the landscape is palpable in all her images, the care she takes in conveying  the best of Donegal is clear for all to see. Take a look at the Barnesmore series: with artist’s eye and commitment she brings her homeplace to you in all its varying guises; the sort of attention Cézanne brought to Mont Sainte-Victoire or Monet his garden.

Think I’m exaggerating? Discover here Donegal in all its grandeur. <www.kateslevinphotography.com>

The Road Goes

 

Where this road goes, I’ll never know;

like water there is no end.

She walked ahead, her dress a flag waving in the wind,

the road a grey stripe in a green scarf,

heavy woolen clouds above us.

She walked between the rags of sky

that littered the road to the bend, the last sight of her

before she was gone into her future.

And, just like that, we saw her childhood end

and turned back to our emptier house.

The Livelong Day

 

The laggard day

of cushioned hooves

that once stampeded.

Sunrise’s promise

proved powdery,

and crumbled.

Afternoon blew 

bubbles and thought

them ideas.

Evening ghosts fell

in behind, and nudged him

further out the plank

Faraway Dreams.

 Another rewrite. One of the advantages of publication in book form is the poems are put to rest, finished or not. I think poems about longings are particularly hard to finish; longings for one thing might well be a manifestation of a deeper longing for something else, and they change in their insistence from one moment to the next. The other side of the coin is that that changeability may be the spark for numerous poems. 

                                        

                                    Tokyo

The puddle is Tokyo;

I’m standing in my rain-proofs

looking down on Tokyo,

watching rain like metal

splinters falling on the city,

and the same thing

that’s making me happy

is making me sad:

an ephemeral beauty,

city of rain and streetlights,

a dazzling in the murk of the night

of something somewhere faraway.

Love, In My Mouth

 

In My Mouth

Love, the word:

warm and rolling.

Itself brittle,

taut, wary.

I had it on a forceps;

it escaped.

Love, the word:

I swallowed it.

Woman in a slant of sunlight.

 

Standing in a slant of sunlight,

silver glinting specks of dust,

fingering the links of the chain

about her neck and gazing, not 

seeing, into the blur of greenery, 

her garden. She knows part of

her life has slipped her; not beyond

sensing, but beyond experiencing.

She knows it was hers: some lost

opportunity, something lost from

her own realisation. And it is lost.

Now she must step out of her reverie,

return to her lesser self, trimmed

but, somehow, wiser.

Even when you get there, have you arrived?

 

If Happiness Has a Sound

It is a stream

running on its pebble bed;

exultation: a waterfall

diving off a cliff;

contentment: a river

strolling through the fields;

achievement: an ocean

hammering on its chest.

And still, the stream is starving,

the waterfall lost,

the river homeless

and the ocean despairing,

seeing the glimmer of the unattainable

on all its horizons.

Still

 

Undulating radiance

away, out to the horizon;

five silhouettes

dancing in it:

a perfection, I believe;

I do believe that.

Beyond them, in that light,

things I wish I said,

long ago

before perfections dimmed;

and still,

still my love.............

The Remaining

This poem has been with me for years. It seems like its content to have an enduring relationship with passing time. The image goes back to the eighties; have I finished with it? Only time can tell.

The Remaining.

See the watch-maker’s face bulge

disappear and bulge in clock glass;

his eyepiece transporting him back

to the innards of Victorian time;

their cogs acting his age; he cupping them,

tiny bones; nudging them onward

to tick his seconds away, and all the time

skeletons, back to his fathers’ reign,

lining the shelves like sunken galleons,

insensible the endless drift of the years.

 

On the mossy floor beneath the trees,

anemones make a starry heaven;

how exhilarating it is to walk among the stars!