You stood at the side of the road,
snow-covered and, as yet, unmarked.
I watched you from the window:
at first, filling your eyes with its perfection,
then weighing printing your footsteps
against being the first to leave a blemish.
And before you had even turned,
I knew your decision.
What difference: the oblivion of a newly born child
and it dead beneath a city’s rubble?
And the child born on one side
of a fence and the other?
What difference: the grief of parents of fighters
and the grief of parents of children?
And the love of parents on one side
of a fence and the other?
What difference: the child who is voluble
and the child whose words are dead in the wreckage of its lungs?
And the longing to live on one side
of a fence and the other?
What difference: the bones that support a child
and those bones smashed to uselessness?
And the care needed on one side
of a fence and the other?
Concrete walls,
steel door.
Daylight is twilight,
though
way up, light
through a window
makes a play of leaves
on the wall opposite:
by this means,
we know that we are
underground,
buried.
Our living lives
are those leaves;
how we fear
the arrival of autumn
and autumn
is almost here.
He’s got a gimp;
it throws his suit
like the buttons are one button-hole out,
and the shirt falls
below his jacket
on that side.
He walks faster to blur it;
speeds through the city throngs;
that adeptness pleases him;
the gimp’s
in his talk
too.
He tells you straight;
tells you
he’s telling you straight,
to remember what he says
or get used to
being kicked around.
And always checking behind
or glancing into doorways
like he’s in debt
all down the street,
then turns a corner like he’s
trying to lose someone.
He keeps his right hand
in his jacket pocket;
the fingers are walking too;
I think it's because some woman told him
that constant movement
is freaky.
He won’t mind my
telling you;
he’ll enjoy been written about,
and feels he’d be good on tv;
he knows they wouldn’t have him;
their loss.
Betty,
the world is a marble;
getting smaller daily;
its mildews and viruses
have spread,
and they are at your feet.
I wanted to say something
reassuring,
for, at the very least, a child
should have hope
and till corrupted,
the child is beautiful;
but, what is there to say:
this has been destroyed.
Betty,
the world is a marble;
there is no stopping it;
its mildews and viruses
are spreading always
and they are at your feet.
.
Some poems refuse to be written, over and over. This is a rewrite of a poem that seems to have a hold on me
September Swallows
September swallows
Knots
on wires unbinding,
as though their true selves,
too long furled,
must hone their aeronautics.
They lift from the wires
into giddy flight,
like crochets escaping staves
for the grander arias of global skies.
Career, dip and wheel;
a restlessness in their DNA
compels them; tomorrow,
they’ll be arrows, Morocco-bound.
Behind those children playing,
I see a grandmother smiling;
she remembers
the blur of children’s play
but it’s not that memory,
it’s their place in her heart.
These moments of happiness:
she has seen them before,
knows the thin bone china
they’re made of;
her smiles are carefree
as the children
but are of this moment;
she has lived through many years.
How impressive the ladder looks from the bottom,
disappearing, as it does, into the clouds.
How those rungs invite;
how everyone encourages you to climb,
so you do.
And all the way up: yes, up, up, up
and, at the top, no more rungs:
space, just space;
they invited you to climb to a space.
Perhaps, I think, this may be Heaven;
maybe, set my molecules free
to wander through Heaven.
Perhaps, the thought is Heaven;
perhaps such a moment is eternity.
Like earthworms,
like the carcasses of all animals,
we darken the soil,
enrich it.
In their turn,
our children will rise,
live in the sun
till they, too, revert to humus.
Our gift to them,
to those coming ‒ grandchildren,
great grandchildren:
a poisoned, decaying earth
and, as a tree nourishes its fruit,
this earth must feed its children
all that has collected around roots,
all that is unseen in water.
You see it in his eyes.
He drowns it in incessant yap,
conceals it behind constant activity;
answers nothing,
but is forever asking questions,
filling his life with places and people;
always on vacation from himself.
His travels are to distraction.
Your hands, gentle,
resting in their usual place
on your lap,
listening to our conversation.
Fingers interwoven,
a basket for your thoughts,
the shape of caring,
the warm nest you made.
How wise those hands,
saying nothing
but alert in contemplation
and ready, always, to open.
 |
| Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, Caspar David Friedrich |
Climb to the summit;
come closer to your soul.
I'm four years out of Dublin now and live in an idyllic part of Donegal. The change wasn't quite as dramatic as it might have been as I've been travelling up and down for years, spending weekends and holidays here. To say that the quality of my life has improved is an understatement and I have not regretted leaving, but I have lost something which I think this poem addresses.
Traffic
I awoke to the usual rumble of city traffic
and then realised it was the sea two fields away
and for the first time felt sad
for all that is past and all that will never be.
That crash of people was the myriad possibilities
daily breaking on my shore;
the roar of their conflicting energies:
the screeching, bellowing of breaks, exhausts, pistons.
The cacophony of the streets sparking blood flow;
the city a pumping heart;
I turned on my side to hear the traffic in the sea
but there was none.
Fingers dripping diamonds,
arching under their weight.
All summer long the yellow tips
blossomed abuzz with bees;
now, in the slow drawl of time
following an August shower,
gleaming white with rain drops,
some spectral in the sunlight;
a once green plant in the trug
outside my window
now bejewelled
as Fabergé might have dreamed,
as would have coaxed Mughal emperors
away from their Peacock Throne.
