Gassed

In 1919 John Singer Sargent completed a large scale oil painting, Gassed. A line of First World War British soldiers, blinded by mustard gas, is led through a sea of bodies to a first aid station. The scene is appalling, and as convincing an argument for the barbarity of war as any. It is strongly reminiscent of Wilfred Owens’ Dulce Et Decorum Est:

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.
 

 

 

I found this video of the painting on Youtube. The camera picks out the detail in the painting very well, and helps to convey the horror of it all. Thanks to denise4peace on Youtube  for this.

Emigration - Empty Houses

An upshot of emigration is the aging of the population, particularly in rural parts. Old farmhouses, their young families gone, used to be a much more prevalent feature of the Irish countryside in the sixties and seventies; the  new wave  of departures may, sadly, turn the clock back. In silencing dead summer  heat, the emptiness of these houses is accentuated.   

 

 A Stranger In The Townland.

 

In Autumn the farmhouse

with the sun-folded field beneath its chin,

traps the daylight in its spectacles,

then flashes it away.

 

A swing hangs among the orchard's arthritic trees

without stirring;

without remembering

a frantic liveliness now reduced

to the occasional commotion of a falling fruit.

 

Once songs of apples filled the farmhouse;

but the children became photographs,

the dust settled on their frames

and soon Autumns were flying uncontrollably by.

Today, between its curiosities, a bluebottle drones.

 

Now that the conversation with the hillside

is ended, the farmhouse

with the sycamore stole

has become an eccentric;

a stranger in the townland. 

Arguments can be hallucinogenic.

 

The Blue Man.

 There was a manon the white line,

middle of the street;

clasping his shins,

he made a hemisphere

to cage his pain. 

Closer,

disfiguring agony;

the pain exploding,

he opened:

a carrier bag in a gust;

I saw a man o the white line,

dead of night;

I'd been in an argument,

the street was taking me

further along.

He was blue

and writhing:

carrier bag in the wind.

I threw my argument into it;

his need was greater

than mine.

Places of Literary/Arts Interest in County Roscommon

Myself and three others have just spent the last two days researching, finding and photographing sites relating to personages of literary/arts  interest in Co Roscommon. Among the places seen were John MacGahern’s barracks home in Cootehall, Percy French memorial on site of his family home, Douglas Hyde’s and O’Carolan’s burial places, Goldsmith's birthplace (disputed), William Wilde’s birthplace in Castlerea, Thomas Heazle Parke’s home in Kilmore, Hanna Greally’s cottage at Coolteigue.

Apart from the sites, the two days were spent in glorious weather; the Roscommon countryside looked magnificent. What hidden gems there are in these counties ( Sligo, Leitrim, Roscommon): Knockvicar, Cootehall, Highwood, Jamestown, Kilmore. There are so many places to be explored off the main roads all over Ireland. 

Candidate for most beautiful placename I ever come across: Eastersnow on the sign, Eastersnow graveyard.  

    

Summer Bliss

I think children gather an appreciation of nature and landscape in a way, and at a rate that is foreign to adults. They don’t appear to dwell on the moment; they don’t seem to have to declare to themselves that a place or a moment is beautiful. The appreciation seems to slip in while they’re busying themselves with something else; yet it gets in and lodges in their subconscious. Later in life it’s still there, a richness in their appreciation of life around them. I wonder how much they pick up when they appear to be otherwise engaged. 

Anyway, this poem recalls lazy childhood days and the awareness of all that’s stirring in the garden.

SUMMER ORCHARD EVENING.

On an evening

when apple was eating the worm,

tree grating the sun

with some clouds, dusty birds;

the green cloth

was spread to the orchard wall.

I watched bees collecting post

while cat was a tea cosy

with dozey trip-wire eyes.

Suddenly dog alarm in the hedge

comes bursting from the undergrowth:

big game hunter

and cat gone steeplejack.

Then dog winks

and we stretch out,

and I go back to being a microscope

eyeball deep in daisies.

This poem was originally included in an anthology called Real Cool - Poems to grow up with, edited by Niall MacMonagle (Martello 1994).

There Are Stars All Around

I am sitting on a park bench

 with a pool of sunlight almost on my lap;

 a cosmos of flies,

galaxies in Brownian motion,

 fills it.

I am looking into a park

after midnight;

 moths flitting beneath an unseen lamp

 are sparks streaking

from invisibility to invisibility.

I am lazing by a stream;

 the sun,

reflected in

innumerable scintillations,

 has ordered the universe

 to pulse beside my sleeve.