The Rain Was Falling.

Standing at the kitchen door,

trying to pick out

individual droplets landing

like tiny footfalls on the concrete. 

How slight  our step in this world;

among all those falling droplets,

I completely missed your footsteps

leaving.

 

Civilisation

 

 

At half six I turn on the news to see how the war is going.

 

Tracers are arcing down into the city;

the reporter keeps looking over his shoulder.

 

Shoes off, I stretch out,

 

rest my feet on the coffee table.

 

 

 

Evening

 

Evening light dozed on

his unwashed dishes;

years' old dust collected behind

hanging china plates;

the Sacred Heart looked on,

as ever,

smoked and sagging.

 

His face, at the table,

jerked unaccountably;

sometimes he choked on his tongue.

The mist of his young face

had cleared completely;

his smile was in a biscuit box

with his wedding photographs, letters

and the pieces of a broken pocket watch.

The effectiveness of simple

Picking up on the word 'simple' in the first line, the poem remains simple, and is  supremely effective for that. 

 

Suicide in the Trenches

by Siegfried Sassoon

 

I knew a simple soldier boy

 Who grinned at life in empty joy,

 Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,

 And whistled early with the lark. 

 

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,

 With crumps and lice and lack of rum,

 He put a bullet through his brain.

 No one spoke of him again.

 

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye

 Who cheer when soldier lads march by,

 Sneak home and pray you'll never know

 The hell where youth and laughter go.

Spring

i

Bleached, bone-dry,

wind-scalded wood;

 

my spindled torso

weathered clean,

 

my curlicued roots

 

clamped in the earth.

ii

 

But Spring’s moist eyes

 

defied my fingers,

 

imagining freedom,
 

conspired with soil;

 

I grew round, bright

and brazen.

 

 

 

 

 

A carrier bag

A carrier bag, caught in a sycamore tree, heaved and pulled, strained itself skinny, thrashed to escape. Its mouth, a terrorized rip, was lightening in the branches.

A carrier bag gulped itself grotesque in the squall on the Lower Kimmage Road. In convulsion,  its face inflated to featurelessness.

A carrier bag flew by. I saw nothing but hands wringing.

  

          The baby in the tree

 

The baby in the tree

is screaming.

 

High above the pathway

near the black tips

of the sycamore branches

he is gaping,

white membraned luminous.

 

How did he get there?

 

He blew there in the wind;

it took him

like a flag from his cot

till he was stretched

across the boughs

like the wings of a bat.

 

And who sees him?

 

I do;

all his hopeless writhing,

too high for the passerby.

And his screams:

too high,

too high for the passerby.

 

 

 

 

How to say I love you

A red, red rose

by Robbie Burns

O my Luve's like a red, red rose

 That’s newly sprung in June;

 O my Luve's like the melodie

 That’s sweetly play'd in tune.

 As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,

 So deep in luve am I:

 And I will luve thee still, my dear,

 Till a’ the seas gang dry: 

 Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,

 And the rocks melt wi’ the sun:

 I will luve thee still, my dear,

 While the sands o’ life shall run. 

 And fare thee well, my only Luve

 And fare thee well, a while!

 And I will come again, my Luve,

 Tho’ it were ten thousand mile. 

             It would be near impossible to express love more beautifully or more movingly than Burns’ second and third stanzas. Read them out loud and slowly. Better still sing them. This version with Eddi Reader and Alan Kelly is just gorgeous. What a stunning voice she has, and his playing is exquisite.

             I went to see them and the rest of the band some months back. They put on a fantastic show, one of the most enjoyable gigs I’ve ever been to. So, what I'm saying is, if you get the chance........................Of course, I should point out that Alan Kelly is a Roscommon man.