An Owl in my head

An idea from the animals represented on the bicorns worn by felos at carnaval in Galicia.

‘There is an owl in my head’

said Joseph. ‘I am wise,

wisest of all creatures’.

‘There is a tiger in my head’

said Paul. ‘I am  fierce,

all creatures fear me’.

‘A stag in mine’

said Thomas. ‘ I am majestic,

admired by all’.

‘My head is empty’

said Jim. ‘a space

for all creatures to come and go.’

In memory of my mother

She was

Two cups of flour resourceful

Plumb-line straight

Three sides of a triangle logical

Rain-coat wise

Five woollen blankets caring.

Artur Widak's Photograpic Exhibition Highlighting The Refugees' Plight

 ‘The Path to Freedom:pictures illustrating the journey refugees are taking from 
 war-torn countries to Europe’ featuring the photographs of photojournalist 
 Artur Widak will be on display in Rathmines Library from November 17th  to 
 December 7th.
 The exhibition features some of Widak's most moving and thought-provoking 
 images,many of which have been highly acclaimed and have appeared in 
 publications such as The Guardian, Huffington Post, The Independent (UK), Le 
 Monde among many others . They portray, all too vividly, the hardships and 
 sadnesses that the Syrian refugees are enduring. It is impossible to view 
 these pictures and not be incensed at the ongoing inhumanity of it all. 

Widak will deliver a talk on his experiences at 6.30pm, Nov 17th in Rathmines 
 Library.

I asked Picasso what he did on September 6th, 1957 ̶ your birthday.

Just back from a few days in Barcelona where I visited the wonderful Museu Picasso. In particular, I enjoyed his Las Meninas Series. This series includes the subset of 9 paintings called The Pigeons which he started on Sept 6th 1957, before returning to Las Meninas on Sept 14th. Though very different in content, he always considered the 9 Pigeons paintings among the 58 Las Meninas Series; I think I know why.

The Pigeons, Picasso. Sept 6th, 1957

I asked Picasso what he did on September 6^th, 1957  ̶   your birthday.

“I was working on Las Meninas. I had put an almost human face

on the Margarida Maria and there the ideas stalled.

On my balcony, pigeons emerged from fluffed up shapelessness.”

Out of the ocean into air,

into clanging space,

grabbing at the caul of light around you.

“I needed to resuscitate a sense of the absurd;

the pigeons twitched

with comic self-consciousness.”

Water’s membrane shut behind you,

things were sounding into being;

you were sounding into being.

“The round angled; the space faceted”, said Picasso. 

Remembering Pearse Hutchinson

No Detail Too Small 

No detail too small, you balanced it on your pen.

Watchmaker with magnified eye,

you admired the exquisiteness in small things.

When a gentian is a match for the Matterhorn,

an everyday kindness is treasure, humility dazzles,

and universal courteousness is a longed for revolution.   

The Dog

A dog built around his snarling teeth   

demonstrates human instincts

when I cross his ground.

Glass stare, no, spikes from his face,

his crew cut spines speared,

snarl or smile, legs set in concrete:

stance consciousness.              

The considered setting of his growl:

natural resonance of nerves.

The chosen time for a step:

psychology of closing, removing space,

building a crescendo of presence.

Then the howling with muscle release:

snap of dogs, snap of men.

Final Breath

in memory of Pearse Hutchinson

In that last moment your breath halted in your mouth;

the  air teetered on your tongue; one last taste perhaps.

Death flew across the room, your eyes followed it,

leaving us, exiting through the walls.

Vivaldi played on,

emerged from behind  your troubled  breathing.

For that few moments,

baroque splendour  was your breath condensing around us.

Where The Poetry Comes From

Fathomless blue;

Blue sky.

Two swallows proclaiming it

Are extravagant

Dancers in an empty ballroom.

A church bell chimes

Two, three, five o’clock;

No matter.

Tracing curves to unending time;

A route to south Africa ?

Fathomed true;

Blue sky.

The Tide's High Blood Mark

  

                 (Before The Firing Squad)

Ready

           

            The sun's tide

            is licking me.

           

Aim

            In one eye-full I have examined every brick,

            seen the crack in that window,     

       `   the wasp on the flag

            and still felt the sun

            and heard the voice right down

            to a bubble on his vocal cords.                                        

Fire

            The sun travelled its 93 million miles.

            Threw my shadow against the bricks.

            My shadow stretched

            My shadow stretched

            My shadow stretched

            And the sun said

            That my shadow was as tall and slender

            As any wave that ever rose

            That ever rose out of the full tide

            Climbed and stretched its arms

            Over the bricks of this barracks wall.

Old Man

The tyre hanging in the garden

is proof that children used to  play there;

but in the breeze it’s a shaking head.

Today snowflakes flying by

leave the sycamore white on its northern side.

The garden is still: no snowman, no footprints.

The tyre is an old man;

with an old voice, he explains:  

“I cannot remember names; truth is

I hung too close to the trunk to be of use;

the sycamore branches bolted upwards;

to this day they’ve never spread out.”  

A Brief Note on an Imminent Famine.

Everyone here will starve:

each bone will be a stripe,

each hand a bowl,

each leg a stick.

Then there'll be the gluttony

of cameras:

our threadbare skin 

will be devoured,

our eyes exported

shining like pickles.

A Snagging Memory

Before The End.

The bedside lamp shone

in the pool of her eye;

it made her teeth translucent,

runnelled her face.

Daylight and I were reluctant visitors;

the  room smelling of trapped breath,

sickness and decay made me anxious

that I might inhale her disease;

and all I loved gone,

all dwindled down to duty.

Fragile Nature

Interference.

A fish is dreaming,

elbow deep.

With my fingertip

I draw a herring-bone

across his heaven;

he bolts.

Now the lake dreams,

empty like a canyon.

What Does He See Where I See Only Stone?

What does he see where I see only stone?

The man is still, his gaze fixed on the ground

but that gaze compels you to look again;

in such  moments a mind might overreach the stars.

I see my reflection, he says;

I see my hair no longer covers my head,

its silver ring above my ears, he says,

is like gorse cleared from a hill-top.

And, he says, I see the child struggling

in the young branches of childhood,

the school doors fanning him on and on

through corridors of captivity, a whirligig

through years, disremembering his own footsteps.

I see the would-be lover, and he loved his hair;

he put a shine in his eye like I polish a shoe;

and his full bracelet of teeth; my God, he could smile.

I see how time subtracts: aging dreams

till they become hobbled old goats that have outstared you,

till they have become unbelievable.

My young loves reflected back have their young faces still

but I would be afraid to see them now.

My plans and projects are shunted, rusting old carriages;

I don't visit them anymore.

The old man's arms are folded so fingers lie like stripes

on his right arm, forage in the dark woolen sleeve

of his left. His head is slightly forward,

his eyes unblinking as though entranced

by weeds growing on the floor of a pond.

I see too that I never held the reins of a life,

that indifference is a colander, indecision has the grasp

of a hand without fingers. Days are punched down

like receipts onto a nail; named, counted, collected,

they grow into months; life flitting across the pages 

of a calendar, falling  into the holes between Christmases.

And I remember those Christmases

long ago when I was young, the totting up  ̶

over a drink   ̶  of departed faces and the wishes,

the wish-bone skinny wishes for the coming year

that smouldered beside a glass of stout and then went out.

I see those faces whose roots entangled with my own,

how arrogance blinded me so I could not see

it was the carpet of their roots that buoyed me up

until recently, feeling them slip away,

feeling the cold gaps they’ve left around me, I discovered

it wasn’t I that put the colours in my head,

and with that discovery much has toppled

that hindered my view. I see, as though from a height,

my head is indistinguishable from all the others

rushing like froth from this life that we call

living.

Now his face is raised, his eyes red-rimmed

with the racing bobbin that’s in his head:

I saw the ground and the scuffed toe to my shoe;

a lifetime might have no other measure than 

its number of worn out shoes.

The Less Trodden Ireland

Every year hundreds of thousands of tourists travel from Dublin to Galway, a distance of 208km (130 miles). They come for a taste of Ireland: atmosphere, heritage, scenery and fun. Often with the hope of connecting with the authentic Irish experience, they cross from one nest of customized attractions to another. The journey takes two hours and  fifteen minutes.

In  doing so, they pass some of the most unspoiled, most interesting, less crowded and most authentic Irish experiences they could hope to  find. Archaeological sites, ruined monasteries,  castles,  heritage centres, stately houses, grand gardens, not to mention tranquil lakes, winding rivers  and panoramic views across the central plain.

On these two maps I have pin-pointed about 60 attractions across a particular, and less visited swathe of the country (not nearly the full list). All of these places would appeal greatly to me, all are worth the detour and most require no payment. This is not an attempt to provide informed itineraries for visitors to Ireland, but to make the point out  that it will pay the traveller to explore more deeply between the tourism capitals of Ireland.

Sites include Russborough House, Castletown House, Trim Castle, Fore Abbey, Loughcrew, Belvedere House, Leap Castle, Corlea Trackway, Strokestown House, Boyle Abbey, Arigna Minning Experience, Clonalis House, Athlone Castle, Hill of Uisneach, Rath Cruachan, Roscommon Castle, Athenry castle, Carrowmore Archaeological Complex and many more; check them out, it's a wonderful list.

Bridge Life

It was, of course, bridge life:

the monk-like garb of old men,

their herring-boned elbows on the parapet,

at home with those ancient lichens

and warmed by their burning pipe fires.

They were limbs of trees left out for the cutting;

softened by rain, hardened by wind,

they were brittle grey grained men

whose conversations flowed in runnels

pocked with their growls and their laughter.

And it was the river flowing, weaving

their childhood and old years into a tweed:

a comfortable cloth, their cloth, the cloth

to warm their bones when the wind comes

that makes old teeth chatter.

Leaving

Loch Ryan is Pink

Loch Ryan is pink.

Stranraer is curling up in a corner

with its people shrinking inside it.

I'm watching the hills' colour draining away

so they become just shadows of a land.

Only the gulls are real and even they

look more like discarded wrappers.

I am looking back over the stern

with the wind pouring down the port-side,

a wisp of the emigrant's sadness blows over me.

This receding shore to another Irishman

might have been Lough Foyle or Cobh or Sligo

and the light at Malin or Tory might

have been the last twinkle before the ship

buried itself in the Atlantic darkness.

The last beads of land would have been treasure

to be stored but instead they are like water.

As the day funnels even further to the west

Scotland makes itself small; somehow it  seems

to be leaving us; turning away. The ship's trace

is a luminous wake and a highway of smoke;

you, who have left no trace, are already forgotten.

I imagine them homeless on board a Christmas tree

bobbing on an ocean between two continents.

Saturn devouring his son

Even by Game of Thrones standards, Rubens depiction of Saturn devouring his son is grotesque. There is a matter of factness in the way Saturn is going about his business that is chilling. Ramsay Bolton would be reminding us of his jaw-dropping barbarity, but this guy is just doing it. And he has reason, knowing that among the deities, sons usurp their fathers. Then there’s the ripping of the flesh off the chest; it’s not the usual “off with his head” approach, but more the way one might eat chicken (without cutlery, I mean ). Saturn with an old man’s dishevelled grey hair, bushy eye-brows, loss of body-tone so wonderfully achieved; it’s a realistic impression, and it’s an impression that stresses that all is being done with the utmost (albeit depraved) sanity.

Goya’s Saturn , on the other hand is comic-book; he looks completely  ‘out of his tree’; whichever end of the carcass was  topmost would, of course, be the end that got chewed off first. And since the headless body seems to be of adult proportions, this Saturn is a giant. As regards which Saturn I’d prefer to bump into, I suppose I’d take my chances with the first; on the other hand, since he looks like any old man, I might well run him and not recognise anything different in him; and that’s serious menace.

It helps me to use images like these to spur ideas in my own writing. The various different interpretations of Goya’s painting (time devouring the young, Spanish war efforts devouring its youth, deaths of Goya’s own children, relations with his son)  are prime fodder for poetry and the images can prepare the stage. But isn’t it intriguing how completely different the poem would end up if based on one or the other of these two images?  

Douglas Hyde Conference 2016

It’ll be my third year in the chair. An outstanding line-up of speakers will address the conference on the theme ‘Telling Tales of Revolution’. But it’s ‘tales’ in a very broad sense. Robert Ballagh will talk on the story-telling in his paintings; Derek Warfield, founder of the Wolfe Tones, on his experience from  a lifetime singing rebel songs; Alan Titley on the references to revolution in Gaelic literature prior to 1916. Frank Allen will tell the story of ‘Twelve Days In May’, a film on James Connolly, which is now in production under the direction of Danny Boyle and is due for international release in the autumn. Gerald Dawe, Luke Gibbons, Vincent Pierse, Niamh Parsons, Liz Gillis and Kevin Hora on a diverse range of topics; the conference takes place in Ballagderreen, Co Roscommon on July 21st.

Information at  http://www.roscommoncoco.ie/en/Services/Community/Arts_Office/the-douglas-hyde-conference.html

Memories of Galway

It's a  lifetime ago. I mean I wrote this poem a lifetime ago. My student-life in Galway, well that's two lifetimes ago. But this poem does catch my Galway. 

Do I still have a soft spot for that city: no, I don't think so. Happiest memories so rooted in their time and place, that the place can never live up to them. Best to leave those locations shimmering as they do in your head. 

From Galway

1.

At half past five we cracked dawn on the Salmon Weir,

swished the rose-coloured sky around our eyes,

clinked our voices.

Then on down College Road like circus folk,

past Johnny Ward's, past the university

where the crows were blowing the ears off the trees,

past the Regional and Kelehan's

and on out to Salthill to shine out loud with the ocean.               

  

2.

I remember Galway's soft drizzle,

each droplet carrying an atom of perfume

from the Glenard garden hedges.

My night-time walks in  that lazy spray:

onto Threadneedle Road,  down to the prom,

out onto the diving board at Blackrock.

Then the palm of mist along my cheek;

the tide repeating

easy, easssssy, easssssssy.

 3.

Each evening the flotilla of swans returns to the Claddagh;

they are, through half-closed eyes,

a thousand yachts drifting by like ghosts.

On the far wall a trawler slumps;

sometimes children run to it but it disappoints them. 

Here is the colour of Galway,

that falls from the clouds that mop the spires,

that rises again in the Burren hills across the bay.   

4.

The boats went on the river in May.

Nothing was more beautiful than the wooden thud

of the oars, than the glare into the eyes,

the voices over the water, that slow slow progress

and the gurgling beneath the boat.

And sometimes into the reeds,

where sunlight fell as though a Japanese screen,

its spectrum on the water disturbed

by a thousand dark lines like flamingoes' legs.

That first year my eyes were studded with splinters

 of sunlight, my ears flooded with the ripples' laughter.

  

5.

It was cosy in the Cellar:

the fire, the bodies, the sunshine that we snared

in our pints of lager,

Gerry Mulholland licking out tunes on the piano,

the whiff of Balkan Sobranie.

All day long heads were coming round the door,

hippies with jester-clothed kids,

long-haired musicians with slaked tongues,

mothers battering through with buggies and shopping.

Sometimes Andy, shambling behind the bar,

undoubled long enough to vent a curse-like greeting,

if he saw you, if he remembered you, if he had no choice.

Then closing time: the wind invited in the opened door

and that god-awful glass scraping down the window-pane.

6.

In Winter the rain made sizzling sounds on Shop Street,

rivulets of shop-lighting rushed along the gutters

with yachting cartons that collected in the grates;

slate-coloured people ran doorway to doorway and

bus queues stood limp and dripping like clothes on a line.

Each footfall splashed a halo of water, soaking shoes;

collars were pinned closed with fingers;

but I remember  that the rain made cables of your hair

and they ran currents down your back.

7.

Out Newcastle Road, down Saint Mary's,

past the Claddagh Palace, the Cottage, the Warwick;

and Salthill still asleep with that blank look

on its doors as though drink had not yet been discovered.

Then down onto the strand where the swish of the sea

filled our ears like shells, where we wrote our names,

where the sun found us and shaded in

that group of shadows it never found again.

8.

There was a house on Nun's Island we fancied

where the water ran almost to the door.

Sometimes we would walk around that way

just to see it, just to say our house is looking well.

I never mention it to anyone;

I’ve passed it and passed without looking;

that moment invisible to everyone but us.

And I don’t see you. I wonder how you are. 

\

The poem in Sunfire had a stanza edited out that I quite like, it was this:

Do you remember, Martin, that Sunday in May,

you and I were on the river about twelve,

a beautiful Summer morning

and we heard the music of flageolets?

So we stopped and looked, but there was no one.

Fifty yards away the Menlo road ran behind a grassy bank

and a low stone wall. The music kept rising

but there was only ourselves on the water.

A band was playing marches right beside us;

the river was still, there was a rock near the boat

with a smooth round back, 

And then above the wall a child's head appeared,

then two, then four, and maybe fifty more,

only to disappear as soon, dragging their tail of music

behind them.