Poem For Now

Then you know its broken

timbers screaming

cracked jagged angular

ribs and canes

nerve endings

iron cacophonies

steel reverb

unreachable lamentations

down in the dark

unfathomable geometries

of chaos

Then you know its broken

Lake

Walk the jetty onto the lake;

lie there.

Eternity. One June afternoon

in that place of peace;

no one to disturb you

but yourself

rushing over the water

to be with you,

to settle,

to find your happiness.

The Saintliness of Feichín

A sea mist clinging to the rocks, dunes, stone huts;

vague dawn light; occasional screechings of sea-birds;

insidious dampness slithering between the stones,

under doors, between blankets and bodies; bodies huddling

closer; breaths’ clouds condensing on faces hard by.

Suddenly the shriek of a man; again and again,

each on the lightning slap of a tong on flesh,

so all, now awake in their huts, are bolt upright, listening,

and suffering the strokes of flails embedded with thorns;

marvelling at the saintliness of Feichín.

After a long agonising period the lashings cease;

the waves are again lapping on the shore, the gulls are screaming;

from Feichín’s hut come quiet moans and latin supplications:

“in manus Tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum”; it is Good Friday,

in mid-afternoon the skies will darken and the temple veil shall be rent.

At mid-morning, he emerges; shock-eyed scare-crow

with shroud covering his body, a scream of blood;

the brothers kneel; thanks is given to God; Feichín is safe.

Already wild flowers are colouring the fields, soon the swallows will come

and bees will make honey to their glorious chant.

How Feichín Got His Other Name, Moéca (Backslider).

Feichín stumped out of Clonmacnoise fuming,

the argument a burst blister in his head.

That cur, Ciarán, had, for the last time, demeaned him;

may his feet blacken with gangrene, may a nest of ulcers

prevent wine ever passing his lips again.

All day Feichín had tended the oxen while it poured and hailed

and him without the merest fortification of a drink.

He made ribbons of his arms climbing through a hedge of briars,

stumbled up to his neck into a stand of nettles, fell through the bridge

over Abha Bán where the rotten timbers ripped open his leg.

Lumbering on now, he growled at shadows, sent the stones of the road

into the bushes with delicious kicks he imagined on Ciarán’s arse;

but suddenly, breaking his reverie, the detested voice was ordering him back.

He grumbled, fought with it, cursed God, but having no choice,

walked backward so as not to look that accursed saint in the face.

Chagall’s Lovers

Chagall’s lovers curl around each other.

This is the way they talk to each other,

smile to each other,

insinuate their feelings to each other.

It is the way two bodies become one,

yin and yang;

it is their completeness in each other:

Chagall’s lovers’ curl.

Smallest Coin of Life

Albinoni’s adagio is playing. Behind closed eyes,

I fly this basket of bones and am free as sunlight;

not pacing back and forth the confines of a skull

fed by vessels circulating blood.

I am free.

This is the least freedom I have claim to;

the least freedom all have claim to; the smallest coin of life.

Once on Ardmore Beach

I’ve been walking the moon’s bright path over the sea

from Ardmore beach for too many years.

My notion of the magical: waves coming ashore

like the game we played as children,

a hand slapping down as the one beneath slips away.

The sound of the waves rounding a headland into the distance;

another time, another world.

The beacons on the far shore flashing, as remote, as poignant

as the piping of waders lost in the pockets of darkness.

Our last night.

And a glittering moonlit highway through it all,

in dreams we’d walk it, looking the moon full in the face, laughing,

magnified, colossal, in all that wilderness.

Runaway

Home, a bar code on your cells;

it won’t be left behind;

the more you try, the wider the crater grows.

I hear it in the shrillness of your retorts,

its lightning is in your eyes;

you forever feeding the vulture on your shoulder;

your frustration a lasso in the hands of home.

The swirl of home is in the pockets of your mind;

you live in its flux.

You choose to run with it or against it,

flow or trip.

Gagged voices don’t make sweeter listening.

Feichín's Bliss on Omey

In the play of sunlight and ripples,

that dance of the lake’s finery,

Feichín sees the splendour of Heaven

and sends his thanks to the Lord.

In the fish, silver treasure of the ocean,

the plenty that graces his table,

Feichín enjoys their steam-play with his nose

and sends his thanks to the Lord.

In the carpet of brightly coloured flowers,

bee-droning machair near the shore,

Feichín antcipates the sweetness of honey

and sends his thanks to the Lord.

In the uninhibited song of the lark,

sky-high notes from among the dunes,

Feichín feels the joy of God’s presence

and sends his thanks to the Lord.

Old Lovers

Mountain and cloud are coupling again;

mountain haunches pressed into cloud stomach;

cloud taking mountain’s contours, moving slowly,

driving slowly all the day.

Old lovers familiar with each others’ bodies;

the touch and feel,

the graceful flow of their love-making

blurring into ecstasy.

‘Make America Great Again’: gateway for a fascist

Normally, one wouldn't presume to comment on the politics of another country, in the case of Trump however, we're all impacted. Whether that be through his total disinterest in preserving the global environment, his unconcealed racism, his misinformation in relation to the pandemic, his disrespect for women, his disfiguring approach to diplomacy worldwide, the ugliness of attitudes that will unfortunately be gleaned by some of  our children. 

His lack of sympathy/empathy for swathes of his fellow citizens, something he shamefully doesn't even try to conceal is disgraceful (here, I can't help but remember how he playfully lobbed paper towels in hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico). Some people, including himself, believe that he should not be shown any disrespect as it disrespects the institution of President; that tendency however started when he himself showed scanty regard for the position he holds.

‘Make America Great Again’: gateway for a fascist

There is a supreme but beleaguered nation

Its greatness has been neglected

There is a solution

There is one who knows that solution

There is only his way

The nation needs the one.

In Our Love-Making

Beyond the clanging

world,

inhabiting our own

drumbeat,

we are braided

lovers

breathing each other’s

breaths,

pumping each other’s

blood,

stirring each other’s

desires,

safe in the basket of

our arms.

Words Forceps

All their words: Basho, Neruda, Akhmatova, Yeats;

they enter and eddy and brim

and are gone, not completely.

I look down into their boiling;

am stirred and moved and inspired

and faintly lost

for wanting

‒ too much maybe ‒

myself spasmic on the end of those forceps.

Life Like Clouds

Life, like the clouds in a blue sky, changes slowly;

I turn onto my stomach to feel the sun on my back.

Afternoon progresses; the clouds of fortune and

misfortune transmute many times over;

I turn onto my back, onto my side and round again;

the sun comes out and the sun goes in

and all the time, with no more than an occasional, indolent

glance at the sky, shadows are passing, shapeless to me.

Slow as it is, life flashes by,

and all is changed completely before I quite grasp it.

Everlasting Life

One day, walking in the hills, I sense you’re inside me.

I don’t know how much of this can be real:

emotion built from the beauty of a place stirring me

and suddenly being aware of your presence.

I stop a moment; the shock of discovering you with me

pulling me up; I’m unsure, questioning:

in truth we are our parents in our time; if beauty is stirring

the atoms you bequeathed me, would that be a surprise?

Walking on, I am aware of a warmth like love filling me,

and I’m aware of the beauty that is all around, and being part of it.

I laugh out loud, quicken my step and have, in that moment,

comprehended something of everlasting life.

How Little Has Changed

I’m reading poetry from China,

first century BC,

and thinking ‘how little has changed’.

And now I see a video of a white policeman

murdering a black man,

and I’m thinking ‘how little has changed’.

Now I see a man,

white and powerful, using this to gain advantage

and I think ‘how little has changed’.

And I wonder how so little has changed:

that, even now, an autocrat may gain the favour of citizens

while fellow citizens die.