Lake

All is quiet in the olive green larders; the

enamel beaded, unlidded eye surveys

realms of dim sunlight between the long

spindling stems trailing forever downward

into the deepening murk, the pitch darkness

where vague stirrings, unexpected presences

and frequent disappearances deter.

Above, languorous leaves burgle the light;

all day, all night, shiver wave, occasionally

convulse; calm or turbulent, the leaves and

surface above them eternally synchronous.

All is evening quiet through the patchwork

of fields on the drumlins beneath a different sky;

the humming of farm machinery has ceased,

the farmers are deep in their dinner conversations

beside kitchen windows full of lush grass, moving

clouds and hustled along sunshine. How delicate

must be their mark in this, the world around

the other world, the world of discrepant life. 

A Poor Man Offers Unlimited Treasure

It’s a paltry thing that sparkler on your finger,

when, on a sunny morning, I will present you

with ten miles of dazzling lake almost to the door.

Or an emerald, when my house is sitting at the bottom

of blazing green fields, and the same all the way to the sea,

two counties to the west, three to the east.

Or amethyst, when the boreen is crowded with foxgloves

ringing their bells for the attention of bumble bees who’ll be losing

their heads in nectar from May to September.

Or rubies, when the hedges are brimming with myriad constellations

of fuchsia; even the ash, high on the hill, outshines them with its harvest

of late evening sun gathered in sprays of blood-bright berries.

And that gold bangle on your wrist, how dull it will look beside the daffodils

under the beech trees not a hundred yards from my house, or June’s irises

with blooms like laughter among the flaggers opposite Scanlon’s old shed.

Over by the privet hedge, you’ll have all the pearls you could wish for

come the end of January; snowdrops, promising the year’s beauty,

will be yours every January, if only you’d come live in my cottage.

Pike

In mid-nave, pike levitates;

half way between floor and roof,

still as a crucifix,

tarnished mail dim in the Gothic gloom.

Spear-head forward,

cast to its medium,

pike eschews all knowledge

but its knowledge of being.

Blue Sky

where we empty the clocks,

drain time

and fly,

wheel happiness, glide happiness,

spool the sun,

skim fingertips

along the ocean’s rim,

gather ice sopranos

from the stratosphere’s crystal beds,

dissolve into pure air,

harvest the ecstasy seeds that dream there,

soar in the winds’ songs,

surf sunlight’s beams,

learn the treasure of empty pockets.

Our Spoon

Child’s hand extending for food,

his skeleton entirely visible;

inside, a heart flat-out pumping

like a fish gasping in a net;

how desperate his heart?

Camera sees, thinks heart and clicks,

swallows child whole,

then asks for more.

Mirror Image

She looks at herself,

and, rather than passing on,

remains in front of herself,

returning her stare

returning her stare.

Time has scribbled on her face,

the script has halted her;

intrigued, horrified,

she has stopped to read

she has stopped to read.

Time’s graffitti has betrayed her,

she sees her story on her face:

time vandalised her beauty;

she turns away

she turns away.

Corporate World

The dull paths of our lives:

sat at desks, endlessly clocking up

corporation minutes, whose sponge-like

insatiability drives us through our days;

propellers rotating at the speed of

managers’ whims; incentivized with

carrots of preferment, in fact, further

enmeshment in their cogs, deeper commitment

to the captivity; to become a presenter

of the starving statistics, those graphs

with ever-widening jaws hidden behind

the oh so convincing lines.

And you,

with family, far away, withering in the drought

of your time, the young imaginations fired

by the lightning flashes of the natural world

doused by your distracted interest,

your removal from their wonders.

And the inevitable hook from your carriage

onto your world of office, desk and air-conditioned

ambitions, your soft-padded shuffle through life,

your highs and lows doled out by those

who have experienced the thrills of more spacious offices.

Baking

The flour falling from her fingers

‒ into the child’s memory ‒

and her fingers coated in flour.

Reacting with her skin,

tomorrow her hands will be red,

raw and sore;

and still there will be fresh bread for the table.

Nature Done and Dusted

Lough Eske, carelessly thrown beneath the Bluestacks;

if my mother was here, she’d say ‘pick that up, fold it and put it away.’

And how do you think Lough Eske would look folded into a rectangle?

‘Tidy’ she’d say (I’m doing her a disservice mentioning her here),

but tidier still behind an interpretive centre with paved walkways,

playground, benches, coffee shop, garbage bins, signposts,

parking spaces for buses, tourism statistics on an ever-ascending curve,

local politicians queuing for photographs beside  ‘Lough Eske Recreation Park’.

International Conferences, brochures, signposts to the future:

Namibian Dune-Surfing, Amazonian Canopy Adventures;

the whole wild world folded into neat tidy rectangles;

explorers lined up three-deep at the ticket kiosk.

The Colour of Her Eyes

Low tide,

a vast expanse of strand

extends to the distant shallow sea;

its shade barely more than the memory of blue

and one bright line.

Two people walking there

remind me of a past happiness;

too far out to leave more than an impression,

too long ago to be sure of what I’m remembering;

but those eyes, I’m definite about the eyes.

Watching snow fall

into an already snow-covered garden

is so similar to the experience of sadness

that it is utterly compulsive

Void

less than

desert or wilderness;

less

than nothingness

is the void from loss.

Something scooped out,

removed,

a diminution.

Loss

irrecoverable, lamented.

Playing Granny’s Old Piano.

When I was young I used to play that jangly old piano;

the notes went round and round the insides of the instrument

like I was playing in an empty hall or in a canyon.

In those days I had some ancestors still living,

who, multi-coloured birds all, perched high up on the escarpments,

listened, and encouraged with calls that blossomed in my ears,

blossom still; rare blooms, I didn’t know that then.

I will never out-perform the Michael that played for them.

I listen to this album to hear those notes; the old hall, jangly piano;

high up, wisps of old birds still cling to protruding ledges;

higher again, the sky squats, tone-deaf and waiting.

Inside the dark places

Inside the dark places

between the branches of trees,

grass plants in the meadows,

crevices in walls,

beneath floorboards,

under the stones on the beach,

grains in soil.

What strange formations,

unlikely growths, exotic creatures,

unexpected confluences;

flashes of light, strange stirrings,

fearsome predators,

unexpected symbioses:

the world is full of unexplored wildernesses.

So I sit here

So I sit here in Arrivals

waiting for ideas:

hedged-in country roads, taking the poetic route,

meandering around drumlins, ponds, farms;

scarves of air-borne sand,

whole beaches streaming like signals pouring

out of short-wave radios;

arrogant jet trails whose firm purpose and direction

dissipate in lamentable short-term memory;

desert highways

where wisps of Merle Haggard

catch like wool on the roadside scrub;

ideas borne on words, carriages on wheels;

so I sit here in Ideas

waiting for arrivals.

A Young Woman's Death

Her young body and beautiful face

laid out;

and the file of mourners grabbing

for metal girders inside their heads

to steady their consternation.

None of us there had ever seen young beauty

dead;

as the people passed,

their eyes flicked like window-blinds,

and all were suddenly disabled.

I searched for words:

could I say how beautiful she looked

or what a waste of a life?

The silence of her closed eyelids filled the room;

there was no space for words.

Cloud, caress her face

with droplets light as pollen,

salve her eyes,

lighten the blue you find there;

bedew her cheeks

like time blown back from childhood;

whisper into her ear

that the world has, indeed, grown more gentle.

Lough Graney

Tonight, this surface gifts the heavens to us;

isn’t it exquisite?

I’ve always wondered how you could leave this place;

what finer existence could inveigle you?

Between lake and sky, soul stepping clear of body

is instantly ecstatic.

Did you imagine that there was somewhere the wings

of your heart would find greater span?

Here the soft insistence of eternity enters your soul;

time bows to beauty.

What the Nighttime Brought

This countryside, known for its emptiness, was, after the hours of daylight,

filled with a darkness so impenetrable we viewed it with fear and wonder.

And when the wind streamed into the night, it brought with it all manner

of creatures, monsters, ghosts who guffawed, screeched, clanked and roared

in the hedgerows, the trees, took possession of outhouses, clambered over roofs,

slithered under doors, howled down chimneys, loitered along the roadsides.

Few had the gift of seeing into that dark, but old James Guihan saw. In our kitchen,

he told us of the mad woman who walked the cur wolf on the end of a rope,

came into our garden on September nights to steal our apples, and the Pooka’s

red eyes that sometimes flashed in at a window, so children must stay in their beds

because those eyes lured boys and girls to the undergound homes of fairies from which

they never returned. He told us about the banshee whose wails presaged a death,

and the lowlifes whose trade entailed their poking in the hedges for strays and runaways,

and his warning that only our night prayers kept us safe in our beds.

Still, night after night, we braved the bedroom window, the thinness of its glass,

to gaze into the pitch-blackness that chased our days away. We looked out

to where the familiar fields had been, trees we climbed, the sheds that were our forts,

saw nothing, and were terrorized by the uncertainty of the world we thought was ours.

The Walls Below The Mountain

The walls of old fields are everywhere,

walls that counted bones.

Feet dug into wet earth, knees bent, backs arched,

boulders raised to waist height;

carried to walls, walls growing, knees bent,

knees straightened, arms bent, arms straightened;

feet dug into wet earth, knees bent, backs arched,

boulders raised to waist height;

carried to walls, walls growing, knees bent,

knees straightened, arms bent, arms straightened.

Beneath the cling film of skin,

the clank-free movement of levers

and hillside cleared by slow degree;

in this way they daily hauled the sun from east to west.

In Favour of more Sympathetic Planting.

Sunlight has trespassed into the plantation murk,

and, snuggled on a pool of moss,

has made a blazing emerald on the forest floor.

While all around, the abandoned paraphernalia of trees,

their dark axles’ wooden spokes remain defunct machinery

in ocean-depth gloom, seized in viscid silence,

the light argues for life in the depths of planted forests;

it asks for space, and reminds with vivid beauty

that dusk belongs only to nightfall.

Old Skin

I want to write

but the brain is arid.

I climbed up to the attic

where life’s projects are

in search of a hook,

found dull old skin.

So I’m back at the window

looking out at greenery,

listening to the never-ending

downpour of full-stops.

A Death

Your last corridor was of snow-white Carrara;

by the time you were walking it, our goodbyes

had already echoed themselves into silence.

Your feet on that floor would have lisped

apprehensively; you would have had questions,

but there was no one to answer.

Outside your death, we listened; heard you struggling

along that Via Dolorosa; saw the body, not the spirit

slipping away, and cursed the cold marble of dying.

Survision #7 Live and James Tate Prize 2020 Details

SurVision #7 is now live and free. 37 poets, from Ireland, England, Scotland, USA, Australia, Canada, Italy, Ukraine, Chile, and Bermuda, some in translation. e.g. Giorgio de Chirico, Humberto Díaz-Casanueva and Alexander Korotko. http://www.survisionmagazine.com/currentissue.htm

SurVision Books has also announced James Tate Prize 2020 for a poetry chapbook. 1st Prize: €120; 2nd Prize: €70. Both winners of the James Tate Prize will win a chapbook publication and 10 complimentary copies. The competition is open to new, emerging and established poets from any country writing in English. All the poems must be the original work of the entrant. Manuscripts can be between 24 and 30 pages of poetry in length, in the English language. This does not include the table of contents, title page and the list of acknowledgements, if any.

Prose poems and translations of poetry are also eligible; all translations must be accompanied by the same work in the original language. Entrants may enter more than one manuscript.

There is an entrance fee of €15 for each manuscript.

Deadline: 31th of August 2020, midnight.

More info and the names of the past winners here: http://survisionmagazine.com/jamestateprize.htm

All is changed, Donald Trump has written a sonnet

All is changed, changed utterly,

Donald Trump has written a sonnet

and has sent it to President Putin for editing.

It is believed that he and Putin will discuss Akhmatova

and Pasternak in a phonecall this Wednesday

while also spending time discussing the script;

plans are believed to be in place for a series of readings

involving Presidents Xi, Erdogan and Jair Bolsonaro.

‘My sonnet is very beautiful’, the president remarked;

‘in fact, maybe the most beautiful, including Shakespeare,

I’m not sure.’ And how impressed is the president

with Maya Angelou, asked a CNN reporter:

‘Not muchly’, came the terse reply.

Cloud Made off with Chunk of Landscape

Cloud, white as toothpaste, stole mountain,

now but finger-tipped with fir trees

and shadowy lovers’ stacked backs

beyond the water-fresh greenness

of my garden’s greenest greenery.

Cloud japanesed mountains

made colossal with minute droplets

cold and softly breathed onto my face;

distance beyond distances, carried me far

through flatlands beyond, and cities beyond

till under sail travelled over, past all knowing.

Married Couple in the Pandemic

I noticed our fingers: grown old,

bones and knuckles;

my face sort of similar, hers is fuller.

We got so used to our own ways,

hard to live to someone else’s tune;

old habits are comfortable.

The house is empty, there’s no company;

I make noise to hear noise,

talk out loud a lot.

Her fingers on the perspex, that small distance

brought the whole distance home;

I would have liked to touch them.

Speaking into Darkness

I am standing above a sheer fall.

All beneath me is darkness,

but I am told there are millions

living in the darkness;

what I am not seeing is vast,

unimaginably so.

I am told that I should speak into

this void,

that millions will hear my voice,

that my words will mean something

to someone, maybe to many,

that I should speak.

I look into the nothingness.

“Hello, my little angel”, I say doubtfully,

surprising myself with that choice of words.

I suppose I imagine children down there;

one child cowering almost into invisibility

beneath that immensity of darkness.

Seeing

Walking along a country road,

I spot, ahead of me, a bird with brilliant plumage;

closer: a foxglove broken double.

I see ash trunks ‒ giraffes’ necks,

a stand of ferns ‒ green flamingos standing one-legged,

a million yellow butterflies hovering above a meadow ‒ buttercups.

Then, straining to see something extraordinary

in everything; I quite suddenly see

everything is extraordinary.

Lone Ranger Trump

Maybe Trump has been wearing a mask all the time. Maybe that's why he couldn't see the havoc his approach was wreaking. Didn't the Lone Ranger wear his mask over his eyes?

Dead Branches

Defunct ambitions,

abandoned projects;

it is only

people lost along the way

that I regret.

Dead branches still attached;

dry twigs.

Once part of my growth and colour;

vestigial now,

reminders just.