The Four Strings On Her Violin.

A tunnel, in which she flitted like a bat with no more than a candle

and a breath of wind coming from somewhere further along,

where heart will explore in search of.............................................

of darkness; with limited life; search until pointlessness.

Second: a meteorites tail blazed across her face, made her magnificent.

All the faces in the auditorium were bulbs, all switched on, all magnificent;

and some cried, and the tears were seeds of her light.

Third, sandy beach: contrary, mix of gleam and dull gray; saw edge,

bilingual, grit between the strings, speckled, pocked. And its sharp edge

of sunlit sea.

Fourth, the arc of a day. From cumulus clouds down to the domes

and spires of the city, she flew time measured in the passing of the sun:

the sharpening and blunting of light. Clouds here and there interspersed

with the blueness of infinity, and day, the unit of our lives, lived in the

sound she was creating right there, in front of us.

In the Lagoon

Sun shining half-heartedly backwards into a sulky sky;

you may come upon me, lost in my beard,

drifting oarless in the lagoon, surrounded by trees

drooping listlessly into the water.

There may be a herring gull perched on my head

scanning the shore with avaricious intent

and perhaps a verse of poetry written to my memory,

in chalk, on the side of the boat:

‘He was a poet of meagre talent,

verbiage yes, rhyme he hadn’t.

Could pick an image, lacked rhythm;

just didn’t have it in ‘im.’

The Moon is a Blood Orange

The moon is a blood orange:

half devoured, rotting,

lolling just above the town.

A shade of Autumn ripeness,

of succulence

as Caravaggio might picture it.

Like a blown rose’s tarnished beauty,

like young love, its transience 
prompts a blissful melancholia.

Silver Birches

Today I came on a stand of birches

dazzling in late evening sunlight.

A tableau of, maybe, a dozen nudes;

splendid, shameless.

Torsos of Elginesque splendour,

arms twining upward in Grecian gracefulness;

statuesque beauties

nonchalant in Olympian lasciviousness.

Re-election in A Time of Death

A privilege of money: access,
access to everything.

To presidency?

Of course.

At what cost?

Cost?

A privilege of money:

the meaninglessness of this question.

Night Light

Night Light

Aerial photographs: night-light of the human sprawl,

cities’ cancerous creep.

Our web, spun across the globe,

corralling wildernesses, removing their essence;

grotesque with carcasses rotting in its threads

and its promise of a planet empty of all but us.

Blogging poetry in a time of Covid

I couldn’t finish my coffee without dealing with the houseflies circulating above the table. I just didn’t want them there. I got out a towel and starting at one end of the room and continuing to the open french doors on the opposite wall, I did a reasonable impression of a helicopter flying out of control with the kitchen towel. The plan seemed good, they were scattering, and I reckoned most of them would flee to the grander world outside. I closed the doors, returned to my coffee, and practically all of them returned to the place above my head.

That, of course, was a declaration of war. I got out the hoover, put on the small nozzle attachment and went after them with Miele know-how. They scattered in every direction, but not one disappeared into the hose, and so I’ve retreated into another room and am distracting my anger with this piece of prose.

Of course, none of this would be an issue if I wasn’t retired. For not quite a year now I have been an altered character; my role on this earth changed dramatically: I have become an almost full-time blogger poet. If I am not writing, I am considering what I might write about; I look at my surroundings and life as a reservoir for topics. I go searching for ideas like someone who was lost their keys in a meadow; I construct and abandon lines continually; re-envisage, re-edit, reword; sometimes resurrect some old poems, repackage, rework and on it goes. With all that time, I’m posting at least every second day (and that’s a rate I’d have advised against, but now writing is the wind in my sails, and I’m keeping them full).

So I sit in this room with all its windows, looking at a sizable swathe of County Donegal and beyond. It suits me very well, this life away from the demands of others, many of which didn’t sit very well with me. Alone with my thoughts congealing on the screen, particularly now, with the pandemic raging like an invisible storm. The blog prompts me to consider my experiences in a deeper way, particularly nature which now fills my view. A consideration of my recent poems shows the extent to which nature has filled my recent life, indeed, at times almost to the point of being overgrown.

Chunks of time spent in my own company, even without the restrictions due to covid, are, of course, necessary for  this writing. That’s the way it must be for poetry, a shortage of direct acclaim that explains why many poets crave live performance. I mention it because, in the grand spaces of time I now have, I would welcome feedback, comments and opinions; I would like other people's reactions to what I've written or how others might have reacted to the same sights and happenings. For me by the window, your comments might be a source of ideas and encouragement, an education in alternative views i.e. a widening of my perspective, and of course company.

The Old Man's Song

The old man loves to sing, but has a cracked voice;

when he sings he cracks the song;

a song not written for old men.

And the composer may, indeed, take umbrage, as singer,

word after word, loses footing on crumbling notes.

But the old man, singing his song,

takes his listeners along a less frequented path; he’s singing

defunct dreams, wispy happinesses, worries and triumphs.

Fissures open between the words, and there, sure enough,

is the other song: the song of life passing.

Finest Beauty

Sunray venus, angel wings, coquina;

conch, whelk, cockle, auger. Fine porcelain

finishes, classical symmetries, delicate markings,

exquisite colourings; nature’s artwork

abandoned, worthless litter, on the seashore.

But the greatest treasure is nowhere to be seen.

The finest human beauty is not the face;

and, as the oyster is no competition for most beautiful shell

though inside may be a pearl,

so too the human heart is hidden from the eye.

A Beautiful Place

A remote corner of a field, away from the traffic of feet

or wheels; where blackthorn, elder and briar have twisted

in old age into a tunnel sheltering a stand of primroses in

March, bluebells in May, foxgloves in July. A spring, an

unplumbable brown eye gazing out of the earth, a stream

taking its clear water to the fields.

A place where beauty does not demand awe nor wrench the

soul from your body, but finds its place within your soul.

A place you remember though have never been; that will

return to you at unexpected moments like memories of home.

The Sadness to September

The leaves growing old, drying like skin;

apples on the crab-tree red as tomatoes;

along the hillside, swathes of bronzed bracken;

a plait of smoke rising from a neighbour’s chimney.

The year on the turn: two days ago, swallows on wires,

on their starting blocks; they’re gone now.

There’s a sadness to September: a cool edge to its heat,

an extra length to its shadows, a ripeness

that is the beginning of the year’s rotting.

The Old Men in the Day-Room

A picture of institutionalized men from about 1970. A nineteenth century room, dark but for a smallish window that allowed afternoon sunlight; bare, bleak and empty for the most part. Dickensian. 

The Old Men in the Day-Room

A rectangular pool of sunlight mid-room;

shadow-clad men on wooden benches around the walls,

features lost in the dark recesses of their faces,

bodies rolled, slumped in sack-black coats;

fingers splayed skeletal on the crooks of walking sticks,

breathing like tide gurgling at the backs of sea-caves

eyes peering from below the surfaces of shallow pools.

Those were the men of the workhouse

in the mid-afternoon gloaming of their day-room,

in the late evening of their lives.

Silence between them, between them and us;

sitting there, boulders in the passing world,

their ears no longer tuned to the pitch of life.

Love Mode

‘Let me be your retinal deluxe’,

sweet-talking;

‘your cochlear delight’,

pushing it;

‘your gustatory bomb’,

‘tactile surprise’.

Words, soap bubbles popping;

she wasn’t wearing it.

I removed my shades,

the room was far too dark.

Díseart Cemetery, Co Donegal

Considered to be Christian since the 6th century, but evidence of  Neolithic burial. Díseart is spare and magical. Religions pass into each other, rituals too. Díseart, among many sites in Ireland, is an example of this.

Silence, a bell without a clapper,

calling to prayer;

you must cross the bridge

to reach a state of grace.

Through the long grass to the well,

water from earth;

blood-life;

cleanse your soul.

Three cairns heaped on corpses

persuade souls to escape;

pass under the stone arch,

be free in eternity.

Rain

Besieged by rain, water;

r for flow

n for harangue:

lakes filling like cows’ bellies;

puddles through the fields

upending the earth;

potholes brimming buckets;

leaves full as spoons,

full of sky;

the whole writhing countryside in my window;

its harangue,

like a world full of religious zealots.

On the Roadside beneath the Mountains

On the roadside beneath the mountains,

a stagnant pool in a ditch, starry green

with algal profusion, dark as profound

thoughts, almost unseen in its humility,

was a Lilliputian’s Loch Lomond or

Loch Ness with unimaginable life-forms;

it stole the prize for the day’s most beautiful,

like a sliver stolen from Monet’s garden.

Pictures of You

Rain, gentle against the window, brought your face to me,

not conversing but going about your myriad chores.

Incomplete pictures: pins in your mouth as you adjust a hem,

hands flicking the needles in the interminable click and flow

of knitting or flour-covered as you lift them from the baking bowl;

you're waist deep in a marmalade-making cloud of steam or beyond all

communication with face down to the light of your sewing machine.

On rainy days, captive in the kitchen and wanting to talk, I sat there

bored. The dim light, condensation on the walls, the hum or click

of the never ending rituals of the kitchen were oppressive, and still,

as the rain’s million little thuds recall, we were close and happy

in each other’s company; the tasks were tasks of love, and those

pictures are my Louvre.

Slaughter House

White filled socket, an eye twisted, with its contorted,

straining body, away from that room. At the end of a rope

taut to the straightness of cane, haunches working, legs

thrashing, sliding in shit; and men flat out dragging,

pushing the heifer towards the slaughter-house doorway.

Roaring beast, terrified as humans are; same recognition,

same fight, same blood gut muscle response, same horror;

and men, angular to their brutal task, dragging, pushing,

hauling to death chambers. At the end of a rope taut to the

straightness of cane, a tongue extending grossly from a mouth.

Into Your Office

Long after you had died,

I opened your leather brief case

to find the smells of your office:

pipe smoke, cigarette smoke, pencil parings,

paper, manila envelopes still inside.

Suddenly, vividly, I was eight or nine,

asking if I can come in,

sit quietly in the heater’s heat,

in the pipe smoke,

in the cosiness beside your table.

‘If you promise to be quiet.’

‘I won’t say a word. I’ll be very quiet.’

And I’d sit on the stool

in the heater’s heat and the pipe smoke

and the cigarette smoke,

beneath the bare tungsten bulb

and it’s smell of burning dust,

under the pine-wood ceiling,

cosy beside your table,

beside you, happy.

Until, of course, I couldn’t keep it going,

had to talk, and shift,

pare the pencils.

That was that,

probably no more than minutes later,

I was ejected.

And then, suddenly,

all those years after your death,

like a genie from your brief case:

your office,

you, my love for you;

and the incursion of those smells into my adulthood,

my home in Dublin;

the shock of something real not illusory

as though your memory was taking form.

Rowing boats across the sky

Voices rippled with laughter;

flashes of bottle-green lightening;

tall as terns on stilts.

Move to your highest,

find a place near the sun;

cast out your coloured net.

Among muses quiet by the ocean,

clink your happiness light as snow,

inhale the flying wings.

Gleaming White

The wind was blowing through the trees;

all was movement; each leaf carried a reservoir,

a film of sun-laden rainwater.

The houses gleamed white on their southern sides,

northern and eastern walls were dark in shadow; through all,

the windows maintained their dead-eyed stare on all that passed.

And you, sitting in that hard light, thinking, perhaps, of love,

watching the bleached days pass, feeling the heat on your skin,

were turning to concrete without ever quite realising it.

Waiting

i.

Each day you come to my house,

without announcing yourself.

You do not enter nor speak,

but I know; I hear your breathing.

ii.

If you would speak,

I would gather your words

like the rarest shells on the beach.

iii.

Tomorrow and tomorrow,

I will still be waiting,

and if you don’t speak

I will wait till all the tomorrows are gone.

That Madness For Power

Isn’t it extraordinary, that madness for power, even

among the elderly; to be prestigious, exalted even

when their bones are creaking out some sos, even

though beneath their shining flags and emblems

are the same squalid cabals, conspiring in the early

hours with barely concealed hatred; no pettiness too

petty, no injury too injurious, except that they might

be seen for what they are.

To be among the trappings of high position,

the gaudily decorated, plaster- thin constructions,

spiders still spinning in the cavities behind them.

To have, on some corridor wall, a portrait painted in a

fashion that has not aged well, and youngsters filing past

wondering ‘How much longer to lunchtime?’

Tragedy

The church crammed to the doors;

tragedy of a young man’s death;

wife bereft, children barely understanding;

a mass mourning.

Behind the rows of congregation, a woman

pushes through to a position

from which she can see the coffin clearly.

Crying inconsolably

in that part of the church where the eyes are dry;

later she will carry her grief home

as though it was their child,

spend the coming nights alone in its company.

Above The Tide

The lonesome cries of waders and sea-birds

from unknowable perches

in the dense darkness of night

come inland.

Souls, wanderers of the wilderness

between heaven and earth,

calling from their purgatories of not knowing

above the tide’s mournful washing.

And the beacon lights

with the eyes of starved animals,

flashing out from between jagged rocks

on the far coastline

where shipwrecks have happened

or they wait for them to happen,

whipping darkness into mesmerising circles

over the tide’s mournful washing.

Goodnight

I’ll lock the back door;

will you check the window is closed

in the sitting room?

The sky’s clear tonight;

we might be in for a good day tomorrow.

The weather forecast’s pretty good;

should get the lawn cut.

Goodnight.

Goodnight. 

Sleep well.

Who the fuck’s texting you at this hour?