From A Childhood

 

It’s late, the sky’s my screen. Laurence Olivier is fleeing

through a forest, dark fronds clutching, clawing at him;

a gothic tale, full of the drama of black and white.

The forest is vast and he must run blindly through it,

somewhere behind is the story I haven’t seen, and

somewhere ahead is a boundary with a land no one knows.

I am at my window, the land I know is quenched;

above, across the inexplicable expanse of the Heavens, is adventure;

I watch it, take it to my bed, and know tomorrow colour will return.

Happy New Year.

You are

 

Life is a flash,

and loving is its perfect state.

I never looked for sparkle in people,

never quite expected it,

but age has a separate lens,

polished by time,

tempered by experience;

through that,

I see

that you are my bright light.

Being

 It's not quite Christmas but the contentment would be a wish. 

Being.

A sparkling Summer’s afternoon,

not doing, but being.

A solar panel,

bang centre of the back garden,

converting energy to contentment,

while activity is reduced

to fingertips running along the suede

of newly mown grass

and time is suspended,

dissipated into the blue yonder.

Windy Day

 

On a windy day, I, cloud,

trees and grass are one and

heaven, earth and water;

blue of sky trimmed with

cloud white and drizzle grey,

sway of branches, swell of

waves and dresses, flight

of hats and litter down street,

astray, voices from mouths,

birds careering into beyond

and leaves’ mouths lisping

off tune in the brightly breeze

lifting, hues patched and

colours drifting; eyes’ lights

and hearts billowing upward.

Migrants arriving at European borders

How wonderful the European stars must look

strung along the wire strands of border fences

or those butterflies, the endless coils of razor wire.

One might, upon seeing them, be reminded of staves

of music: Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms

or lines of text: Shakespeare, Dante, Cervantes,

or how civilisation was aghast seeing those photographs:

the skeletal faces of the innocent behind Auschwitz fences;

the horror that such could happen in our own time.

A Hand in Water

 

A Hand in Water

for my father

Trailing a hand from a boat:

that morning sluicing through my fingers

was my most perfect with you.

More than fifty years on,

the memory is in my fingers

as I watch a Hollywood hand trawl water.

Fishing for sunlight on a lake is a carefree pursuit,

not so fishing for your smile in memories;

but that flow through my fingers

is the feeling of complete happiness,

though the smile I’ve given you

may well be my own production.

When

When I brush my hair,

it sweeps over your head.

When I button up my coat,

you snuggle inside.

When I exert myself,

you mop your brow.

When I settle myself on the couch,

you tuck your legs up.

When I close my eyes,

you daydream.

When you go,

I will be no more.

Leaves in Sunlight

 

Leaves: music

and colour;

in sunlight

they are.

On a warm

afternoon

icicles of air

play them;

turn white

those green flashes;

so eyes hear

the world.

Squalls

 

I keep myself up to date,

not with what you do

but how you are;

I read the squalls

coming in over the ocean.

Like newspaper print,

they drizzle upward,

and, truth to tell, they hanker

after tragedy;

I find them totally compelling.

So, yes, down to the last comma

(they don’t do stops)

and I know that you know this,

I know how it is with you;

no tragedies, but squalls: how apt, yes.

Autumn Aria

 

The tree,

aria

on a pedestal,

coloratura.

Autumn

performance;

the wind carries

fire.

Wonders

 

The wind in the wires

is making choirs

of conversations

that would have passed

unheard.

The child standing

on the tarred road hums

what the wind strums

and beats a stick

on the ground.

The sound he hears

is the music of the spheres

from somewhere above

but a rustling in the hedge

turns his head

and there’s a mystery

in the darkness of leaves.

To The Slaughter House

 This is a re-edited version of a poem I posted some time back. When asked why I wrote/posted this poem, I was a bit stumped. I am not a vegetarian. I used to see this years ago in my childhood; it was ugly, but we took it as normal life. It's not a scene many are likely to see now. So the answer: I think it tugs at a deeply buried conviction that animals have greater awareness and understanding than we have ever given them credit for; and the only logical upshot to that is that our brutal treatment of them needs to end.

To The Slaughter House

White-filled socket, eye twisted; its contorted,

steaming body straining 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, terrified as humans are; that same recognition,

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

and men, angular to their brutal task: dragging, pushing, hauling.

At the end of the rope, its head straining upward; the tongue,

extended from its mouth, tasting the stench of death,

and the horror of its flagging resistance.

Scale

 

It is mid-afternoon in Dublin;

two boys are hammering the shit out of each other;

no one else is around; they don’t know just yet,

but this is the end of their friendship.

Pull out.

At a city crossroads a motorbike slows;

five shots ring out, two pedestrians collapse,

one is dead, one will be maimed;

the motorbike is now two streets away.

Pull out.

All is suddenly people running

through the streets escaping chaos;

most don’t know what happened;

outside a bookshop bodies scattered like litter.

Pull out.

Two nations are flexing toward war;

there’s ongoing military build-up along the border,

incendiary rhetoric,

and fear is churning the insides of both sets of citizens.

Pull Out.

Europe, all of it, in one eyeful;

the sharp curve of the globe;

blue iris earth;

earth a drop of water; beautiful.

Pull out.

‘There may be intelligent life out there,’

one creature said to another,

looking beyond the moons of its planet;

‘but I doubt it.’

Small Wonders

 

Photograph by Paul Caponigro

What skies beneath our feet,

what immensities we trample;

how much gentler our step would be

if we saw the minute wonders of the world.

Water

 

Far down, a glimmer of light;

down inside the earth, a wonder

to our young eyes.

We lowered the bucket

through the ferns and darkness

to collect magic,

and drew it up,

heavy with water

and mystery.

Pristine; icy; we drank

beautiful water,

and believed it to be purity.

Western Landscape

 

The clouds are on the fields;

limestone walls their arms,

and thorns glistening black;

white berries of rain are

dropping from haws; haws

like rubies on slender fingers.

Limestone-locked, sodden

fields in thrall to water:

caged cress-green reveries;

long memories and dumb

to speak, as the sea might,

of sorrows buried in their depths.

 

October Leaves

 

October leaves on the footpath and pond

were galaxies, star-shaped maple;

colours of evening, hearth colours;

of a year whose duties have been seen to;

of hands when the deal is done.

Russet, reds, yellows, browns:

colours of contentment, of retiring.

In November they were rotting, blackening

sodden heaps, turning back to humus,

my October stars. In December they were gone,

but left hand-shaped traces all over the path,

waving back, waving back, those happy souls.

Correction

 

Church, state, company, brother/sisterhood ask for loyalty,

not to what is right but to their advancement.

It is time now for a thousand whistles to blow:

ask not what you can do for your country – ask what you can do

that is right.

Fall

 

In keeping with the principle of relativity,

when the branch gave, she travelled past galaxies,

enchanted by their beauty, gently down,

admiring Autumn’s Doppler Effect on the stars,

the shift from green to reds, browns and yellows.

Near the speed of light, she might have mapped

the universe but for this reverie,

so when she touched down (with a frightening thud),

the research was left undone; subsequently

her attention was diverted into a different field.

Her Hair

 

Her hair

fell, long entwined tresses

down the length of her back,

down past her knees.

Sunlight nested there,

in those long ivy trails;

small birds must surely have flown

garlands about her head?

But today it was patterns

of run-off water on the strand;

the way the past is preserved;

still beautiful, if stone.

 

All of it,

all our care,

all our passion,

will become, soon enough,

just beautiful smoke.

No Name

 

cross the bridge

of your childhood

rolling it up

as you go

keep it

over your shoulder

ask for directions

to the desert

you’ll have arrived

when you are nowhere

unroll the rucksack

set up home

White Page

 

White is infinite:

infinite symmetries,

infinite perfections.

Intimidating therefore:

imperfection on white

is unforgivable.

Nightie Night

 

I turned on my side, shadows moved between the wardrobe

and the ceiling, and over in the corner near the door. I closed

my eyes. Main Street was in the pours, its shops streaming down

the car windows, neon flashes, on and off, our faces dim

as 30watt bulbs, on off, on off, the car a prison of rain drumming

bad temper into our ears, and shapes of people fleeing both sides

of the street, like we too should be getting away, moving somewhere.

I opened my eyes to see Jesus in the wallpaper and closed my eyes

as quickly not to see Him, behind my eyelids a legion of angels

descended in iodine-coloured light from where coal-black clouds

had opened Heaven onto the earth. Open again, the lights of a car

travelled across the room, and left it blacker; where, I wondered,

                     can cars go in the pitch black night?

A World

 

Gods; we make all that is in the world

beautiful when we are lovers.

In our sunlight all that was ordinary

is now spectacular, part of our happiness,

gathered around us, by us, to fulfill our

knowing of each other. All that is mundane,

the daily effects and events shine

with the gleam we see in each other;

all we live within heightened to exhilaration.

Love sees its perfection where it lives,

celebrates its belonging, and is complete.

Surprise, Mam

 

If the stars fell

like snow

so all around

was a glow of lights

streaming

down our eyes,

making a surprise

of happiness,

I’d remember you,

between two lines

of July-dancing

sheets,

pegs in your teeth,

fast clouds in your hair;

ah, to be there

again

making a surprise

of happiness.

Leaving

 

I wonder how it is taking leave of your loved ones that last time,

or  watching the daffodils fade knowing it ito be your last season,

or hearing the words ‘rest now, breathing is too difficult’, knowing

those on the shore are letting the mooring line slip into the water.

Water

 

Water

Water held my face;

the wind tried to steal it.

A fish jumped,

I had a brainwave:

why don’t you and I

make our home in the water?

First Days Away

 

Those first days away from home,

in a city with nowhere to go, knowing no one,

and no one to expect you at any place, any time

created an almost dizzying disconnectedness,

an unsettling emptiness; perhaps it felt like a lobotomy.

Alcohol was an easy decision: a place to hang out,

a reason to be there; alcohol would fill the hours,

dispel the loneliness. The hubbub of a bar was a vision of living;

though one was alone,  a rock in a stream, for a while it felt like living,

and later, when the isolation began to drill your brain,

the alcohol would take you away, tuck you up in oblivion.

Crow Speak

 

A crow, high up on the wires,

a knot of night-time

grumbling this last fifteen minutes;

gabbling inside his feathers

obscenity-filled arguments;

a vituperative stream.

Fagots of words issuing fluently,

from the throat behind his horny beak,

a language long hidden beneath the cloak

of feather and pitch;

a communication with the sky

as present and natural as weather.

Burren

 

Burren

The hard skin, we walked,

to the clouds,

and from the clouds to the sea,

and out to the lighthouse.

A country with no boundaries

between land and water,

nor land and sky,

nor past, nor future.

God lives in a cave,

God lives on the mountain,

God and the devil

living among others of their own kind.

We walked the pavements,

among living shadows;

they held out their hands;

their hands sang.

We saw, in water-filled hollows,

ourselves: air, rock and light,

transient and eternal;

cloudscapes, not people.

Midget Man

 

I give you midget man:

the mite with purpose.

I give you the inexplicable

workings of a miniaturised brain;

the repetitious trawl of a mind

across one, same, vacant square.

I pass onto you the question:

what possible purposes

can a zig-zagging corpuscle of life

have:

the conundrum of protoplasm,

slime, albeit contained,

having somewhere to go?

September Swallows

 

Knots on wires uncurling:

crochets escaping staves,

commas punctuation.

September swallows,

avionics engaged,

suddenly frenzied

as though their true selves,

too long furled,

must hone their aeronautics:

wheel, swoop, sweep;

for tomorrow

they will trace lines of longitude.

Grief

 

Along the edge of your grieving

is the wind’s voice,

that snags and flitters on the sloe;

blooming rags that flicker

through the hollows of your nights,

rummaging through your memories.

And, when the scouring is done,

dawn’s eye, dry as weathered bone,

will come, find you, nail you to its eternity.

 

So narrow in his thinking,

he could never grasp an opposing view.

Always right, looked down on opposition;

was ever a man so disabled?

Ignorance, a black bag over his head;

how vigorously his arrogance grew in darkness.

Lop-sided Song

 

Tipsy,

singing your lop-sided song

with uncertain voice,

as though notes were ice,

while all the time dancing

on unsteady feet.

A song

smothers in technique;

but you found its soul

and set it free;

you’ve never known, but

I loved you most just then.

A New House

 

I moved house recently, this will be my last. Not suggesting that I’m moving on any time soon, but the house itself has strong echoes of the transitory. Its name, Bedeque, refers to a red-bricked street off Belfast’s Crumlin Road which disappeared in the seventies; the stone was taken from Enniskillen’s old railway station.

There was a time, when travelling on holidays, we’d be looking out for the first glimpse of the ocean; daily now, it’s our first view of the outside world as we look out over Rossnowlagh, across Donegal Bay towards St John’s Point, Killybegs and Sliabh League. The view through the dormer window has something of those old seafaring novels, I almost expect to see a galleon moored in the bay, but, actually it’s empty, the trawlers coming and going from Killybegs are hidden by St John’s long finger.

What I do see is the play of sunlight on the water, ever-changing as the cloudscapes are ever-changing in this part of the world. Glittering circles, burnished bronze; brilliant white streaks; silver-grey stripes; colours, that defy nomenclature, existing for seconds only, then passing with a puff of wind.

Some days the mountains are one with the sea, some days with the sky, sometimes all are one, lost in low stratus cloud, as empty a nowhere as anyone has ever seen. But the greatest glories come with the setting sun, spectacular at the end of August; red like the ambient glow on the cinema screens of my childhood, suggesting, as the old films did, mysterious, exotic worlds just beyond those wild impenetrable mountains.

And then, in darkness, the lighthouse and beacon lights across the bay; the house lights, street lights; the transience of our lives so much more appreciable in the miniaturisation of distance, beside the vastness of the ocean, its permanence and its indifference; there is a beautiful melancholia attached to it all. Which brings me back to the transitory: Bedeque Street in Belfast, Enniskillen Railway station; maybe I’m getting carried away?

It’s all relative of course, glad I’m not a mayfly.

Megaliths

 

In the pitch blackness of stone, keeping their minds cool,

we store their thoughts while the millennia skid by.

Boulders, like badges pinned to the landscape;

spirals chased into them, thumbprints for return journeys.

In their heft, we preserve their spirits, unmovable;

in granite, their dreams, stars plucked from out of the sky.

 

I cannot tell the difference between fire and

ice nor love and hate when you are the subject;

All is passion, life a storm, and in that storm,

I am tossed, battered and reawakened over and

over to you, life, lover.

Once was a day

 

I watched her cross the stripes:

light grey loose sand, dark grey wet sand,

to the sea, blue stripe, shifting like a river,

dragging itself past.

Her dress, white flowing, a net for sunlight,

a Sorollo image, timeless, magnificent like a lily;

so sharply sculpted each movement freeze-framed;

and passers-by, all cropped to solitariness.

Each one photographed in the loneliness:

once was a day, when, beneath a straw hat,

on that strand, in that light, and the sea passing,

the sun acknowledged me.

Fall in love with lonely

 "fall in love with lonely" from Bruce Springsteen's 'Hello Sunshine' stuck in my head. There's a wistfulness to the song, which is wonderful and  a strange accuracy to the phrase too.  Have a listen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icJjlg5e6l8 Let song and wistfulness diffuse into the sky; let  the winds take them into the wedgewood blue stratosphere to the listening cockles  faraway.

Fall in love with lonely

“Fall in love with lonely”,

wallowing

 in unreliable memories.

Hopes thrown onto the rocks;

not really, 

forlorn notions is what they were.

I wanted more 

than fits into a life,

more than I’d a right to aspire to;

but it’s not all bad 

falling back to earth;

when you land you can stand again.

A political failure

 

Words fly,

they are air.

Bullets fly

through the air.

They fly

through the words.

Humanitarian Support for Afghan Citizens

 

The spread of covid from one individual in China to the entire world has illustrated that the planet is now just one large neighbourhood. Similarly, the spread of  political trends and movements; we can no longer consider a problem in one country to have no bearing on another, no matter how far distant. In effect communications and travel have become ropes binding us all close together. In the coming years climate change, pollution, water management, conservation of environment will all have to be tackled by the global community working as one.

My point in saying this is that there is no brushing aside the current Afghan problem, the crisis there is not solely of their making, and the fallout will not be contained within its borders. It is a global issue and those in danger deserve more that our turned heads.

The Afghan Council of Ireland has published a letter template on its Facebook page for Irish citizens to send to their governmental representatives to urge them to strengthen the support for Afghan citizens fleeing the new regime. See  https://www.facebook.com/101984398057143/posts/369156171339963/

I urge Irish readers to read and send it to your TDs and MEPs, and perhaps readers from other countries might do so with wording appropriate to the situations where they live.

St Brigid's Well, Liscannor

 

I walk along the subterranean passage to St Brigid’s well;

it is jammed with pictures of the Sacred Heart, Virgin Mary;

statuettes of Jesus, Mary and the saints; crucifixes, rosaries,

mortuary cards, vases, medals, ribbons, coins, photographs.

Sadness. There are that many calls to God along the passage,

the walls seem almost sagging under the weight of the pleas.

The passage ends where the water falls in algal greenery;

where the earth is giving but also taking away.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Remember my beloved mother, Theresa;

she put so much store by Heaven;

I leave you her photograph.

Paul’s legs are both smashed,

he is too young for such hardship;

I leave you his gloves.

Twice my expected child has miscarried,

not again, dear Lord;

I leave you my rosary.

It is my hope that Anne will come home,

I pray for this daily;

I leave you the ribbon I kept.

Beyond the barren trees

 

Beyond the barren trees,

at the place silenced in snow,

the ruins of our love still stands.

A gable just, and the tracery of our dream,

still beautiful if vacant;

our ghosts, the grand thing we longed for,

still there.

Court Tomb

 

When their bodies had started into stone,

we lay them among the boulders

that had grazed the hillside, in a nest

for early sunlight, not far from the roaring tide,

in sight of the eagles’ perches,

in sight of their timber homes,

in sight of their fields,

stones away from their parents.

When their bodies had started into stone,

we left clothing, corn, arrows, bone knives

by their sides and pointed them along the path

of the returning sun, with our prayers

and our wishes built so high they would be seen

from the birth-places of mountains, rivers or stars;

they would know that we were waiting, all the generations 

waiting, running like currents through the stones.

Spiralling Down

 

First I saw bricks give way.

then the bricks and mortar collapsing

down, a chaos

in which I unexpectedly saw beauty,

a stampede of petals;

oh, I’m exaggerating to jump on a few lines;

there was a curvature, a pattern

one sometimes sees in a whorl of petals

because the fall of one brick is contingent on the fall

of the previous, except symmetry, a radial symmetry, almost,

spiralling down 

was totally spectacular, absolutely beautiful.

 

Love made arcs of us,

and as water dreams

of droplets,

we dreamed of perfection

and might have made it,

but the curvature of our arms,

unfortunately,

had to round a perfect circle.

Clean Technology

 

How vicious those butchers

with bloody hands!

Our deaths delivered

clean as hovering.

How wonderfully civilised!

Pike

 

Pike resides in Gothic gloom

among the ever-descending piers

in dense silence.

Is the shadow of a ripple.

A Christian life,

shaped to it;

does as God directs.

Has the dark stain of silt.

Sweeps nave and aisles,

never actually grumbles,

swallows the unwary altar boy.

Is custodian of the gravel.

The White Square

 

The white square;

that dense emptiness;

the pressure it exerts.

I point out that there is nothing there,

that you are struggling with nothing,

that there is only you.

A Time

 Didn’t our lives come together? Once. 

Wasn’t there a time that was ours; 

the two of us? 

Isn’t that so, wasn’t there?

A time, once?

Survision Issue Nine

Includes 33 poets  from Ireland, England, Wales, USA, Canada, Australia,  Italy, some in translation https://survisionmagazine.com/currentissue.htm

And entries  open for submissions to the James Tate Prize 2021 for a poetry chapbook. 1st Prize: €120; 2nd Prize: €80. Both winners will win a chapbook publication + 10 free copies. There is an entrance fee of €16 for each manuscript. Deadline: 31th August 2021, midnight. Info: https://survisionmagazine.com/jamestateprize.htm

Gulls

 

Dazzle-bellied off the graphite sea,

curds flying from the churned-up agitation

of the tide; the ocean’s mouth foaming, venting

furiously onto the beach at Rossnowlagh.

Inside the thunder-ear, climbing the grey air,

slicing the storm, they stitch cloud and water, screaming

obscenities at each other; thrashing and wheeling

in the cage between a ferocious earth, indifferent Heaven.

The wish

 

Grinning in the sunlight, the river

plays jazz on the stones.

I sit, feet dangling,

its frequencies lighting my face;

toss a coin for happiness

into the honeycomb of bright water,

It settles among the pebbles

that all wishes become.

Sitting Outside

 

He sits, comatose, outside his door;

the beer tins, spent cartridges

scattered all around.

She wakes him, suggests dinner;

he insists on having one more,

pulling the trigger releases a gasp.

Next time she comes

he’s slumped back in his chair,

a trail of beer running away from him.

Perspective

 

My house is a box;

I move from bed to table to television and back,

bed to table to television and back.

From above I am a mouse scuttling;

stopping starting fidgeting nibbling sleeping.

From further up an ant.

The greater the distance, the more inexplicable

the behavior;

more’s the pity we don’t see ourselves from a height.

Goya

Goya from The Disasters of War

Goya

Of course not!

Of course no one that ever cracked open a head

has seen a symphony pour out.

No executioner has seen the flow of an amber fireside

with its intimate and tangling caresses 

drain from the split skulls of lovers 

 nor have soldiers who shoot dark holes 

 seen rafts of memories spilling, 

 carrying the children, the birthdays, the orchards, 

 the dances. 

 When they shot the poet, Lorca,

 the bullets sailed in a universe, 

 yet when the blood spurted it was only blood 

 to them.

Our Finest Belonging

 

Sorolla - The Siesta

When we lay there, our bodies were grass,

a sea of meadow, the sweep of wind carrying

us along, flowers of rye. We, the droning

bumble bees in buttercups; we, the chirruping

finches, chomping cattle; darting suddenly

within briary hedgerows, rustlings, commotions

and hunters’ silences; and only vaguely conscious

of the faraway cataracts of traffic.

How sumptuous the flow of light and warmth;

how sinuous our bodies in that current,

the colours of the field embroidering our bodies.

We, agglomerations of the soil; we, the criss-crossing

zeniths of nerve and muscle: the fields risen on legs

now part of the swathes of breeze-blown beauty,

settled, nested into our finest belonging.

Magical Ride

 

The countries of the world are passing over;

seas in sunlight; streamers of islands, far-off volcanic chains

stippled on a serene blue ocean, archipelagos for dreamers;

cumulus snow-covered mountains are towering himalayan

at the edge of my world west and south; burren-coloured foreboding

the continents north and east. My eyes, ships, have travelled

all the world and other worlds; seen more wonders

than all the explorers and all the travellers of myth and legend:

shimmering mountain ranges, the light emitting from within them;

grotesque creatures that evolve as you watch; unimaginable

monsters risen from the deep or birthed from the ribs of the land.

I have seen great curtains hanging from the heavens,

obscuring all of America, and when they’ve cleared

I have seen the fingers of God spread across the universe.

I have seen misty Kyoto on the Donegal hills where sometimes

there’s been nothing, the whole planet obliterated, a void.

All of this is my way of saying, whatever about plane, boat or car,

a seat by a window is a magical ride.

Beauty

 

Youthful beauty:

what a treasure that was,

like snow.

Settled on your face,

extended wings a moment,

then flew.

The skin, slackened

on your bones,

took the shape your humours.

In the end

life detaches itself from dreams;

then beauty is pointless.

Bluebells

 

Bluebells

in memory of Peter 1929 ‒ 2021

We had watched the bluebells arriving

in ones and twos, clusters then crowds;

their lights switching on like houses

on the hillside settling in for the night.

We’d watched the blue covers extending

down the fields, and the Castle Caldwell trees

bathing ankle-deep in those waves.

We filled our eyes with the beauty,

harvesting it for thinner days;

the day the brilliant blue light dimmed on the hillside

was the day it went from your eyes.

We stopped the car to see it quenched

like a plantation felled or the bay’s muddy floor at neap tide,

and thanked God the granaries of our memories were overflowing.