Poetry led me

By sheer coincidence I'm posting this on Poetry Day Ireland. I came across the quotation and felt I had something to say on the matter. The poem does, I think, speak the truth for some, but I would not disagree that poetry has, for many, a healing effect, and I think this has probably been particularly the case during the pandemic.

"poetry led me by the hand out of madness"

                                                                    Ann Sexton

So often, poetry starts a journey but does not arrive;

drops your hand somewhere out on the plain.

Sometimes, it leads through a series of holograms, pictures 

of a journey, then scampers off into a faraway dot.

Or insinuates that you are mad and it is the map

that will return you to yourself.

And sometimes it is the madness; so for your bearings,

keep note of the landscape passing.

Cross

 

From nails I hang,

abandoning my corpse like sloughed off skin.

From these four open corners my sprit flies

unfettered by earths’ directions.

Love defying hatred;

I give you the ladder of my bones.

Call me king,

only when I’ve given all for you.

The cross

 

Religion aside, the cross

as a symbol of freedom:

its four corners open

so it cannot contain;

its crossbeam embracing the sky, 

poised for flight;

its shape more defined

when light floods about it.

 

.

Empty House

 

Walking through the house: a trespass.

Your order, comforts, colours;

your breath, but not your breathing.

Walking inside your head

with no permission; 

blundering into that unexpected museum-like staticity.

Walking in your space;

the ghost of you constantly passing

but the sunlight falling shadowless onto the floor.

Three Views of the Universe

(rewrite of a poem posted a few years back) 

Sitting on a park bench,

a pool of sunlight before me,

a cosmos of flies:

stars in Brownian motion.

City park at midnight:

moths in lamp-light

with the sudden brilliance of meteorites

streaking from invisibility to invisibility.

Evening sunlight,

a stream of molten silver;

a system of planets

carved into its limestone bed.

And while it's still April,

here's some advice from Ogden Nash:

Always Marry An April Girl

Praise the spells and bless the charms,
I found April in my arms.
April golden, April cloudy,
Gracious, cruel, tender, rowdy;
April soft in flowered languor,
April cold with sudden anger,
Ever changing, ever true --
I love April, I love you.

which is really an excuse to consider

A Flea And A Fly In A Flue

A flea and a fly in a flue
Were imprisoned, so what could they do?
Said the fly, "let us flee!"
"Let us fly!" said the flea.
So they flew through a flaw in the flue.

which is a good moment to consider again

What a Wonderful Bird the Frog Are

What a wonderful bird the frog are

When he stand he sit almost:

When he hop he fly almost.

He ain't got no sense hardly;

He ain't got no tail hardly either.

When he sit, he sit on what he ain't got almost. 

                                                               (anon.)

I tried to write something in similar vein:

The sidewinder snake

scribbles sssss in the sand;

spelling what she say

as she slithers away;

how smart is that?

Okay, I'm not Ogden Nash, not even anon.

Holbien: The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb

 

Ah, God in a box

no universe.

Male body in a coffin

crucified yesterday.

What is life, Lord;

what can we not see?

A Pair Of Boots

 

Van Gogh 'A Pair of Boots'

Thrown there, a pair of boots,

well scuffed, parched;

a lolling tongue

thirsting for dubbin.

Laces trailing away

like wire after an escape;

the boots waiting,

endlessly patient.

Leather whose memories

are those of old hands,

who remember the stories

in their sleep.

.

Dance

 

Danced a hornpipe on the stream

to its continuous applause.

60% water, the moon full,

I was, indeed, at the top of my form,

clicking the stones

and stomping up spray,

quavers and crotchets draining

from my heels;

and the rooks on the tops of the trees

were roaring me on, breaking into jigs

themselves, they were,

and the sky full of jingly silver

and shooting concertina notes.

Once, The Banshee River

 

The old men walk a circle from the home;

their old suits holding their bones together.

They stop at the bridge to inquire how life goes;

the river speaks differently to each, then slithers along.

Once, an old man lay down in middle of the road

just over the bridge and was killed almost instantly.

Old people see visions in rivers, they understand, walk on,

and maybe next day come back again to learn some more.

No one knows what he saw in the river, but no one doubts

that it was the river that directed him to his bed.

will never end

 

Into the earth they go, those lives barely more than dreams.

Nurtured, schooled, and delivered before the full flowering

of youth to the guns and bombs of wars spurred on by the

vainglorious who, beating the drums in the far distance, turn

on the tap of patriotic souls. And how they let it drip; oh, if it 

had been a tap of water, it would’ve been mended long ago; 

                                  the pity is we don’t hear soldiers dying.

Zeca's Best

 

Portuguese singer/songwriter José 'Zeca' Alfonso at his best: Grandola vila morena, with its haunting accompaniment of marching feet is, even  by the high standards of Portuguese music, extraordinarily stirring. Sometimes a song gives me the feeling that I must write, rare enough really, but when that sense lingers it is down to the strength of feeling the singer and song arouses, and this is definitely a case in point.

Grândola, brown town (English transation)

Grândola, brown town,

Land of fraternity;

It's the people who command

Inside you, oh city.

 

Inside you, oh city,

It's the people who command;

Land of fraternity,

Grândola, brown town.

 

On each corner there's a friend

In each face there's equality

Grândola, brown town,

Land of fraternity.

 

Land of fraternity

Grândola, brown town

In each face there's equality

It is the people who command

 

In the shadow of a holm oak

Which no longer knew its age

I swore as my companion,

your will, Grândola;

 

your will, Grândola,

I swore as my companion

In the shadow of a holm oak

Which no longer knew its age.

Daffodils, Aliens

 

Daffodils are

yellow-brained aliens

standing one-legged

in the April snow.

Star-headed,

they gaze into the emptiness,

open-mouthed,

silent.

The Waves Make Mountains

 

The waves make mountains;

they are as impassable as the Himalayas.

A life time is short;

I’m not going to take them on;

and that, somehow, seems a defeat;

a wide gaping failure;

as though the waves came ashore and found me

and declared to all and sundry that I am a coward.

Ripple

 

Underside of a ripple moving through the water;

sleek and graceful.

Elegant too, sitting by the pool as though it was

the flowing water that shaped her.

And the pool, still in thoughtfulness, as I would be

if she stepped away.

Landscape

 

The backs of my hands ancient:

aerial photo of mountain range,

parched landscape, countless miles.

My life, neither cuneiform nor hieroglyphic,

not hardship, but travelled;

travelled across that lonely landscape.

Precarious

 

Oak-aged, Leonard’s voice.

Dancing in the early hours, turning

on the spools of his words;

arms pouring like wine downward,

filling her full with his lilt;

her eyes soft as the vowels he intoned;

her feet unsure, carefully stepping

on the cobbles of song;

singing it one beat behind

as though each word arrived one moment too late;

swaying,

the glass of wine in her hand

precarious

like a life on the verge of spilling.