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.

Walking through summer's

 

swathes of bluebells,

setting rain and sunlight

ringing

or, perhaps,

languorous lanterns

spilling moonlit midnight

onto the ocean floor

or

thoughts

bubbling through

the fresh green moss

of toddlers’ imaginations

or

those souls

whose light

must wait

for yet another year.

Screaming

 

You were screaming.

I looked inside,

a child

was using the cavern of your mouth.

Her agitation,

its minuteness

caused laughter;

she was convulsed with that frustration.

No one wanted to see

your mouth,

the red raw wound;

no one wanted to look inside.

You screamed.

I said to my daughter

 

His gentleness now stone;

she, her love, a tree;

the bark climbed her body

till, finally, her eyes were shut;

he and his anger now a flower;

her generosity a shell.

And so it goes

till all is turned.

I remember her arms:

now blades of grass.

If only we had known,

but how could we, that was then.

Whitethorn

 

Sometimes you come

from what is now a long time ago,

and you are smiling;

that was a different world,

and your smile belongs to then.

But it is no coincidence

my remembering on the first of June

when the fields are a flood of lush green growth,

the hedgerows a celebration in whitethorn,

a lively champagne or, perhaps, unrestrained happiness.