Happy Christmas

Snow Hill by Andrew Wyatt

 

I come back to this image over and over; it's beautiful, strikes a chord in me, and keeps striking. It's Wyatt's subjects over the years, but reminds me too of  Yeat's review of himself in poetry in the poem 'The Circus Animals' Desertion'.

The image  suggests a poem to me that's buried inside somewhere; I come back again  to find it and suppose sometime I will.

This isn't exactly Christmas cheer, but does remind me of  the Christmas totting up of those departed  that the older generation engaged in when I was a child. 

Continuing a Christmas custom then; wishing you the very best over the coming days.

When the day comes

that I am reduced to the flicker

that is, in a moment, out

and they’re saying “I think he’s gone”,

“yes he’s gone”;

I will, hopefully, be dancing on Snow Hill

with all those I knew,

spinning around, kicking up their legs

in the fields that are home

as the pillows of childhood

and nothing but happiness spinning out

over the unsullied fields.

Israel Close Embassy in Ireland; they are unhappy with the Irish view of the Gazan war

 

December 2024. A study carried out by the Community Training Centre for Crisis Management in Gaza, backed by the Dutch Relief Alliance and the War Child Alliance, has found that 96% of children surveyed feel their death is imminent; 49% have expressed a desire to die. (see reliefweb, warchild.net, The Guardian)

November 8 (Reuters) - The U.N. Human Rights Office said on Friday nearly 70% of the fatalities it has verified in the Gaza war were women and children……………..Overall, those aged 18 or under represented 44% of the victims, with children aged 5 to 9 representing the single biggest age category, followed by those aged 10-14, and then those aged up to and including 4.

May 2024. From a statement issued by Josep Borell Fontelles, Vice-President of the European Commission and Janez Lenarcic, European Commissioner for Crisis Management:

"Since the start of the conflict in Gaza, following the brutal terrorist attacks by Hamas on 7 October, 31 out of 36 hospitals have been damaged or destroyed.………………..Since October 7, the WHO has recorded a total of 890 attacks on health facilities, with 443 occurring in Gaza and 447 in the West Bank………………………....……."

Unicef 8 Nov 2024 “In October alone, 64 attacks (on schools) were registered on the ground, mostly in the north; 95 per cent of all schools in the Gaza Strip have sustained damage over the past year………………...Meanwhile, at least 658,000 school-aged children in Gaza have been disconnected from all formal learning activities, casting a shadow of uncertainty on their future; their lives overwhelmed by mental health distress, as well as increased risk of child labour and child marriage."

30^th Jan 2024. (BBC) “satellite data analysis obtained by the BBC shows the true extent of the destruction. The analysis suggests between 144,000 and 175,000 buildings across the whole Gaza Strip have been damaged or destroyed. That's between 50% and 61% of Gaza's buildings......Mr Scher, one of the academics who worked on the Gaza damage assessment, said it stands out compared with other war zones he's analysed. "We've done work over Ukraine, we've also looked at Aleppo and other cities, but the extent and the pace of damage is remarkable. I've never seen this much damage appear so quickly..............”

These reports from the myriad, including use of huge bombs that cause wider, indiscriminate damage and loss of life, laying waste of farmland and crops in spite of impending famine, lack of warnings...... it's a long list.

Boned Trees

 A slightly amended version:

 

When they shake out the fields,

wring the cities,

we fall out, boned trees.

How our Summers passed

and fell;

seasons of desire.

Left us gaunt and brittle,

finger nails

still scraping the sun.

Today

 

Can you spin a cloud onto a stick;

collect sparklets of sunlight from a river;

walk the moon’s highway over the sea?

There are times when happiness might belong

in this list; I thought so today when you cried

and we were not there to put our arms around you.

Happiness seemed very remote just then;

you might as well have tried to fill a jar with blue sky

and I thought I heard a hollow clank from the universe.

What I Remember

 

A stream, somewhere in Connemara,

working its way through strewn boulders,

over a mosaic of rust-coloured stones.

The thousand sounds of water, finding

its races constantly blocked, celebrating

 boisterously its thousand victories.

The percussion of its falling into pools

isolated in hollows beneath the rocks;

a deeper tock under the spray’s sibilance.

The sprightliness of  mountain flow

through the gentle, soft greenery

of the fields beneath the slopes.

The exuberance of those waters rushing

through the channels of a young boy’s heart;

rushing still.

Leaving

 

Bronze, copper, gold:

the boats are on the sea,

sailing past,

sailing on the wind;

waved away by branches

almost bare now.

Ghosts man the boats;

passing silently

on currents of wind,

the year in their nets;

this one glorious moment

and then they have sailed.

A Life's Story

 

Unlikely now: the size of your fist;

hard, smooth, rounded; chiselled by weather, abraded

in the billions of quartz, sandstone and granite stones

constantly rolling in the tide on this cold Atlantic shore.

Limestone. I, unlike them, sprung from life;

carry my ancestors within me; crinoids, brachiopods

and bryozoa; their shells, hard parts crystallized now;

I am an assemblage that collected on the bed of another sea;

a tropical sea that teemed with life and its colours.

How far away that bright life was from the lithification that comes,

but time, all too soon, brings its darkness

and I have spent millions of years deep in the inanimate earth.

That I would see light again seemed unlikely

and yet, here I am, carrying the vestiges of a sea that once was home.

As you pass over me, you will not notice;

but my voice is there, in the tumult of the waves shifting the stones.