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.

The Country Child

       The Country Child.

The country child

runs in and out of rain showers

like rooms;

sees the snake-patterns in trains,

the sun's sword-play in the hedges

and the confetti in falling elder blossoms;

knows the humming in the telegraph poles

as the hedgerow's voice

when tar bubbles are ripe for bursting;

watches bees emerge from the caverns

at the centres of buttercups,

feels no end to a daisy chain,

feels no end to an afternoon;

walks on ice though it creaks;

sees fish among ripples and names them;

is conversant with berries

and hides behind thorns;

slips down leaves, behind stones;

fills his hands with the stream

and his hair with the smell of hay;

recognizes the chalkiness

of the weathered bones of sheep,

the humour in a rusted fence,

the feel of the white beards that hang there.

The country child

sees a mountain range where blue clouds

are heaped above the horizon,

sees a garden of diamonds

through a hole scraped

in the frost patterns of his bedroom window

and sees yet another world

when tints of cerise and ochre

streak the evening sky.

He knows no end, at night

he sneaks glimpses of Heaven
through the moth-eaten carpet of the sky. 

The Viewing.

Dead: the colour of old cream,

his eyes shuttered shut;

so neat, besuited and slim,

the weight he lost dying.

They made a basket of his fingers

with a rosary spilling down;

everyone said he looked lovely,

but when I touched his face

it wasn’t him at all.

The baby in the tree

The baby in the tree

is screaming.

High above the pathway

near the black tips

of the sycamore branches

he is gaping,

white membraned luminous.

How did he get there?

He blew there in the wind;

it took him

like a flag from his cot

till he was stretched

across the boughs

like the wings of a bat.

And who sees him?

I do;

all his hopeless writhing,

too high for the passerby.

And his screams:

too high,

too high for the passerby.

Child

         

Where are you.

Where are you child.

Among the spring green leaves

Naked as a lizard;

I hear your airy lilt,

Why are you humming.

From what remote well

Do these grotesque sounds come;

Dispatched, bleak cirrus

In the high skies of a child's voice,

Freezing all the forest

Into fairy-tale stillness.

Where are you,

Where are you child.

In what empty paradise;

Where's the tower that emits your eccentric song;

Against the frozen wings of which birds of paradise

Do you rub.

Speaking of Roscommon, The New Roscommon Writing Award is coming up

Then and Now

Light cavorting on the stream,

choruses of flies on dung,

and the flush green of Roscommon fields.

Whole afternoons I would spend

watching minnows dart

beneath those smidereens of sunlight.

Larder to larder, cold flowing weed,

combed fresh opulence.

No trickery in a jam jar; dull brown they died.

This morning sitting in Dublin;

smidereens of sunlight played on the ceiling

and I remembered this.

and speaking of Roscommon:

The NEW ROSCOMMON WRITING AWARD 2016 is organised as part of the county’s literature development programme. It is funded by Roscommon County Council and The Arts Council, and supported by the Roscommon Herald and by Shannonside FM.

The winner will receive a monetary prize of €500 and will have their winning entry printed in the Roscommon Herald. It will also be broadcast on Shannonside FM. (Four runners-up will receive €50 each)

Closing date for entries is 30 November 2016

Enquiries to

ghoare@roscommoncoco.ie.

Competition Rules

·         Entries, in English, on any theme, in any literary form, will be accepted.

·         The competition is open to anyone over 18. All entrants must have a connection with the county of Roscommon (born in, living in, currently working in, went to school in, etc).

·         Typed entries (handwritten entries cannot be accepted) must be no more than 500 words. Mark the number of words in your entry on the bottom of the page. Entries over the 500 word limit will be automatically disqualified. There is a limit of two entries per entrant.

·         Include your name, address and contact details, plus your connection to the county. Include these on a separate page, not on your entry. 

·         There is no entry fee. All entries must be received by 30 November 2016.

·         The competition will be adjudicated by Brian Leyden. The judge’s decision is final. 

·         Post your entry to: NEW ROSCOMMON WRITING AWARD 2016, Aras an Chontae, Roscommon Arts Office, Roscommon. You may also email your entry to: ghoare@roscommoncoco.ie. Title your email NEW ROSCOMMON WRITING AWARD 2016.

·         The names of the shortlisted writers will be announced in local media and online at http://www.roscommoncoco.ie/en/Services/Comm_Ent/Arts_Office/literature.htm

·         The awards ceremony will take place early in 2017, on a date and at a venue to be announced. 

What Does He See Where I See Only Stone?

What does he see where I see only stone?

The man is still, his gaze fixed on the ground

but that gaze compels you to look again;

in such  moments a mind might overreach the stars.

I see my reflection, he says;

I see my hair no longer covers my head,

its silver ring above my ears, he says,

is like gorse cleared from a hill-top.

And, he says, I see the child struggling

in the young branches of childhood,

the school doors fanning him on and on

through corridors of captivity, a whirligig

through years, disremembering his own footsteps.

I see the would-be lover, and he loved his hair;

he put a shine in his eye like I polish a shoe;

and his full bracelet of teeth; my God, he could smile.

I see how time subtracts: aging dreams

till they become hobbled old goats that have outstared you,

till they have become unbelievable.

My young loves reflected back have their young faces still

but I would be afraid to see them now.

My plans and projects are shunted, rusting old carriages;

I don't visit them anymore.

The old man's arms are folded so fingers lie like stripes

on his right arm, forage in the dark woolen sleeve

of his left. His head is slightly forward,

his eyes unblinking as though entranced

by weeds growing on the floor of a pond.

I see too that I never held the reins of a life,

that indifference is a colander, indecision has the grasp

of a hand without fingers. Days are punched down

like receipts onto a nail; named, counted, collected,

they grow into months; life flitting across the pages 

of a calendar, falling  into the holes between Christmases.

And I remember those Christmases

long ago when I was young, the totting up  ̶

over a drink   ̶  of departed faces and the wishes,

the wish-bone skinny wishes for the coming year

that smouldered beside a glass of stout and then went out.

I see those faces whose roots entangled with my own,

how arrogance blinded me so I could not see

it was the carpet of their roots that buoyed me up

until recently, feeling them slip away,

feeling the cold gaps they’ve left around me, I discovered

it wasn’t I that put the colours in my head,

and with that discovery much has toppled

that hindered my view. I see, as though from a height,

my head is indistinguishable from all the others

rushing like froth from this life that we call

living.

Now his face is raised, his eyes red-rimmed

with the racing bobbin that’s in his head:

I saw the ground and the scuffed toe to my shoe;

a lifetime might have no other measure than 

its number of worn out shoes.

Loneliness

At One End Of A Bench.

 

At one end of a bench

an old man wearing Winter clothes

regards the fountains and Summer

through melt-water irises.

 

He needs my ear to be a conch

 

so that he can call to the past

 

down these auditory canals.

And when he calls, his wife and son

 

will resurrect, return, reverse

 

like filings into a family.

 

It is mid-morning in Stephen's Green;

the usual sounds: clacking fowl

 

and fountain symphonies, and beyond

the thrash of traffic and voices. 

In that moment: two strangers on a bench

 

 

are travelling backwards to Mayo;

elsewhere a beggar has recreated himself

 

in a bank window and somewhere,  in a kitchen,

 

a woman is conversing though the voice

 

that answers has not been heard for years.

A love poem

I Give You       

 

This tree's dripping fruit

to place in your mouth

to ripen your tongue.

 

The water guttering down

these green leaves

to be a trellis of fingers

about you.

 

This soft drizzle of sunlight

to fall gentle as the petals

of meadowsweet on your cheeks.

 

This bindweed and all tendrils

to hook and bind

our desires together.

 

Country Childhood

I was blessed to have a country childhood. The freedom to come and go without the constant monitoring for safety. We had the run of the town and surrounding countryside. I would like to think that it's still that way now, but probably not.



The Country Child.

 

The country child

runs in and out of rain showers

like rooms; 

sees the snake-patterns in trains,

the sun's sword-play in the hedges

and the confetti in falling elder blossoms; 

knows the humming in the telegraph poles

as the hedgerow's voice

when tar bubbles are ripe for bursting; 

watches bees emerge from the caverns

at the centres of buttercups,

feels no end to a daisy chain, 

feels no end to an afternoon;

                     walks on ice though it creaks;

sees fish among ripples and names them; 

is conversant with berries

and hides behind thorns;

slips down leaves, behind stones; 

fills his hands with the stream

and his hair with the smell of hay;

recognizes the chalkiness  

of the weathered bones of sheep,

the humour in a rusted fence,

the feel of the white beards that hang there. 

The country child

sees a mountain range where blue clouds

are heaped above the horizon,

 

sees a garden of diamonds

through a hole scraped

in the frost patterns of his bedroom window  

and sees yet another world

when tints of cerise and ochre

streak the evening sky. 

He knows no end, at night

he sneaks glimpses of Heaven

through the moth-eaten carpet of the sky.