Emigration out of Ireland

I honestly thought that the subject of this poem belonged to an Ireland that had passed. I was conscious of the fact that it described a state of affairs unrecognizable to an increasing number of readers, and like most people, believed that Ireland's affluence was here to stay. It’s a poem I felt achieved what was intended, but was past its time.

Who could have guessed that the country would return in a flash to days of high emigration, high unemployment, inflation, lowered wages, and empty houses.

It may not be as bleak in today's rural Ireland as the poem describes, after all we're falling from a richer place, but it is the 2011 version of same and I no longer believe the poem has lost its relevance.



Inheriting The Land.


Here the sea is no more than a sigh in a shell,
conversations speed past, pole high, Dublin to Galway
and music is the wind whistling beneath a door.
Slightness describes Summer's step,
stonework its skies; a little light drips
from its edges but it's falling from a miser's hand.
Across the fields the church, within its necklace
of dead congregations, is a rusty hinge;
a place filled with a century's stillness.
And the ivy-choked trees lean closer together
like old men guessing at each others' words.

If you were to fly over these patchwork hills,
along the hedgerows and through the lightless haggards,
you'd never meet a soul. The old farmers are sitting
in their twilight kitchens, their families standing
on the mantelpiece in the other room that's never used
with faces tanned beneath American skies.
Only the din of crows seeps into that silence;
crows more numerous than leaves on the sycamores,
always bickering, hogging the light,
building their cities, staking their inheritance.

Growing Up

Shortly you will trace lines,
leave,
join the herds,
leave your trail among the trails
meandering over the hills.

We are part of some eccentric’s
geometry;
I wish I could tell you more,
my little love.

Where Are You.

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.

Often the well is dry

Tired

Tired,
tired words
burst like plastic footballs.

Waiting on this sand-paper plain,
I am no more than a skull
propped up.

With biro for harpoon,
I remain still
in the little pool of my shadow,

turning questions over
on the spit of my mind;
I have burnt larks on my plate.

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

And when there is drought and nothing is growing, the first rain comes like a shower of diamonds.

The Happiest Days

The happiest days were the days before worries or responsibilities, before time was important; summer afternoons at home in Roscommon, childhood days,nothing to do but watch swallows circling and put the eye low to the lawn, imagining.

This poem was included in an excellent anthology, edited by Niall MacMonagle,"Real Cool, poems to grow up with"(Marino Books,1994). This is the anthology I would recommend to anyone who is dipping their toes into poetry, an inspired choice of poems from editor Niall MacMonagle


SUMMER ORCHARD EVENING.

On an evening
when apple was eating the worm,
tree grating the sun
with some clouds, dusty birds;
the green cloth
was spread to the orchard wall.

I watched bees collecting post
while cat was a tea cosy
with dozey trip-wire eyes.
Suddenly dog alarm in the hedge
comes bursting from the undergrowth:
big game hunter
and cat gone steeplejack.

Then dog winks
and we stretch out,
and I go back to being a microscope
eyeball deep in daisies.


Another poem I've posted previously comes from the same time:


Where The Poetry Comes From


Fathomless blue;
Blue sky.

Two swallows proclaiming it
Are extravagant

Dancers in an empty ballroom.
A church bell chimes

Two, three, five o’clock;
No matter;

Tracing curves to unending time;
A route to south Africa?

Fathomed true;
Blue sky.

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.

In Mayo

Some places remain in your head all your life. Not intact, but fragments that still convey (broadly) the appearance of the place. So you return, and your geography is completely off but the essence is right.
As a student of Geology, I spent a week mapping in Finney near Lough Nafooey in Co. Mayo. A wonderful time and a wonderful place. The fragments have stayed with me ever since. When I wrote a poem “In Mayo” sometime around 1990, it was Finney I was thinking of.

See http://www.flickr.com/photos/ruthann/sets/72157600099944683/ for a range of photos from this beautiful area. From “Sunfire”:


In Mayo

The sky:

rags on bushes
in a wintry gale.

The barbed-wire fence:

a lunatic's music
sprinting down the valley.

The mountains:

tossed heads
with their silvery sheen.

Telephone wire:

daisy-chained voices
humming out of tune.

The lake:

a shirt that blew
off a line.

Rowan tree:

tongue on the mountain
shaping high C.

More Laughter Yoga in Rathmines

Another chance to take an instant vacation.

Cathetrine O'Dea will be leading two series of Laughter Yoga in Rathmines over the coming weeks. The first begins on Tuesday 10th May in Centre Studios, Rathmines (over Boots),5.45pm to 6.45pm. The second begins Thursday 12th May, 4.00pm to 5.00pm, at Swan Leisure. Both will run for five weeks and the cost is 45 euros,(30 euros: OAPs job-seekers and students).

Wear comfortable clothing, bring yoga mat or towel and a bottle of water.

"True poets must be truthful"

......Wilfred Owen

This YouTube movie originates from Voices [Education Project] whose mission is to "Amplify the voices of veterans and civilian witnesses to war, in order to heal the wounds of war and lay the basis for a more peaceful world."
"Difference can lead to dialogue and growth rather than violence." To know more about this see their website:http://voiceseducation.org/

This clip sets very well the context to Owen's poetry.



Smile, Smile, Smile (by Wilfrid Owen)

Head to limp head, the sunk-eyed wounded scanned
Yesterday's Mail; the casualties (typed small)
And (large) Vast Booty from our Latest Haul.
Also, they read of Cheap Homes, not yet planned;
For, said the paper, "When this war is done
The men's first instinct will be making homes.
Meanwhile their foremost need is aerodromes,
It being certain war has just begun.
Peace would do wrong to our undying dead, --
The sons we offered might regret they died
If we got nothing lasting in their stead.
We must be solidly indemnified.
Though all be worthy Victory which all bought,
We rulers sitting in this ancient spot
Would wrong our very selves if we forgot
The greatest glory will be theirs who fought,
Who kept this nation in integrity."
Nation? -- The half-limbed readers did not chafe
But smiled at one another curiously
Like secret men who know their secret safe.
This is the thing they know and never speak,
That England one by one had fled to France
(Not many elsewhere now save under France).
Pictures of these broad smiles appear each week,
And people in whose voice real feeling rings
Say: How they smile! They're happy now, poor things.


23rd September 1918.

Irish Religion and Irish Literature

To be brought up Roman Catholic in Ireland in my generation and before, was to be brought up with with a strange mix of observance of hard fast doctrine on the conduct of one's life, and a wonderful belief in fantastical superstiton.I think this has a great deal to do with the richness of Irish literature.Anything is possible in a reality that can be influenced by supernatural events, where excessive pain is directly associated with love, where the icons of gentleness are sometimes gruesome.

It's a mix that brands itself, smoking, on the soul.

Legend

Though birds have nested

among the thorns, and the trunk

has grown wild with ivy,



his arms and legs

are still outlined in those sinews,

his belly is a knot of growth.



Deep in the withered leaves

shines an eye; a fish swims there;

he who eats the fish lives forever.



They say he was nailed to the tree,

well above the ground

so a soldier could lance his side



to satisfy the crowds

that fish swim in rivers,

wishes swim in blood.

Short Poems on Love and Life and Life Passing

Days scud by like clouds;
that generous wind
blows forever.

But it blew into a corner
where our days collected,
not clouds but leaves.

_________________________


One bullet
and your universe went black.

One piece of metal,
the opposite to a key.

_________________________

Heart:
empty hangar
but for a step-ladder
and a bucket of oil.


_________________________

Father’s Day:
her voice came into my head:
“Daddy’s Day”, she said.

I went to see if she was in her room;
it was 6am.
Can it really be so long ago?

__________________________


After all, a house is just a box
without a human to rattle.


__________________________

Your face: smoke.
Or was I holding it in smoke fingers?

Love crashed then receded.

Remember your face?
It might have been a heat haze in January.


___________________________

Air Spectacular - Starlings over Lough Rea

I've always known that starlings leave Red Arrows for dead. But take a look at this footage from Lough Rea, it's awesome.(brilliant posting by BDaly1234 on YouTube)



And this is the perfect introduction for a poem called, Dead Starling:

Last evening starlings were
balloon bursting
cluster bombing
wheat whirling
skirt twirling
cape sweeping
out beyond the town.


This morning
a meteorite
landed
outside my door;
there is nothing on earth
as motionless as
a dead starling.

Whale Song

The eeriest, saddest sound on the planet. Check out The Oceania Project channel on Youtube for more videos on whales and their beautiful, haunting songs. http://www.youtube.com/user/TheOceaniaProject

Mother Liked This Poem

To begin with, my mother was more than a little apprehensive of my writing poems. She dreaded finding herself published inside one of them. When one of my earliest publications turned out to be "Visiting the Corset Maker", her apprehension seemed well founded.Fortunately a friend of her's, who also visited the corset maker, liked the poem and her regard shifted.

However, she really did like "The Country Boy"; and though she occasionally wondered why I can't always write happy,pleasant poems, this poem convinced her that she could let me out with a biro in my hand.

When she had died I found her copy of "Sunfire" with press cuttings cellotaped in, and realised how proud she was of the book.

So for mother's day:

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.

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.