I arrived in Dublin in 1973, having joined the Bank of Ireland, and was training in the Head Office in Baggot Street. Away from home, it was the first time in my life I was not answerable to someone for how I spent my time; no one questioning where I was, or who I was spending time with. Strange after all those years,it felt wrong; there seemed to be too much space; there was a hollow feeling to it.
I think that hollow is the one that sometimes bringing loneliness, gets filled with drinking. Of course, it could also be filled with golf or dancing or..or..., but pubs are so accessible and they promise company or the illusion of company.I was at a loose end and I did find it lonely.This memory has very little to do with the poem Passage, but the "space, to wander in" brought it back - a disorientated state of mind.
PASSAGE.
We were lovers;
now I'm off,
you're packed away;
you folded up small.
So with curving spine
and arms belting knees
tight under chin, I roll on;
a wheel from the accident.
Ahead there is space,
to wander in,
to kick up dust;
space where fires won't burn.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Communion Girls.
Small white spinning tops;
tinkered with children
parade affectation,
grotesque display
of competing Hail Marys.
On May 25th
doll darlings
agitate for cash;
let us pray.
“Let us pray
for long white dresses,
matching gloves,
patent shoes and handbags.”
“Dear Baby Jesus
let there be sun;
may it twinkle and shine
on our little one.”
tinkered with children
parade affectation,
grotesque display
of competing Hail Marys.
On May 25th
doll darlings
agitate for cash;
let us pray.
“Let us pray
for long white dresses,
matching gloves,
patent shoes and handbags.”
“Dear Baby Jesus
let there be sun;
may it twinkle and shine
on our little one.”
Exploiting Fears For Profit
So much attention paid nowadays to the individual’s right to self-respect and dignity. And yet the incessant bombardment of people to be what they are not.
There's nothing new in this post, except I've never before quite considered the extent to which women must alter themselves cosmeticly to meet the expectations put on them socially.
So they must colour their faces, their hair; tan their skin, paint their nails, enhance their breasts (surgically if needs be),remove old skin, remove wrinkles or other signs of (horror) age, slim to a shape totally unnatural, remove body hair, add lashes, nails, coloured lenses even. In short, change almost every visible aspect of their bodies. Deoderise, then add perfume; moisturise; forgot to mention remove any blemish however small. All done; no, higher heels, change height (shape too).
Then clothing: slimming, appropriate colours, up to date, classy, sexy, original, not too original or you’ll look like an oddity. And of course it would help if you had more money; a lot more.
How long will governments continue to allow money-makers undermine the basic right of an individual to be content in his/her own skin?
There's nothing new in this post, except I've never before quite considered the extent to which women must alter themselves cosmeticly to meet the expectations put on them socially.
So they must colour their faces, their hair; tan their skin, paint their nails, enhance their breasts (surgically if needs be),remove old skin, remove wrinkles or other signs of (horror) age, slim to a shape totally unnatural, remove body hair, add lashes, nails, coloured lenses even. In short, change almost every visible aspect of their bodies. Deoderise, then add perfume; moisturise; forgot to mention remove any blemish however small. All done; no, higher heels, change height (shape too).
Then clothing: slimming, appropriate colours, up to date, classy, sexy, original, not too original or you’ll look like an oddity. And of course it would help if you had more money; a lot more.
How long will governments continue to allow money-makers undermine the basic right of an individual to be content in his/her own skin?
Saturday, June 4, 2011
The Dog
A dog built around his snarling teeth
demonstrates human instincts
when I cross his ground.
Glass stare, no, spikes from his face,
his crew cut spines speared,
snarl or smile, legs set in concrete:
stance consciousness.
The considered setting of his growl:
natural resonance of nerves.
The chosen time for a step:
psychology of closing, removing space,
building a crescendo of presence.
Then the howling with muscle release:
snap of dogs, snap of men.
demonstrates human instincts
when I cross his ground.
Glass stare, no, spikes from his face,
his crew cut spines speared,
snarl or smile, legs set in concrete:
stance consciousness.
The considered setting of his growl:
natural resonance of nerves.
The chosen time for a step:
psychology of closing, removing space,
building a crescendo of presence.
Then the howling with muscle release:
snap of dogs, snap of men.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
History Recorded and Available Online
Amazing what's preserved and easily available online.Youtube is of course an amazing resource for finding just about anything; how about the
oldest written music, only 1400BC
First Photograph 1826 Nicéphore Niépce; view from his upstairs window
Voice Recordings: Florence Nightingale 1890
Edison, Houdini, Yeats, Ernest Shackleton,Conan Doyle and others
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtU7SwMyUqM
Robert Browning, 1889, recites 'How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYot5-WuAjE&feature=related
Film: Coronation of Tsar Nicholas II, 1896 and a number of other historic film clips at
http://www.politics.ie/history/159872-historic-film-clips.html
oldest written music, only 1400BC
First Photograph 1826 Nicéphore Niépce; view from his upstairs window
Voice Recordings: Florence Nightingale 1890
Edison, Houdini, Yeats, Ernest Shackleton,Conan Doyle and others
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtU7SwMyUqM
Robert Browning, 1889, recites 'How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYot5-WuAjE&feature=related
Film: Coronation of Tsar Nicholas II, 1896 and a number of other historic film clips at
http://www.politics.ie/history/159872-historic-film-clips.html
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Miners Town
"Carry slack" she says
to the spires of smoke
stealing away from Miners Town
where every child is born
to carry a bucket.
In the evening the little men
will gather below the street
where the pit-head eyebrows meet
so when their fathers come,
they'll parade nearby;
smaller jackets just.
A jet shape of geese
passes through the smoke columns;
for a moment she travels too
but then they leave her,
disappearing each year
over the same roof-top.
"Carry slack," she repeats
into the dog's ear of a kitchen door,
and in the shortened evening
she too unfurls a stalk of smoke
that'll mark her place
in the forest above Miners Town.
to the spires of smoke
stealing away from Miners Town
where every child is born
to carry a bucket.
In the evening the little men
will gather below the street
where the pit-head eyebrows meet
so when their fathers come,
they'll parade nearby;
smaller jackets just.
A jet shape of geese
passes through the smoke columns;
for a moment she travels too
but then they leave her,
disappearing each year
over the same roof-top.
"Carry slack," she repeats
into the dog's ear of a kitchen door,
and in the shortened evening
she too unfurls a stalk of smoke
that'll mark her place
in the forest above Miners Town.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
A Child's Imagination
It doesn't take much. Under a hedge was a tunnel, a tree was a fortress, long grass was crawling with unfriendly natives, wildlife, whatever.
The Fort
When the shed was loaded with turf, Martin and I dug a bunker, mounted hurlies, one to the front, two through the slits in the back wall and spent all afternoon watching for Germans invading from Fahy’s or crawling on their bellies through the long grass behind Glynn’s.
Sometimes we took our rifles onto the roof. Shot, we plummeted to our deaths on the lawn or maybe we parachuted with pillow-cases, before dashing for cover under a hail of enemy fire.
Now and then we came charging, guns blazing, picking off enemy between the gooseberry bushes; occasionally we fired on jets, watched their jet-trails pour smoke into the sky before ditching over the horizon, somewhere beyond Stonepark.
All winter our bunker dwindled, till May saw the shed empty. Good thing too, Geoff Hurst wouldn’t want turf stacked in the back of the Wembley net.
Our shed filled with turf.....
The Fort
When the shed was loaded with turf, Martin and I dug a bunker, mounted hurlies, one to the front, two through the slits in the back wall and spent all afternoon watching for Germans invading from Fahy’s or crawling on their bellies through the long grass behind Glynn’s.
Sometimes we took our rifles onto the roof. Shot, we plummeted to our deaths on the lawn or maybe we parachuted with pillow-cases, before dashing for cover under a hail of enemy fire.
Now and then we came charging, guns blazing, picking off enemy between the gooseberry bushes; occasionally we fired on jets, watched their jet-trails pour smoke into the sky before ditching over the horizon, somewhere beyond Stonepark.
All winter our bunker dwindled, till May saw the shed empty. Good thing too, Geoff Hurst wouldn’t want turf stacked in the back of the Wembley net.
Our shed filled with turf.....
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
The Beginning of Science
Long before Saint Patrick,
leather-footed musicians
would keyhole dawn
to catch the sun in ice candles.
They played those flames on strings,
their spikes of sound,
for children’s whistling eyes and lunatics,
who, in their distance, danced.
Fire caged in ice, ice in their hands;
music lit from within;
ambition began;
separation became a beauty.
leather-footed musicians
would keyhole dawn
to catch the sun in ice candles.
They played those flames on strings,
their spikes of sound,
for children’s whistling eyes and lunatics,
who, in their distance, danced.
Fire caged in ice, ice in their hands;
music lit from within;
ambition began;
separation became a beauty.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
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.
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.
Friday, May 20, 2011
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.
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.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
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.
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.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
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.
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.
Friday, May 13, 2011
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.
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.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
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.
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.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
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.
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.
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