Dicing with the Devil

The local men outside the church interested me as a youngster. On a point of doctrine, did it qualify as attendance at mass if you joined them outside the church or was it a matter of being inside the porch door? I suspect it must be the latter. But why did they bother at all? Does God make these sorts of distinctions? One way or the other they had the best time at mass with the exception, probably, of the priest and altar boys who as far as I was concerned always performed to full houses.

The After-mass Men were these men with the addition of a particular strain of ‘inside the door’ man, a type who appeared to me to be taking the same risk as marijuana smokers who hang out with heroin addicts. Anyway, morally,they all constituted a dodgy breed, endangering each Sunday their eternal living conditions.

These clusters of men arranged themselves in ways that would have excited a sculptor. Dark clothes and, I suspected, dark conversations reigned. They were a dangerous influence, to be avoided by such as myself, to be looked down on, to be prayed for like you’d have prayed for the conversion of Russia;and every boy risked joining them at least once.

The After-Mass Men

Remember those figures by the church wall
Sculpted in after-mass conversations:
Blather-tattooed men
That hung there by their jackets;
Museums with pockets,
Pockets full of knives,
pipes and matches.

Stone men:
Pre-Christians defiling Sabbaths
With their Saturday conversations.
Gargoyles:
Coats would be wrapped against them
As though they were sudden showers of hail.


from Sunfire (Dedalus Press)

Paradise Lost in Dublin

Plans are afoot to have a reading of the whole text of John Milton's great poem Paradise Lost on Friday the 14th of December, 2012, in Trinity College Dublin. The event is being organised to raise funds for the National Council for the Blind (see www.ncbi.ie for further information) and to hear Milton's poem read by many different voices in one continuous reading.

 

Established poets and writers will feature prominently among the host of voices that will be involved in the day-long reading;a number of well-known poets are already on-board. Dr Philip Coleman and Dr Crawford Gribben of the School of English are the organisers of the event;it sounds great,definitely one of the literary events of the year.

Memories

A poem I have come back to many times. Dangerously close to sentimentality, but a challenge to get it right. Normally I'd wait a long time before anyone else would get to see it, but the last draft has been sitting there for ages out-staring me.

Two Lovers Sunbathing

 

Two lovers sunbathing on the grass

in a weave of meadow sounds;

laughter swishing them

round and around.

Together,

falling into the infinite blueness of the sky,

their hands clasped,

grasping eternity in an afternoon.

One sunny afternoon

forty years ago.

Before The End

It is difficult for children to attend a dying relative. The quiet, patient listening does not come easily.The regret returns in adulthood; part of life.


Before The End.

The bedside lamp shone
in the pool of her eye;
it made her teeth translucent,
runnelled her face.

Daylight and I were reluctant visitors;
the room smelling of trapped breath,
sickness and decay
made me anxious that I might inhale her disease;

and all I loved gone,
all dwindled down to duty.

We Protect The Innocent, Don't We?

We protect our children. If there is a risk to innocent lives we do not fire. Collateral damage in war ..........is our consideration for children based on their race or nationality? Is not the the destruction of their innocent lives the ultimate act of cruelty, of racism?

Contemplating Goya

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Plate 36

 

(referring to plate 36 from THE DISASTERS OF WAR

 by Francisco Goya) 

Contemplating this corpse,

you lean back on your elbow. 

A heart not pumping,

blood not coursing. 

Is that not a corpse?

Is it not dead as a snail's shell? 

Your eyes fixed on his face;

composure. 

There, that's where you recline;

beneath his composure  

trumping the handiwork

of the hangmen who thought, 

(as they always do),

that death was the final transaction.

Upcoming Events

Culture Night 2012 is Friday, 21st Septembers. I’m looking forward to reading poems from Above Ground Below Ground at Cruachán Aí Heritage Centre in Tulsk http://www.rathcroghan.ie/ . Artist Elaine Leigh and I will present images and poems that relate to the Neolithic sites at Lough Crew in Meath, Brewell Hill and Killeen Cormac in Kildare, and the legends and myths associated with these sites. 

A body of work still in the making: the subject matter has fascinated Elaine for a number of years, I’ve only caught the bug this year, but I've been amazed at what it has taught me and at the dam-burst of ideas it has ignited, (those last few words seem to have escaped from a war comic c. 1965).

 

From  “ Above Ground Below Ground”

 

The sun enters the passage;

I meet him on my way;

he touches my head

like water. 

I emerge into day;

in the chamber

the sun dwells a moment

on my earlier impressions. 

I return after the day

to elaborate my carving,

my spirals,

my perpetual turning.

 

 

 

On Monday 24^th, I’m in Mullingar for the launching of Mullingar Scribblers, Poems and Stories Volume 5.This fantastic writer’s group, the Mullingar Scribblers, who meet on Monday nights in the Annebrook Hotel have produced excellent writing for many years; I hope they get great support from everyone in Mullingar. I might also suggest that, if you are local and half interested in writing, you could do a lot worse than call into one of their sessions.

Explaining Our Madness

A friend, contemplating the various madnesses of humanity during the week, mentioned the irony of governments paying people to save lives and kill simultaneously; only doctors save lives one by one, soldiers kill in thousands.

There is a short period in childhood when these ironies are questioned, I think this is the only time in which we can save our children from what we've perpetuated. From Sunfire...

 

   Growing Up           

Shortly you will trace lines,

leave,

join the herds,

leave a 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.

First Film of Amazonian Tribe

Loggers threaten the existence of uncontacted Amazonian tribes by removing their living resources and space, introducing diseases and by violence. One of the great problems is convincing governments that these tribes actually exist; the film instances the activities of illegal Peruvian loggers being permitted by the Peruvian government. This moving clip from a BBC Survival documentary, made with the collaboration of the Brazilian Indian Affairs Dept shows the first footage of an uncontacted tribe and was made to convince the world that these tribes do indeed exist. Visit http://www.uncontactedtribes.org/ for more.  

Gassed

In 1919 John Singer Sargent completed a large scale oil painting, Gassed. A line of First World War British soldiers, blinded by mustard gas, is led through a sea of bodies to a first aid station. The scene is appalling, and as convincing an argument for the barbarity of war as any. It is strongly reminiscent of Wilfred Owens’ Dulce Et Decorum Est:

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.
 

 

 

I found this video of the painting on Youtube. The camera picks out the detail in the painting very well, and helps to convey the horror of it all. Thanks to denise4peace on Youtube  for this.

Emigration - Empty Houses

An upshot of emigration is the aging of the population, particularly in rural parts. Old farmhouses, their young families gone, used to be a much more prevalent feature of the Irish countryside in the sixties and seventies; the  new wave  of departures may, sadly, turn the clock back. In silencing dead summer  heat, the emptiness of these houses is accentuated.   

 

 A Stranger In The Townland.

 

In Autumn the farmhouse

with the sun-folded field beneath its chin,

traps the daylight in its spectacles,

then flashes it away.

 

A swing hangs among the orchard's arthritic trees

without stirring;

without remembering

a frantic liveliness now reduced

to the occasional commotion of a falling fruit.

 

Once songs of apples filled the farmhouse;

but the children became photographs,

the dust settled on their frames

and soon Autumns were flying uncontrollably by.

Today, between its curiosities, a bluebottle drones.

 

Now that the conversation with the hillside

is ended, the farmhouse

with the sycamore stole

has become an eccentric;

a stranger in the townland. 

Arguments can be hallucinogenic.

 

The Blue Man.

 There was a manon the white line,

middle of the street;

clasping his shins,

he made a hemisphere

to cage his pain. 

Closer,

disfiguring agony;

the pain exploding,

he opened:

a carrier bag in a gust;

I saw a man o the white line,

dead of night;

I'd been in an argument,

the street was taking me

further along.

He was blue

and writhing:

carrier bag in the wind.

I threw my argument into it;

his need was greater

than mine.

Places of Literary/Arts Interest in County Roscommon

Myself and three others have just spent the last two days researching, finding and photographing sites relating to personages of literary/arts  interest in Co Roscommon. Among the places seen were John MacGahern’s barracks home in Cootehall, Percy French memorial on site of his family home, Douglas Hyde’s and O’Carolan’s burial places, Goldsmith's birthplace (disputed), William Wilde’s birthplace in Castlerea, Thomas Heazle Parke’s home in Kilmore, Hanna Greally’s cottage at Coolteigue.

Apart from the sites, the two days were spent in glorious weather; the Roscommon countryside looked magnificent. What hidden gems there are in these counties ( Sligo, Leitrim, Roscommon): Knockvicar, Cootehall, Highwood, Jamestown, Kilmore. There are so many places to be explored off the main roads all over Ireland. 

Candidate for most beautiful placename I ever come across: Eastersnow on the sign, Eastersnow graveyard.  

    

Summer Bliss

I think children gather an appreciation of nature and landscape in a way, and at a rate that is foreign to adults. They don’t appear to dwell on the moment; they don’t seem to have to declare to themselves that a place or a moment is beautiful. The appreciation seems to slip in while they’re busying themselves with something else; yet it gets in and lodges in their subconscious. Later in life it’s still there, a richness in their appreciation of life around them. I wonder how much they pick up when they appear to be otherwise engaged. 

Anyway, this poem recalls lazy childhood days and the awareness of all that’s stirring in the garden.

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.

This poem was originally included in an anthology called Real Cool - Poems to grow up with, edited by Niall MacMonagle (Martello 1994).

There Are Stars All Around

I am sitting on a park bench

 with a pool of sunlight almost on my lap;

 a cosmos of flies,

galaxies in Brownian motion,

 fills it.

I am looking into a park

after midnight;

 moths flitting beneath an unseen lamp

 are sparks streaking

from invisibility to invisibility.

I am lazing by a stream;

 the sun,

reflected in

innumerable scintillations,

 has ordered the universe

 to pulse beside my sleeve.