The Green Road

The blackthorns above Fenore
are flight rooted;
they are folklore’s skeletons,
beggars of the green road.

Scoured to the knuckle,
stunted on burren karst,
they are the hags on the mountain
hunched from Atlantic gales.

Yet even this stone-weary day,
with hunger perched on their throats,
a robin is singing in each
notes that singe the February air.

Beneath the huddling sky,
into the ear of the green road
it pours, clear as water,
the music of tin whistlers’ dreams.

Doesn't red sound nice

From Ted, a compelling argument for becoming a cyborg.

Anguish




 

Mouth:

howl, that shape.

 

We

leave it space.
 

 

The space gets bigger.

Detail from Francis Bacon's Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion,1944

 

Once my father and I found a skull

in a field with the hum of a bee inside.

My father said it was a last thought,

that a man’s last thought stays forever

in his head. 

I didn’t want to touch the skull,

just to move closer to see a last thought;

but as I did the bee flew out and I ran

terror-stricken back to my father;

horrified for having tipped the natural order.

Expressing Depression

 'O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall/Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed'.

These lines cause me to wonder if the search for the appropriate words, and the subsequent expression of one's condition helps to ease the effects of depression. By making a prayer of it, I assume Hopkins was shifting some of the weight towards heaven.


No Worst, there is None.

                                   by Gerard Manley Hopkins

No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,

More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.

Comforter, where, where is your comforting?

Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?

My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief

Woe, wórld-sorrow; on an áge-old anvil wince and sing —

Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked "No ling-

ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief."

    O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall

Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap

May who ne’er hung there. Nor does long our small

Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,

Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all

Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.

 

 

In My Mouth

Love, the word: 

lush;

a summer night’s rain.

Itself:

taut, brittle.

 

I had it on the end of a forceps;

bead of mercury:

it escaped.

Love, the word:

I swallowed it. 

Demented Trees

Trees keening winter nights away;

their wails woven into the wind.

Heads of hair like seaweed from the strand,

knots tailing limply towards the sea.

Underground, roots twisted toward some source,

shaped by memory.

Trees like abandoned lovers,

scratching down the marble of night-time.

from Above Ground Below Ground

Seamus Heaney

In the last few days, thousands of people will be remembering the day the met Seamus Heaney; experiencing the sadness one experiences on losing a friend. He had that ability, with gentle smile and generous engagement, to make a stranger a friend in a fleeting exchange.

It seems appropriate to listen again to his beautiful poem ‘When all the others were away at Mass’, now that those encounters are memories.

This links to footage of him reciting some of his most famous poems; ‘When all the others were away at Mass’ is included.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/ailbhemalone/videos-of-seamus-heaney-reading-his-poems-aloud

The Roscommon Anthology - Culture Night Reading

The Roscommon Anthology  will most likely be launched in October, but the first Anthology reading will happen on Culture Night. Alice Lyons, Gerry Boland (Roscommon's current writer in residence) and myself will be reading at 7pm, Friday, 20th September in Roscommon Library. As with all events on Culture Night, admission is free. So put it in the book.

Voice from 1889 - Robert Browning

English poet, Robert Browning (1812 – 1889)  reciting his poem 'How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix' on  April 7th, 1889. It was recorded on the Edison Cylinder.



There is a treasure trove of rarities at https://www.youtube.com/user/transformingArt/videos

Which is my face?

First published in Prairie Schooner, Volume 85, Number 4, Winter 2011

Mary Byrne

Old Mary Byrne posed for the camera
holding a photograph
of herself taken years ago.
 

Two faces:
the first a plate
embellished for display;
 

the second
a pattern of neolithic swirls
engraved into stone
 

—a life carved into its face—
two dangling earrings:
two broken chains.

 

Famine: Media Coverage

A Brief Note on an Imminent Famine.

Everyone here will starve:
each bone will be a stripe,
each hand a bowl,
each leg a stick.

Then there’ll be the gluttony
of cameras:
our threadbare skin
will be devoured,
our eyes exported
shining like pickles.

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. 

This man 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 sons 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,

outside the thrash of traffic and voices. 

In a moment:

two strangers on a bench are traveling backwards to Mayo;

elsewhere a beggar has recreated himself in a bank window

and somewhere, busy in a kitchen, a woman is conversing

though the voice that answers has not been heard for years.

The Old Men

 The breed of old men I’m remembering is gone now. I remember them out from the county home, on walks into town or sitting on the low stone wall in summer sunshine. They were countrymen, wore well battered suits and flat caps, leaned on walking sticks and did or didn’t say hello. Some, of course, were very friendly, and some carried bags of sweets. The women were less visible usually; they tended to stay closer to the old building.

I didn’t realise it then but a lot of them had sad stories, and the silent ones had good reason. Some were almost dumped there, for others the Co. Home was a salvation. For many, the old home was still too close to its workhouse history to  be a comfort, and maybe some recognized in the old double ditch, 400 yards on the road, the boreen that led to the workhouse cemetery.

Whatever, they were very much part of the grain of my Roscommon childhood. 

Who Has Seen The Old Men

Who has seen the old men

getting their suits

tanned to their backs? 

Ghost of a check,

button holes frayed,

crew cut threads. 

Years worn on face

and on cloth;

the cloth becomes the face. 

And when the Summer colours

come clashing

on the young,  

who will see

the old men

in their concrete cloth?

The Fall

When apples fall

like pocket watches

among the trees

and leaves

like closing old hands,

the fog is rising,

old souls

over the green.

There is a quietness

like padded feet

or, quietest of all,

the droplets

playing in the hedge;

and the grumpy whimper

of hedgehogs

scuttling for their sleep. 

Most of all I notice

                the thud of Winters

changing children into men.