Stone: Christian and Pre-christian

Whether it be the ruined castles or celtic crosses, megalithic dolmens or round towers,  Ireland's greatest treasures are made of stone. To my mind, they are at their most beautiful when you come upon them expectedly: unsign-posted, undeveloped. And yet we need them as part of our tourism. It's an old bone of contention now, but I would go for heritage centres  away from these sites. I'd go for centres in local towns that highlight what's in the district, supply maps, information, lore.

If there must be development at the site, I'd go for small; not overwhelming. Carrowmore neolithic cemetery ( 6000 to 3000 BC) in Sligo is a case of the latter; the centre is modest, allowing the megalithic remains their space on the landscape.

St Patrick's Well at Oran, Co Roscommon would be passed in the blink of an eye as one drives around a bend on a road. The remains of the nearby round tower is the only evidence of its ancient importance. The unexpected discovery of the round tower added hugely to the pleasure of seeing the well. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                           St Patrick's Well at Oran, Co. Roscommon

St Patrick's Well at Oran, Co. Roscommon

 

Megalithic Tomb inside Cairn at Carrowmore, Sligo

Mick O'Dea, the artist

Mick O'Dea is perhaps best known for his portraits; his 2010 portrait of Brian Friel being a beautiful example of what he does so wonderfully.

But as the YouTube video above shows, he is far more than a portraitist. This will be borne out by a visit to his website, which I strongly recommend.

http://mickodea.carbonmade.com/

City Lives

 

City Lives.

They shout into space,

answer each other like whales

across great haunted distances;

they never meet,

only sound waves ever meet.

  

Alone in their canyons,

hives,

shoals

they roar.

Rooms upon rooms

upon houses upon houses

upon streets upon streets:

roars spilling out,

spilling over,

spilling down.

 

A million sound waves,

a million discordancies

tumbling, surging, 

pouring out

onto the streets,

into the traffic,

wheels, cogs, pistons:

 

that cannibal jazz

of cities.

 

A poem about something I can hardly explain

This poem is about something I can hardly explain,

our twenty-third year in this house,

the laburnum, again, filling our bedroom window

with its solar brilliance.

We met Graham outside, on the street.

He said “didn’t you hear about Evelyn, (his wife),

we buried her last Saturday.

I looked at your house, you were away.”

I am in bed. My wife,

her arm casually across me, is sleeping.

I am looking at the laburnum;

I look at it like this every year.

New or Old Religion

Old religion it may be, but worship of the goddess of the earth ensured that earth was not defiled. Ecology for pre-science days; the planet would be in a be in a far healthier state if those beliefs still prevailed.

 

Clay in her mouth,

clothed in darkness, caged in stone.  

She speaks in

the crumbling of mountains,

creeping of oceans across continents. 

When she pauses,

earthworms devour boulders.

All the beautiful days

"All the beautiful days,

 all the beautiful days...." 

And he died

with all the beautiful days

like a wishbone in his throat. 

Two passers-by stopped and looked: 

How did his eyes become like that?

They became bleached blue with liquor madness. 

How did his face get so torn up?

He often fell but was not dead. 

And old, why is he so old?

Because he fought with every single day,

and each day's victory was notched into his face.

 

                                                                           from Sunfire (Dedalus Press, 97)

Painting Skin

Watching artist, Mick O’Dea, building up the layers of colour that are in skin was a revelation to me.

Her skin is clear and white (as I see it);

he picks out the heat and cold

that is in her flesh.

So her belly is blue and green,

colours I have seen

where rubbish stirs in low tide.

She is a frame for the hanging

of a thousand colours.

They are inside each other, 

wash in and out of each other;

overlapping, under-lapping.

They graze on each other,

slap, fall, meld, hide,

shimmer, swelter, drown;

no rules until completion.

The brush, searching for challenges,

rushes about the page putting out fires,

anxious for a thousand perfections.

Tonight I Nearly Died

Tonight I Nearly Died.

 

Tonight I nearly died

in the Sunday chain

returning to Dublin.

A scythe

arched onto the road.

As I rushed

I nearly overtook life. 

What did I learn? 

My eyes are good

dilated in horror.

 
                                                              from Sunfire (Dedalus Press, 1997)

Face

A face in a window

told me all I needed to know

about age.

The colourlessness, darkness,

confinement. 

A face that stared through me,

that saw or not,

cared not ─

blank as its countenance ─

for all that moved. 

A face

on a north-facing window-sill,

turned outward

for that day

toward the sun on the other side.

 

A Moment Certified By Lovers

A Moment Certified By Lovers.

 

It's a certifiable moment

a punch-drunk second

a pulse's high tide.

 

A dog eats grass

a water drop shivers

a barrel fills to its brim

an apple falls 
a body drifts 

a face buckles

a lover screams.

 

At the tip of an orgasm

passion powders;

the creek turns to dust.

 

 

 

                                           from Sunfire, (Dedalus Press, 1997)

Three Scenes from a Midland Town

Three Scenes from a Midland Town

1.

Marty Regan’s shiny coffins are loitering

along the out-house wall.

Lukie Dyer, waiting outside Anderson’s pub,

fag burnt close to the knuckles,

is doubled over in a fit of coughing. 

2.

Toothless,

Pete Boland’s  grin

floods his face.

His eyes are

salmon leaping.

3.

After mass

the pints

on Murphy’s counter

are a meeting of stout clerics.

 

A Primitive Death

One eye a bog-hole, the other a slab,

bleached blue of a childhood memory.

I walked on water, sank in the marble,

its thought engulfing me,

its emptiness a net.

Looking at You

 

How her face changes when she is sleeping. I have not seen that face before, where is she?

Where do the zillions go in the sleeping hours?

And when she comes back, her mask reset; will this face be taut beneath,  waiting for the next night's darkness?

 

Looking At You.  

 

Now asleep:

Are you young again?  

When your body loosens out

And your eyes needn't see me

And your face unravels from its cares;  

Is it me you'll want to escape from?  

To run back, hurdling over the years,

To seek out your first lover, and to nestle

In that small space of time before doubts began.

 

 

Static State

“Parents who never showed their love, complain of want of natural affection in their children; children who never showed their duty, complain of want of natural feeling in their parents; law-makers who find both so miserable that their affections have never had enough of life's sun to develop them, are loud in their moralisings over parents and children too, and cry that the very ties of nature are disregarded.”

Charles Dickens in Nicholas Nickleby on a universal truth. It is seems to me, not much has changed: the state turns to state bodies in education, health and justice to deal with familial issues, and they moralise according to the prevailing winds of the time.

 “Natural affections and instincts, my dear sir, are the most beautiful of the Almighty's works, but like other beautiful works of His, they must be reared and fostered, or it is as natural that they should be wholly obscured, and that new feelings should usurp their place, as it is that the sweetest productions of the earth, left untended, should be choked with weeds and briers”.

More Distrust

With the mask removed,

his face was old, shrunken;

too human; less than, almost. 

We had forgotten, lost proportion,

it came as a shock;

that’s true. 

It was a morning of masks,

that was the currency;

my eyes grew too big.

Though this poem relates to a different issue altogether, there is something in it that applies to the current controversy involving the Garda force and the Government.

I think we have for too long allowed our politicians, wearing their politician hats, to prevaricate, issue bucket-loads of disingenuous verbiage, condescend at will to the general public.Too often the side-step that is so obviously a shoring up of their own positions; that lack of honesty, and utter lack of moral backbone.

But we too seem to have lost  perspective; so long seeing their public 'masks', we seem to have lost proportion. Should shovel-loads of prevarication etc. not be taken as a failure by our 'leaders' to  account to those whom they are supposed to represent. And should the growing distrust of our politicians not be put down to their mis-handling of leadership, ineptitude in responsible positions.

The inability of those with responsibility to apologise is always worrying, but we should not accept it as the currency.


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