Cities

 

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:

 

the cannibal jazz

of cities.

 

Where Are You

         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.

 

Love

The idea, the word, the wish, the conjecture. High and low flying. The fog. Nothing easy or thought out but defeats you there, at the bottom of a series of rungs. Because nothing is so high-flying in our aspirations. Where dreams and bodies collide with such vehemence, a triumph is unlikely, only that fog. And the fog eats, or demolishes; because, somehow, that's what's chosen. Somehow demolition is easier in stress.

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. 

  

Art and poetry

                                               

                          Van Eyck: The Crucifixion with the Virgin and St John

  El Greco: The Crucifixion

 

       

Mantegna: Women at the crucifixion

 

 

Both, like plasticine, can be so malleable or, at the other end of the scale, so nuanced.  Small suggestions take you somewhere else: a new direction, a new discovery. So much is so possible from the same root. A new colour, turn of a limb may bring a new, altogether different image, as the magnetic words on the fridge quite randomly scatter into unexpected meanings, fresh ideas.  


 

Bacon: Three |Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion

 

 

      Three Monsters. 
 

Here are three monsters:

Agony, a greyhound skinned; howl.

Hollowness, a hen plucked;  peck.

Dementia, a bundle of hay;  scratch.
 

 

I have stood them on furniture

to pose.
 

They were in the entrails of spirit,

I picked them out with a forceps.

I thought they looked remarkable in the light.

I thought the viewing public

might want to scrape at them

with their spatulas.

 

 

Mont Sainte Victoire

 

Cezanne's Mountain 

i

Like ice, like iron,

glass, air, granite.  

 

The sun inside it,

through it, off it.

 

Purpling into thunder,

convulsing cumulusly,

 

bulging

 into storm.  

 

ii 

Sugary brilliance this morning,

the brow of Provence

clear as the first day;

a tooth, a molar.

The Beauty

From the shit slops she grew;

we marvelled.

Such a slim, graceful beauty

from our soil,

that crystalline perfection

from our sphagnum sponge;

such iciness, hauteur.

 

Such a bitch, we all agreed,

yet every man longed for her gaze

to soften on him.

To be in her ice trail,

to hope to bed her;

such power over men and women:

the witch.

from Painting Women

 

 

                         Balance 

                                                                                                                                              a brushstroke tips it

  

       He adds                                                                                     counterweights

                                                              

                                                                                                                                                        corrects

  

                     She arrives                                                                by bristles of a

  

                                                              brush          

  

                                                                                  a construction                                                                 of
     
   light

  

                                      acrylic

  

                                                                                                                         on  paper                 

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.

Where the poetry comes from

Reflection and dreaming, in a nutshell.

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.

Reviving the Irish language: a cultúrlann for Dublin

Why throw our hands up in despair? The Irish language is on the verge of extinction; we’ve known all along, the death rattles have been deafening for a hundred years. In highlighting the rapid decline in the usage of the Irish language in the Gaeltacht areas, the authors of the recent report have also drawn into question the current Government’s level of commitment to the preservation of our language.

A friend of mine, language teacher from Germany, visiting Dublin asked to go somewhere where she could hear the language being used. I balked. The same difficulty applied to myself years ago, when as one of a group of sixteen year olds returning from the Irish language summer college, we agreed to have a reunion in Dublin; but where? Where is the centre for speakers of our language in our capital city?

2016 is a year of celebration; the question being asked is how best do we commemorate, not only the people and events of 1916, but our Irishness. I suggest that the finest and most practical gesture we can make is the establishment of a cultúrlann that, at one stroke, solves difficulties like those I’ve outlined and proclaims our commitment to the preservation of our Irish heritage. And we don’t have to reinvent the wheel, but look at the model that is Cultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich, just up the road in Belfast.

Coffee shop, theatre, art gallery, book-shop; a place that will encourage all who want to speak Irish, hear it spoken. A warm place, open all day and full of positivity towards the Irish language and culture. For now we need people with some imagination and a fondness for Irish in order to make a start.

With You

   

The fields, green with snow

under an apple blue sky; 

you, brimming

winter’s brightness, 

turning cartwheels;

your whole body grinning. 

The silver trees of our breathing

in full flower; 

my golden happiness

in being with you 

till the shafts of shadow

turned purple at sunset; 

       and our hours together

       colourless at parting.

Country Childhood

I was blessed to have a country childhood. The freedom to come and go without the constant monitoring for safety. We had the run of the town and surrounding countryside. I would like to think that it's still that way now, but probably not.



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.

Notice to children

The Aos Sí (Sídhe), the fairy folk of Ireland are alive and well and are living beneath the sídhe, fairy mounds dotted all around Ireland. They are reputed to be the Tuatha Dé Danann who retreated underground after defeat in battle by the Milesians.Though sometimes referred to as a beautiful race, and always ready to dance, they are also associated with carrying out a range of dastardly deeds,  particularly the stealing of babies, and sometimes people not so young.

 

Children’s Song 
                                     from Above Ground Below Ground
 

The piper’s notes come whistling clear,

as in the days of yore;

they leap and prance to the piper’s tune

as wildly as before. 
 

For still they dance, the fallen ones,

beneath earth’s prison door;

for still they dance, the fallen ones,

enraptured by the score. 
 

A child that plays among the stones

might tempt them from their lair

to substitute a grey-haired imp

for a boy with golden hair. 
 

For still they dance, the fallen ones,

in the heat of the molten core,

for still they dance, the fallen ones,

beneath our earthen floor. 
 

Now children who must pass the mound,

respect this ancient lore;

and when at last you curl to sleep

be sure you’ve locked the  door. 
 

For still they dance, the fallen ones,

to this endless encore;

for still they dance, the fallen ones,

and will for ever more.

 

 

 

Literary Competition for Writers with Roscommon Connection

New Roscommon Writing Award 2015 First Prize €500

Competition Rules

·        Entries, in English, on any theme, in any literary form, will be accepted.

·        The competition is open to anyone over 18. All entrants must have a connection with the county of Roscommon (born in, living in, currently working in, went to school in, etc).

·        Typed entries (handwritten entries cannot be accepted) must be no more than 500 words. Mark the number of words in your entry on the bottom of the page. Entries over the 500 word limit will be automatically disqualified.

·        Include your name, address and contact details, plus your connection to the county. Include these on a separate page, not on your entry.

·        There is no entry fee. All entries must be received by 30 August, 2015.

·        The competition will be adjudicated by Jessamine O Connor. The judge’s decision is final.

·        Post your entry to: NEW ROSCOMMON WRITING AWARD 2015, Roscommon Arts Office, Roscommon West Business Park, Circular Road, Roscommon. You may also email your entry to:  mmullins@roscommoncoco.ie. Title your email NEW ROSCOMMON WRITING AWARD 2015.