Ending

 

 

He, who covered my body

with snail-trails,

whose hands were wrack

swept over my skin,

kisses on my back

a colony of shell fish.

 

He, who would have crossed a mountain range

for an hour between my thighs

now crawls over me

with wizened passion.

Gutted of love,

he comes clawing,

scavenging; 

and insults me with lies

that have made greater pincers 

of his mouth than his hands.

 

What does he see in me ?

 

Meat to excite him,

his groper's desires,

even his fingertips betray him.

But no more,

the erotic becomes ugly,

decrepit manoeuvres disconnected

from their original meanings;

the touches stain you.

 

I have watched him slither from my gaze

a thousand times a night 

while slipping the word love 

from his vocabulary;

watched him develop this communication

of knives and forks.

Eerie art

Reflections in puddles and pools can throw reality into the most unexpected compositions of forms and colours. Juxtaposed with the watery medium's actual surroundings, the resulting artistic effect can be stunning.
I find this to be  particularly true of bog holes. The spare beauty of the landscapes, the bleakness of winter skies in Ireland, the suggestion, (since they tend to be oblong, rectangular), of an ethereal grave. If I stop to look, I'm likely to find myself  absorbed into melancholic thoughts.

Bog Hole

 

Mute Michael laid out on water

shivers like a flag.

 

Fissures of sky rake him,

his mouth worms.

 

Night, extinguishing the bog cotton,

finds him alone

 

treading visions,

dressed in bottomless black.

 

 

 

 

Detail from painting by Elaine Leigh. 

Time to Honour Kathleen Lynn

Suffragist, labour activist and nationalist, Kathleen Florence Lynn lived most of her life in Rathmines, and has been shamefully forgotten in a city she served selflessly and tirelessly.

She was born in County Mayo in 1874, daughter of Church of Ireland Rector, Robert Lynn. Some of her education was received at Alexandra College, Dublin; she qualified with degrees in medicine, surgery and obstetrics from the Royal University in 1899. In 1909 she was made a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons.During the Lock Out of 1913, she became involved in the relief efforts for workers and their families. This commitment to the welfare of Dublin’s poor became a driving force for the rest of her life.

Her activities brought her close to Countess Markievicz and James Connolly. She was appointed Chief Medical Officer with rank of the Captain of the Irish Citizen Army, and served in that position during the Easter Rising. Part of the City Hall Garrison, at the time they surrendered, it was Kathleen who was in command. Imprisoned after the Rising; following her release she became an active member of Sinn Féin. She was elected TD for Dublin County on the anti-treaty side in 1923. After failing to be re-elected in 1927, her involvement in politics diminished; she did remain active with the Rathmines urban district council until 1930.

Lynn lived and ran a practice at 9 Belgrave Road, Rathmines. Her commitment to Dublin’s poor was exemplified by her work at Saint Ultan's Hospital, which she founded, along with Madeleine ffrench-Mullen, in 1919 to care for impoverished mothers and infants. It was a pioneering initiative, the first infant hospital in Ireland.

She died on 13 September 1955, and was buried in Deans Grange Cemetery with full military honours.

Her sympathies with the Republican cause brought her into conflict with her family, her gender mitigated against her in her profession. In spite of all this, she persisted and is one of Ireland's great unsung heroines. Perhaps the new children’s hospital will be named after her; one way or the other, it is now time to honour Kathleen Lynn.

Two New Books: Poetry from Gerry Boland, and Pilgrim Heritage in Cork

Two launchings for your diary. I’m  delighted to be launching Gerry Boland’s new collection of poems, In the Space Between (Arlen House) in King House, Boyle at 12.00 noon on Saturday 28th November.
The second is Dr Louise Nugent and Dr Richard Scriven's Wells, Graves & Statues: Exploring the heritage and culture of pilgrimage in medieval and modern Cork, which will be launched at 7pm on Wednesday the 25th of  November at St Fin Barre's Cathedral, Cork City.

Who Has Seen the Old Men?

Poverty makes  old look older.  Clothes become outer skin. Identified by their clothing, faces become unseen. We discount the clothes before there is ever the beginning of engagement with the person's face. And so, having dehumanised many of the most needy, we can live, happily avoiding the poverty on our streets.

 

 

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 ashen clothes?

A love poem

I Give You       

 

This tree's dripping fruit

to place in your mouth

to ripen your tongue.

 

The water guttering down

these green leaves

to be a trellis of fingers

about you.

 

This soft drizzle of sunlight

to fall gentle as the petals

of meadowsweet on your cheeks.

 

This bindweed and all tendrils

to hook and bind

our desires together.

 

What Does He See Where I See Only Stone?

 

What does he see where I see only stone?

The man is still, his gaze fixed on the ground

but that gaze compels you to look again;

in such  moments a mind might overreach the stars.

 

I see my reflection, he says;

I see my hair no longer covers my head,

its silver ring above my ears, he says,

is like gorse cleared from a hill-top.

And, he says, I see the child struggling

in the young branches of childhood,

the school doors fanning him on and on

through corridors of captivity, a whirligig

through years, disremembering his own footsteps.

I see the would-be lover, and he loved his hair;

he put a shine in his eye like I polish a shoe;

and his full bracelet of teeth; my God, he could smile.

I see how time subtracts: aging dreams

till they become hobbled old goats that have outstared you,

till they have become unbelievable.

My young loves reflected back have their young faces still

but I would be afraid to see them now.

My plans and projects are shunted, rusting old carriages;

I don't visit them anymore. 

 

The old man's arms are folded so fingers lie like stripes

on his right arm, forage in the dark woolen sleeve

of his left. His head is slightly forward,

his eyes unblinking as though entranced

by weeds growing on the floor of a pond.

 

I see too that I never held the reins of a life,

that indifference is a colander, indecision has the grasp

of a hand without fingers. Days are punched down

like receipts onto a nail; named, counted, collected,

they grow into months; life flitting across the pages 

of a calendar, falling  into the holes between Christmases.

And I remember those Christmases

long ago when I was young, the totting up  ̶

over a drink  ̶̶ of departed faces and the wishes,

the wish-bone skinny wishes for the coming year

that smouldered beside a glass of stout and then went out.

 

I see those faces whose roots entangled with my own,

how arrogance blinded me so I could not see

it was the carpet of their roots that buoyed me up

until recently, feeling them slip away,

feeling the cold gaps they’ve left around me, I discovered

it wasn’t I that put the colours in my head,

and with that discovery much has toppled

that hindered my view. I see, as though from a height,

my head is indistinguishable from all the others

rushing like froth from this life that we call

living.

 

Now his face is raised, his eyes red-rimmed

with the racing bobbin that’s in his head:

I saw the ground and the scuffed toe to my shoe;

a lifetime might have no other measure than

its number of worn out shoes.

Rag Tree

A thousand dances for Patrick’s stone eyes: 

leg-kicking

heel-tapping

thigh-slapping;

each rag a soul treading thin air.  

A thousand advances on Patrick’s stone ears: 

tongue-clicking

finger-snapping

hand-clapping; 

each petition a guttering flare.

A familiar state

Writer’s Block

 

Nothing lands on this plain,

nothing moves

but its seeping emptiness.

 

Goggled pilot

high above

this snow-gagged wilderness,

 

loop or spin,

I leave no shadow;

the paper grins.

At one with nature

The reliance of humans on nature has suffered from the rise of modern religion. The disappearance of deities of the earth and our own elevation into the realms of being made in God’s image has stunted our regard for the rest of nature; nature in the service of man has blinded us to our reliance on it. Ancient societies (and not so ancient, but always disdained for their ‘backwardness’) understood the interdependence very well. Our global and daily desecration of the environment would have been seen as criminal under a different belief system. This poem by Thomas Hardy catches our oneness with nature very well. 

Transformations 

 

Portion of this yew

Is a man my grandsire knew,

Bosomed here at its foot:

This branch may be his wife,

A ruddy human life

Now turned to a green shoot.

 

These grasses must be made

Of her who often prayed,

Last century, for repose;

And the fair girl long ago

Whom I often tried to know

May be entering this rose.

 

So, they are not underground,

But as nerves and veins abound

In the growths of upper air,

And they feel the sun and rain,

And the energy again

That made them what they were!

 

The Silver River

 

 Jacket, shirt and shoes,

 his socks and trousers

neat on the bank;

 a small crowd watching from the bridge.  

silver river running  

 He was coming from a game of cards, late,

 the winnings in his pocket.

 There had been a woman,

 they had visited the priest.  

silver river running  

 But that’s long ago now.

 He worked the farm;

 a good worker, his neighbours said,

 always busy with the tractor. 

silver river running 

 He lived with his mother,

 who cooked his meals and managed the money.

 Now she was a great farming woman,

 everyone agreed. 

silver river running 

I have a photograph of him holding a child,

he didn’t look comfortable;

he sat for a while in the garden

but didn’t stay long. 

silver river running

 

A carefree lazy time

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.

Light: Man-made

Light: Man-made

 

The lights go out

down our street, through the town, country, world; 

all that fits so easily inside a head. 

A new light

tipped slightly upward in a glob

of hardened brain tissue: 

one aerodynamically perfect,

copper-bright

bullet.

 

Seamus Begley "The Bold Kerryman"

Here is Annie Laurie from Seamus Begley’s new album, The Bold Kerryman. What a beautiful voice he has.

The song is based, in all likelihood, on a poem written by William Douglas (1672 - 1748), with amendments in the 1850's by Alicia Scott, (Lady John Scott), who set it to music.

Douglas wrote the poem for his sweetheart, Annie. But Robert Laurie, Annie's father, was not in favour of the romance leading anywhere, owing to her young age and Douglas's political views. He, a soldier, was later exiled for his Jacobite allegiances.

Given the beautiful melancholic atmosphere of Begley's rendition, it would be nice to conclude this piece by describing how she died of a broken heart,  and he lived out  his life in total dejection, till eventually they  were buried side by side near Maxwelton brae. In fact, they both found marriage partners and lived long lives. And, well, sorry.........................................maybe I've just ruined it.

 

 

Annie Laurie 

"Maxwelton braes are bonnie
Where early falls the dew
And it was there that Annie Laurie
Gave me her promise true

Gave me her promise true
Which never forgot will be
And for bonnie Annie Laurie
I would lay me down and die.

Her brow is like the snowdrift
Her neck is like the swans
Her face it is the fairest
That ever the sun shone on.

That ever the sun shone on
And dark blue is her eye
And for bonnie Annie Laurie
I would lay me down and die.

Like dew on the gowan lying
Is the fall of her fairy feet
And like the winds in summer sighing
Her voice is low and sweet.

Her voice is low and sweet
And she's all the world to me
And for bonnie Annie Laurie
I'd lay me down and die"

Magical Fore

 

 

This is Fore. It is one of the few places I know where a stone building sits as comfortably into natural surroundings as though it were a limestone outcrop. Fore is a place of outstanding beauty; the ruined Benedictine abbey actually succeeds in drawing  attention to the peace and beauty of the valley around it. The immediate impact comes from its lack of commercialization; it comes on the traveler as something magical, something that  rose from the green fields beneath it. There was a time when Clonmacnoise had the same magic, but poor and tasteless development put an end to that.

Consequently,(and not surprisingly), some magical myths have grown up around Fore. Here are the 7 wonders of Fore: the monastery in the bog, the mill without a race, the water that flows uphill, the tree that has three branches/the tree that won’t burn, the water that won’t boil, the anchorite in a stone and the stone/lintel raised by St Fechin’s prayers.