Leaving

Loch Ryan is Pink

Loch Ryan is pink.

Stranraer is curling up in a corner

with its people shrinking inside it.

I'm watching the hills' colour draining away

so they become just shadows of a land.

Only the gulls are real and even they

look more like discarded wrappers.

I am looking back over the stern

with the wind pouring down the port-side,

a wisp of the emigrant's sadness blows over me.

This receding shore to another Irishman

might have been Lough Foyle or Cobh or Sligo

and the light at Malin or Tory might

have been the last twinkle before the ship

buried itself in the Atlantic darkness.

The last beads of land would have been treasure

to be stored but instead they are like water.

As the day funnels even further to the west

Scotland makes itself small; somehow it  seems

to be leaving us; turning away. The ship's trace

is a luminous wake and a highway of smoke;

you, who have left no trace, are already forgotten.

I imagine them homeless on board a Christmas tree

bobbing on an ocean between two continents.

A Sad Week

It is the week of the Nice atrocity;

beyond the Gap, I see,

draped over a roadside memorial stone,

a tee-shirt flapping in the wind.

Elsewhere, a man decides

the universes of eighty-four minds

must be obliterated;

eighty-four lives to the wind.

How men assume themselves God:

make plots of hatred

where there were gardens of innocence,

conjecture bullets as seeds.

My most sincere sympathy to the relatives and friends of all those who died this week.

Imagine the countries of Europe erecting fences

Imagine the countries of Europe erecting Auschwitzian barbed-wire fences

with no man’s land between: grassy lanes lush with ragworth, thistle and buttercup.

Imagine, like water released into channels, migrants flowing into these paths,

growing from trickle to torrent, eventually filling them; a teeming mass

constantly jostled onward to no destination.

The season passing into winter, the grassy paths turned muddy with traffic, then frozen under snow;

a metre to either side border guards watching with disinterested expressions.

Imagine these flowing borders across the map of Europe,

serenaded with the music of its civilization from behind the wires of Hungary, Austria,

the Czech Republic: Mozart, Bartok, Mahler…….

The seasons pass, bodies pile up against the fences like layers of insulation;

and the citizens all snug in their European Agreements.  

Saturn devouring his son

Even by Game of Thrones standards, Rubens depiction of Saturn devouring his son is grotesque. There is a matter of factness in the way Saturn is going about his business that is chilling. Ramsay Bolton would be reminding us of his jaw-dropping barbarity, but this guy is just doing it. And he has reason, knowing that among the deities, sons usurp their fathers. Then there’s the ripping of the flesh off the chest; it’s not the usual “off with his head” approach, but more the way one might eat chicken (without cutlery, I mean ). Saturn with an old man’s dishevelled grey hair, bushy eye-brows, loss of body-tone so wonderfully achieved; it’s a realistic impression, and it’s an impression that stresses that all is being done with the utmost (albeit depraved) sanity.

Goya’s Saturn , on the other hand is comic-book; he looks completely  ‘out of his tree’; whichever end of the carcass was  topmost would, of course, be the end that got chewed off first. And since the headless body seems to be of adult proportions, this Saturn is a giant. As regards which Saturn I’d prefer to bump into, I suppose I’d take my chances with the first; on the other hand, since he looks like any old man, I might well run him and not recognise anything different in him; and that’s serious menace.

It helps me to use images like these to spur ideas in my own writing. The various different interpretations of Goya’s painting (time devouring the young, Spanish war efforts devouring its youth, deaths of Goya’s own children, relations with his son)  are prime fodder for poetry and the images can prepare the stage. But isn’t it intriguing how completely different the poem would end up if based on one or the other of these two images?  

Imagination and Terror

        Sunfire

When sunset was a match put to the western sky,

hell blazed over the Galway Road.

From my bedroom window, I watched the clouds catching fire,

the inferno spreading towards my house.

At the end of the day, hell conquered heaven.

My house so close;

getting into bed, I anticipated apparitions,

knowing that God’s bright sun had fallen into that fire.  

Old Truths

It is not growing like a tree

In bulk, doth make man better be;

Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,

To fall a log at last, dry, bald and sere;

A lily of a day

Is fairer far in May,

Although it fall and die that night;

It was the plant and flower of Light.

In small proportions we just beauties see;

And in short measures life may perfect be.

I was listening to the radio today, to an item about the proliferation in the use of steroids by young men and the harmful side-effects they cause. The issue of people’s dissatisfaction with what is normal and natural again; how long has the discussion on the links between the role-models in fashion and eating disorders in young women been going on? Surely it is time to demand greater responsibility from the image-makers.

The poem prompts a second thought. A time of wall to wall, ‘crash bang wallop’ entertainments is unlikely to be the time of greatest happiness: every aspect of normal life diminished in scale by digital/celluloid constructs. I wonder to what extent we have lost the ability to recognize the quieter, more subtle beauties nature puts in our way.

 It may be couched in old-fashioned terms, but Ben Jonson’s poem seems as relevant as ever. 

Douglas Hyde Conference 2016

It’ll be my third year in the chair. An outstanding line-up of speakers will address the conference on the theme ‘Telling Tales of Revolution’. But it’s ‘tales’ in a very broad sense. Robert Ballagh will talk on the story-telling in his paintings; Derek Warfield, founder of the Wolfe Tones, on his experience from  a lifetime singing rebel songs; Alan Titley on the references to revolution in Gaelic literature prior to 1916. Frank Allen will tell the story of ‘Twelve Days In May’, a film on James Connolly, which is now in production under the direction of Danny Boyle and is due for international release in the autumn. Gerald Dawe, Luke Gibbons, Vincent Pierse, Niamh Parsons, Liz Gillis and Kevin Hora on a diverse range of topics; the conference takes place in Ballagderreen, Co Roscommon on July 21st.

Information at  http://www.roscommoncoco.ie/en/Services/Community/Arts_Office/the-douglas-hyde-conference.html

Memories of Galway

It's a  lifetime ago. I mean I wrote this poem a lifetime ago. My student-life in Galway, well that's two lifetimes ago. But this poem does catch my Galway. 

Do I still have a soft spot for that city: no, I don't think so. Happiest memories so rooted in their time and place, that the place can never live up to them. Best to leave those locations shimmering as they do in your head. 

From Galway

1.

At half past five we cracked dawn on the Salmon Weir,

swished the rose-coloured sky around our eyes,

clinked our voices.

Then on down College Road like circus folk,

past Johnny Ward's, past the university

where the crows were blowing the ears off the trees,

past the Regional and Kelehan's

and on out to Salthill to shine out loud with the ocean.               

  

2.

I remember Galway's soft drizzle,

each droplet carrying an atom of perfume

from the Glenard garden hedges.

My night-time walks in  that lazy spray:

onto Threadneedle Road,  down to the prom,

out onto the diving board at Blackrock.

Then the palm of mist along my cheek;

the tide repeating

easy, easssssy, easssssssy.

 3.

Each evening the flotilla of swans returns to the Claddagh;

they are, through half-closed eyes,

a thousand yachts drifting by like ghosts.

On the far wall a trawler slumps;

sometimes children run to it but it disappoints them. 

Here is the colour of Galway,

that falls from the clouds that mop the spires,

that rises again in the Burren hills across the bay.   

4.

The boats went on the river in May.

Nothing was more beautiful than the wooden thud

of the oars, than the glare into the eyes,

the voices over the water, that slow slow progress

and the gurgling beneath the boat.

And sometimes into the reeds,

where sunlight fell as though a Japanese screen,

its spectrum on the water disturbed

by a thousand dark lines like flamingoes' legs.

That first year my eyes were studded with splinters

 of sunlight, my ears flooded with the ripples' laughter.

  

5.

It was cosy in the Cellar:

the fire, the bodies, the sunshine that we snared

in our pints of lager,

Gerry Mulholland licking out tunes on the piano,

the whiff of Balkan Sobranie.

All day long heads were coming round the door,

hippies with jester-clothed kids,

long-haired musicians with slaked tongues,

mothers battering through with buggies and shopping.

Sometimes Andy, shambling behind the bar,

undoubled long enough to vent a curse-like greeting,

if he saw you, if he remembered you, if he had no choice.

Then closing time: the wind invited in the opened door

and that god-awful glass scraping down the window-pane.

6.

In Winter the rain made sizzling sounds on Shop Street,

rivulets of shop-lighting rushed along the gutters

with yachting cartons that collected in the grates;

slate-coloured people ran doorway to doorway and

bus queues stood limp and dripping like clothes on a line.

Each footfall splashed a halo of water, soaking shoes;

collars were pinned closed with fingers;

but I remember  that the rain made cables of your hair

and they ran currents down your back.

7.

Out Newcastle Road, down Saint Mary's,

past the Claddagh Palace, the Cottage, the Warwick;

and Salthill still asleep with that blank look

on its doors as though drink had not yet been discovered.

Then down onto the strand where the swish of the sea

filled our ears like shells, where we wrote our names,

where the sun found us and shaded in

that group of shadows it never found again.

8.

There was a house on Nun's Island we fancied

where the water ran almost to the door.

Sometimes we would walk around that way

just to see it, just to say our house is looking well.

I never mention it to anyone;

I’ve passed it and passed without looking;

that moment invisible to everyone but us.

And I don’t see you. I wonder how you are. 

\

The poem in Sunfire had a stanza edited out that I quite like, it was this:

Do you remember, Martin, that Sunday in May,

you and I were on the river about twelve,

a beautiful Summer morning

and we heard the music of flageolets?

So we stopped and looked, but there was no one.

Fifty yards away the Menlo road ran behind a grassy bank

and a low stone wall. The music kept rising

but there was only ourselves on the water.

A band was playing marches right beside us;

the river was still, there was a rock near the boat

with a smooth round back, 

And then above the wall a child's head appeared,

then two, then four, and maybe fifty more,

only to disappear as soon, dragging their tail of music

behind them.

Among the Ruins

If it was whole, Dunbrody Abbey would be beautiful. However, the ruin stands, like so many monastic ruins throughout  Ireland, a magnificently sculpted limestone outcrop in the middle of a field; majestic in its isolation and its remains; lichened to the colours of the Irish sky; colours that nature knows befit the Irish landscape .

If it was whole, all that it is would be before you. As it is, you must rebuild, refurbish, re-carve.  Here and there small ornamental flourishes survive in its stonework; imagination kicks in, but it is too great a task to restore all that wonderful ornamentation; enough to know that it was there. Searching out these small details becomes a treasure hunt.

If it was whole, the roof would exclude the sky and the light; the lancet windows would be of stained glass not of moving clouds, the floor would be darkly flagged, the recesses as black as caves. Today it is  a flood of  glorious daylight.

Shape-shifter

The shape-shifter, Púca, in Irish mythology is a tricky guy. His moods vary hugely, from malevolent to mischevous, even, on occasion, to kindly. There is more than a suggestion that sightings and encounters with the Púca were alcohol induced. So, arriving home in the early hours with a variety of wounds on the body would, don't you know,  result from an unfortunate meeting with a puc goat on the  narrow road home.
There is however, in Púca's various guises, iconic images picked from the Irish landscape and  Irish lore. Though not of Irish origin, he, like so many immigrants over the centuries, became more Irish than the Irish themselves.
Here is Elaine Leigh's stunning 'Púca' which features in our collaborative work Above Ground Below Ground.

                                                                   
                                                         Shape-shifter

Gull I fly, spark from an anvil;

goat leaping, fraying rag.

Eagle swooping, slivered sunlight;

horse exhaling piston-jets of steam.

Hound darting, arrow-swift,

hare sentinel of the jewelled morning.

Lizard slithering tress down stone,

bull pounding bodhrán of the earth.

Chopin

A stream is sparkling. The notes are swirling. Eddies, cascades, runs, sprays; coloured pebbles flickering beneath; sunlight glinting off the surfaces: aqueous diamond, facets fluid.

That magnificent play of light into the eyes, tickling senses into pleasure even exultation, as near to breaking into a sprint as the spirit ever will.

The notes spill down the aural canals, trickle through the auditory nerves; speckled light, now fast now  slow; now curved, smooth as treacle; now splintering sparks from a bonfire.

Walking along the Grand Canal outside Dublin

Beyond The Twelfth Lock.

All the world was in a pool by the canal;
all the Autumn,
all the Summer turned peacock 
gazing at itself
quietly, still, face to the water.

Where I had seen the swans
flaming in Spring,
today I came on Summer, 
gold and beautiful,
about to die.

Damp and Drizzle.

     

Damp wet, wet, wet.

Grim drizzle

Leaning against the wall

All day.

If I could hum the mood

In your ear

You'd know what I mean;

You'd remember.

Representative of the Common Man?

I was listening, recently, to an interview in which an Irish businessman was outlining the necessity of capitalism. It was a familiar story: those who create wealth for all must have the reward of affluence to motivate their efforts. That wealth is then divvied up among all; he would acknowledge that there were basic entitlements at the lower end e.g. education, a home etc. His philosophy acknowledges that greed is a driver for humankind, and inequality is an inescapable aspect of it all. So be it.

Part of the reward for wealth, though, is the belonging to a class that can ‘afford’ privilege; privilege that permeates all facets of life, that is passed onto succeeding generations, deserving or not. Within a skip and a hop from that philosophy then, we have the divided society in which many are set for cannon fodder (or one of its peacetime guises) and others to be part of the elite who can enjoy uninterrupted comfort through the privations of others.

This, then, leads me to wonder how anyone can imagine that someone like Donald Trump can possibly be a suitable representative for the American in the street.

Margaret.     (d. 1961)

 

Child that played and skipped

and ran, 

climbed among the trees

when the adult was as far away

as death itself;

woman in a countryside

of old men and their wives

turning spidery;

rain and years

between herself and old age;

London: Irish skivvy, 

that rolling unrolling knot

of mop, bucket and woman 

paid with poverty for accepting

oblivion.

Spitalfields and squalor;

a dark coat, bark-rough face

beaten to a glower;

culprit and victim,

drink took them both.

When yellow was the perfect colour

Yellow has that unfortunate connotation in battle. But yellow is a warm light. And blazing gorse is the fullest vent of Summer's exuberance. A yellow rose on the verge of full bloom is the promise of just that. 

The Yellow Rose.

                for Alan Biddle (1952-1994).

When his eyes had shut for good

and his face was just a face

and conversation had slowed

to the ebb and flow of memories

speaking among themselves,

a small gesture recast the day.

She placed a yellow rose on his chest

over the picture of the Sacred Heart.

The gentleness of that moment;

the single rose: how well chosen;

how well she chose it.

His face changed, full of ease

as through all his illness,

but death had sculpted warmth away.

His eyes shut against us,

fingers tangled up in rosary beads;

I'll remember him alive

or remember the rose when he was dead.