A Poem: An Image

Image© Matthew Gammon

Roscommon County Council are hosting an exhibition entitled, 'A Poem: An Image', in the Civic Offices in Roscommon which will is running until Oct 20th. It comprises 16 poems written in response to 16 images, and is definitely worth visiting.

My poem, Returning, was written in response to Matthew Gammon's moving and very evocative image shown above. 

Returning

Houses are funny: boxes really, boxes of memories,

even in decay,

even though the memories are peeling.

The walls, soaked with voices, breathing out their memories

which settle, a fine dust around you.

You, who entered, no longer here;

you, who is here, transfixed in this presence of the past;

an in-between place: you and spirits

and yourself that once was;

and it all settling, a fine dust around you.

Escalation 2017

You’re mad.

You’re nuts.

You’re mad.

You’re nuts.

That’s it, I’m going to kill you and everyone who knows you.

You can’t, cos I’m going to kill you and everyone who knows you first.

There I told you; you’re mad.

You’re nuts.

You’re mad.

You’re nuts.

The Light of Innocence

The lake: shape of a dress thrown haphazardly onto the ground.

One  evening late, all the people of the village came to divest

 themselves of their sins,  washed them into the lake,

which swallowing , simultaneously caught hold of the sky,

held it in a petrified grasp; sky that never had  a care.

Two swans, two mute glories, some distance apart;

two matches  frozen at the point of flaming  appeared on the water

at the precise moment of the immersion. People say

their plumage shone with unearthly brightness.  It is said in the village

that they appear every time a sinner  divests himself of his sin;

that the light is the light of innocence.

Memory of my Father

I have a memory of my father

sitting on a log in the shed,

reading the Sunday Independent

between the lawnmower and the garden tools;

it was his quiet  refuge.

I see him through the open door,

from across a narrow lawn newly mown;

bees are tracing zig-zag lines

between us;

and the lupins are in full bloom.

Summer stretched out over the fields and the railway line,

beyond the gates, out to the Shannon, and beyond;

but Summer is a precarious season.

I like lupins,

they look like Summer.

Brown Eyes

She had deep brown eyes;

I believe trout swam in their depths.

And I often spent an hour sitting there

with my feet disturbing their surfaces

like rain.

But the currents that stirred her

were much deeper.

They stirred the silt of years

far below,

far below my reflected face.

3 photographs

This little scene in the grounds of a holy well caught my attention.You can almost hear her exclamation, "Holy God!" And, what's gas is, the rest of the family got good steady jobs in the Civil Service.

This signpost above a beach gives you a fifty fifty chance of  taking the right direction to somewhere.

And, this sign at a petrol station isn't unique; I mean I know what it's saying, but I don't think its saying what it means.

Green into Grey (full)

Green into Grey

When the clouds

Fell onto the hill with the trees,

And they were sinking,

Sinking;

I thought of you.

The still heads

Belied their stirrings in the murk,

They were swimming,

Swimming;

And I thought of you.

All day long,

Shadows mutely threading that depth,

And they were ghostly,

Ghostly;

I thought of you.

When the sun

At last tore the mist from the trees

they were gleaming,

gleaming;

And I dreamt of you.

Green into Grey

When the clouds

Fell onto the hill with the trees

And they were sinking,

Sinking,

I thought of you.

Trees

Trees keening winter nights away,
their wails woven into the wind;

heads of hair like seaweed taken from the strand,
flails knotted in insoluble puzzles.

Underground, roots twisting toward some source
shaped by memory;

trees like abandoned lovers,
scratching down the marble of night-time.

Don’t say too much

or you’ll give it away.

Peter Doig’s paintings are poetic; magical, mysterious, beautiful and different. Canoes and boats feature a lot, it's a good choice: figures isolated on the water,  going to God knows where,while the interface of water and air introduces the notion of an alternative world.

His six characters in ‘Figures in Red Boat’ are suspended between something horribly grotesque and perfect serenity, the explained and the unexplained, this world and some other. They look lost and it’s interesting that the figure on the left seems to be seated outside the boat. An exotic landscape is suggested in the background, but it might be mist; there is sunlight on the figures in a dim grey setting.

Was there a bloody accident, leaving six people somewhere beyond life? Is this a boat into the next world?

Mirage-like; ambiguous and disturbing, it leaves me wanting to write about it; but what? It’s quite brilliant.

I am weave

I am weave,

flows bare bones of the land,

roots, blood my stealth;

streams mountain hair,

hillsides’ ruminations,

meadow fantasies;

bleaches sunlight,

sugars earth,

rips the seas’ tides;

calls clockwork from branches,

buries bones in soil, drags days behind,

stirs the year.

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.

Swallows performed by Garonne

Elaine O'Dea's song Swallows performed by Elaine and Elisabeth, together Garonne.

The Trees at the Rath*

Trees keening winter nights away,

their wails woven into the wind;

heads of hair like seaweed taken from the strand,

flails knotted in insoluble puzzles.

Underground, roots, twisting toward some source,

shaped by memory;

trees like abandoned lovers,

scratching down the marble of night-time.


* Fairy ring, fort

Meteorite

Meteorite

When the starlings were the full of the sky,

we stood, rooted, gob-smacked,

exhilarated beyond words,

knowing that no air-show

nor any natural phenomenon ever compared.

Next morning I opened the back door

to find a knot of feathers on the ground,

a starling as far from flight as could be imagined,

as dull as the stone

that once blazed an arc across the heavens.