Minnows

Compass needles

in current,

still

as thought.

Flint arrows,

they darted linear,

abrupt angles sparked

and quenched

Euclidian

in execution.

Dunbrody Abbey

If whole, Dunbrody Abbey would be astonishingly beautiful.

As ruin, it stands, vestige of a medieval past, stripped of context;

its magnificence magnified by isolation, a gemstone outcrop

in a pasture, now lichened to the colours of the Irish sky.

Occasional flourishes in the stonework coax imagination’s

wooden scaffolds, ladders, ropes and pulleys to be assembled:

ribs must fan across vaulted ceilings, capitals must crown the columns,

grotesques and gargoyles must emerge, trespassers from the walls.

And though a melancholy breath pervades the ruined passages and doorways

from the devastation wrought by men, now smoothed by centuries’ weathering,

and the ceiling of sky that portends change and the eventual passing of all things,

its splendour prevails, and like sun dazzling on water, the old walls enchant.

Eternal

Rivers running over the land:

slivered sky and light
tress-like;
fish and ripples one,

alive.

Clamouring in high places,

lisping in low;

spry in youth,

sedate in age;

always journeying to their end

to run again.

Once

The abandoned house I told you about, thrashed;

walls broken through, windows gone; no longer

the separation of outside from inside that makes it a house.

Everything’s strewn around: magazines, books, records;

now scattered jigsaw pieces of a life from the seventies 

except  a towel rail in the kitchen: three dish-clothes

still folded crisp as the morning newspapers,

beside them a pair of scissors hanging on a string.

Love deepened by beauty

Leaving the mountain track, we strolled down to the lake;

it was a still evening, neither wind nor nature stirring;

a summer’s day with softest breath drawing to a close.

We had already stopped conversing but hadn’t realised it

by the time we reached the water’s edge; there the high cirrus

was blazing from our feet to the twin mountains beyond.

We watched them, dumbbells on the surface, shoulder the sun

down through the gleaming chasm into the earth between them;

the sky darkened, the flames died and eventually turned to ash.

We had not spoken, but had become part of the stillness,

the sunset even; anything said would have rippled the surface;

we were part of the beauty; it began at our feet.

Today's Crucifixion Scene

Disgusted by the selfish approach of Trump, portraying himself as Christian, hoovering up resources without due thought and consideration for the world outside his high gate. 

Today's Crucifixion Scene

The hills fold landscape into view;

on their summit windmills make a crucifixion scene.

Crosses tall and stark

with back-cloth of barrelling black clouds;

the earth beneath them with all the doings and apparatus

of mankind reduced to miniscule insignificance.

The crosses without bodies; sleek and empty

like our twenty first century doctrine.

Wartime Deaths

What is this war about? What are these deaths for?

Certainly not a stretch of land, nor a belief, nor a freedom.

They will have died for our understanding:

the days of America First and Brexit are numbered;

the planet is too small, too small for separations

now that a man who sneezes in China can fill the hospitals of the world,

that a face mask in Tehran can just as surely save American lives as Iranian.

Maybe in the future there should be a week set aside for nature

Birdsong

March sunlight has made the birches blaze;

leafless yet, their papery bark is making flames;

even in mid-afternoon they appear heavenly.

With the din of cars laid low by the virus,

birdsong is everywhere; how many thousand trees

on this hillside; how many birds is that?

Spring is indeed a time for listening; I haven’t been.

Now, in this awful time, my hearing has returned, and

I have rediscovered a symphony long lost beneath wheels.

The House on the Hillside Opposite

The house among the trees on the hillside opposite is visible in the afternoon light.

I could not see it this morning nor yesterday evening, but now I see its rusted roof;

it shows in a gap between the fir trees. Four cleared fields bound by stone walls

and crossed by an overgrown path are a napkin fixed at its neck; behind it,

the hill rises, a patchwork of confer, fern and heather: rough, poor terrain.

The house, empty of its people but their belongings remaining where they were.

Mountain sheep come near but don’t trespass; the trees, however, will. They will

break and enter, force their way through the walls, dismantle the roof, split the floors.

The effects of a household will mix with leaf litter: bottles, cups, saucers, a necklace,

an old radio, a hammer, an iron, a light shade, the cheap picture frames, a tin box

with buttons still inside, no, the buttons with the black flakes of rust mixed through.

All will be buried in the soil, but not the people.

They are already in the soil, but not the same soil, nor anywhere in these parts;

they are buried across the sea, where necessity took them.

So the house was of no use; the possessions had no use, not even to looters or vandals.

How strange are lives that can be so intense minute by minute and, yet, one morning,

bags packed, a home is left with all its paraphernalia in place; the fields are left, the hillside left,

and for love or health or money, what was once all can suddenly be valueless.

Feichín's Penance

January, frigid dawn. Rain

forged in heaven's graphite-dark belly

flaying the island.  

Fifteen strides out from the shore,

Feichín’s head, gull on the water,

chanting to the glory of God.

Waves crash over, tearing hair,

weed on the rocks, and eyes,

cockle-shells bleached staring.

A Modern Tale

Before the enemy was quite in sight, the king came onto the balcony

and scattered daffodil petals onto his people, saying ‘aren’t they beautiful?’

Never before had anyone seen such a spectacle, such lavishness.

They were beautiful: flakes of sunlight falling like snow, they were the full of their eyes.

So filled with hope and joy they danced among the falling petals

even when the enemy was already inside the city walls.

Exercise for Isolated Trio

You on a white page twisted your body into an S

I watched then lying on my side coiled into an O

Greta made a curve of back and arms to be a C

You extended one arm and one leg to make a K

Flexed I crooked arm to feel forehead to be an E

Greta bowed head with extended arms to be a T

With our limbs outstretched we shaped 3 stars

And shivered in unison to make it sort of electric

After Achnasheen

In his wonderful poem, Achnasheen, Pearse Hutchinson addresses the anglicisation of gaelic placenames. Speaking of Achnasheen in Ross-shire, Scotland, he says,

‘Is isn’t Gaelic any more. It could never be English.
Despite the murderous maps,
despite the bereft roadsigns,
despite the casual distortions of illiterate scribes,
the name remains beautiful. A maimed beauty.’

And sure enough they are still beautiful as I hope this “poem”, a selection of placenames on the island of Ireland, demonstrates.

After Achnasheen

Ballydehob Kilmacow Kiltyclogher

Cong Shanagolden Glencree

Gouganne Barra Kilbrickan Knocknagoshel

Cong Belturbet Lisnaskea

Ballycumber Ballyvourney Killargue

Toomevara Ardglass Timoleague

Labasheeda Lismore Glenamaddy

Goleen Tubbercurry Athleague

Kanturk Kilaloe Toormakeady

Rush Keshcarrigan Kilmovee

Termonfeckin Tarmonbarry Dualla

Skeheenarinky Cleggan Kilkee

This Evening a White Canal

A swan, lifting its wings as it glides in my direction,

seems to have condensed this reflection of cloud

into itself and is now extending its wings to display

that magnificence.

I’ve never before seen the canal like this

nor a swan as an embodiment of light on the water,

as though an upward gush congealed into a life-form

whose sole purpose is the animation of a surrounding beauty.

Delight

A translation of Gliondar which I posted on Feb 20th.

Delight

Sauntering along a woodland trail on a winter’s evening,

rich green moss all around; on the tree trunks,

the rocks, in the pools of water.

The whole path like a emerald stream running before me;

gentle on my eyes, quiet in my ears, soft beneath my feet.

Here and there, patches of yellow-green sunlight

‒ nature’s smiles ‒

running alongside like a young pup

and myself filling with the delight that sight brings.