An Long Corcra - The Purple Ship

An Long Corcra



An spéir glas leathsféarúil,
díon craiceáilte mo theach,
bobaire lán le cruthaíocht.


Na páirceanna gorma spraíúil,
droimneach mar bhraillín sa gaoth
faoi righne na sléibhte dearga.


Agus mise, captaen an long corcra,
ag seoladh farraige mór mo shaol,
gan aird a thabhairt ar compás nó réalta
                                                    ar bith.


I don't think I'd have written this in English; what a pleasure it is to be writing poems trí Gaeilge, and again, if any reader spots a grammatical error I'd be very grateful for the correspondence. Here's a translation.


The Purple Ship

The hemispherical green sky,
mad roof of my house,
prankster full of invention.

The playful blue fields,
undulating like a sheet in the wind
under the strict red mountains.

And myself, captain of the purple ship,
navigating the ocean of my life
without compass or star.

A Person

1.

He paints all sorts. Familiar scenes,

but there’s always something missing:

a tree with trunk and crown, no middle,

house with windows, blank space ‒ no door.

2.

He lives rough;

his back the wall of his bedroom.

He listens to a radio, low static-filled sounds

that dribble from his privacy into the street.

3.

I’m looking at the doorway;

the paintwork is scorched.

It’s been like that for a while now;

he, himself, is missing.

And then

    

And then

           And then

   And then

You get to where you are.

       After all that

  After all of it

        After all that

You arrive at where you are.

Here

          Here

  Here

This is where I have arrived at.

Personal Observation

The page invites words like snow invites footsteps;

the climber’s challenge of a cliff with no footholds.

Countless times my imagination has proven itself to be 

(i) the empty snowscape

(ii) unfit for the challenge.

Trump Watch

For years I couldn't quite grasp how Germany walked itself into despotism. Now I'm beginning to get it.

Trains

We recorded trains speeding past:

successions of windows,

film strips flashing across our eyes,

flapping away into the night.

You described trains passing apartment windows

in an Italian city: photographs of strangers:

a cup halfway to a mouth,

a head bent to a drawer.

A photographic exhibition:

snapshots of the disconnected

lives of modern cities;

ephemeral existences, dispensable people.

In your apartment we watched our footage,

it delighted us: trains are film strips;

they roll and roll and roll

and each frame is a kind of death.

Butterfly Poem

One solar bright afternoon, I stopped to watch

a butterfly ‒ white wings with orange tips ‒

fluttering for a few moments above the May

green foliage on the roadside at Lough Eske,

then settling on a leaf, a candle flame suddenly still.

Spectacle may be the Grand Canyon’s sheer fall or

a bengal tiger crouching on a snow-bound Himalayan crag;

but in the vastness of a Donegal hedgerow

it is a splinter of life flying between paper-thin wings
more dazzling than rose petals

Speckled Water

The pools

the pools of stones

hide the eels

eels 

the eels of mottled water

I dipped my foot

dipped 

I dipped my foot

into the teeth

the teeth of writhing water 

oh how it ran

ran from me

shiny side of a ripple

how those teeth took my foot

the eels of speckled water

From a Child's Window

The child is at the window; he is there every evening

at this time, as the clouds of the world are catching fire. He knows

the fields behind his house: the hay-shed with the tunnels through the bales,

the wrecked car under the elders where some of the hens are laying,

the field with the maze of pathways through the furze.

Beyond that, the railway line where the lesser known world begins.

He has been there, where the fields are wide and there are no houses,

to the water hole where the small fish dart from weed cover to weed cover;

that’s where the prairie begins, where cowboys travel alone.

To the left, the railway line cuts straight to the white gates;

he has seen the gates; beyond them trains travel days, weeks

across parched deserts, open steppes, past wadis, oases. The passengers

seldom look: tuxedoed gentlemen with glinting teeth are tipping whiskeys

lit by a million lights in crystal glasses to feather-boa’d women

whose champagne drinks sparkle back from the tips of their slender arms.

He knows the station is to the right, and there’s the bridge he loves to stand on

when the four o’clock is coming through. The excitement as the engine appears,

slowing to the platform, then starts up, and the carriage roofs passing beneath him,

he loves that; then the last of it, the tail slithering away from the station.

Where to? He does not know. It goes into a place he has no thoughts on;

the evening train into the hours he sleeps through; that is where darkness is.

International Incident in Local Pub

Early twenties, long fair hair, blue-jeaned, Dutch I'd guess. Camping on the beach probably; sitting now with her travelling companion at the next table. 

I’m in the only bar in the locality, Friday night, thronged with locals enjoying the weekly music. The two girls have a different style, they’re noticed, but that’s the height of it; you get summer visitors in these parts.

At the bar, shimmying, the local Ronaldo. Thirty-five-ish, pint in one hand, massaging roll of  belly between tee-shirt and jeans with the other; he’s outlining a game-plan to three acolytes: ‘gwan horse!’ 

But the girl’s spread-eagled on his cross hairs and the performance is for her. He’s watching, every few minutes his eyes travelling over to her table.

And suddenly he’s off to her table. He’s full-sail on the open sea, and that’s noticed too, but that’s the height of it.

He asks her to dance.

On the dance floor he’s doing a jive-waltz-dribble sort of thing, interrupted occasionally to lob the odd word down her ear-hole. There’s twirl, lots of twirl, and twinkling feet; the locals know the story, little smiles on their faces, the pair are the only ones dancing.

Back at the bar, anticipation-pricked, he’s warming the lads; shimmies becoming daintier, more intricate like; he calls another pint......and a glass.

The glass crosses the floor, the pint with it.

Stool patted, down goes the arse and it’s chat, chat, chittidy, chattedy, chit-chat; he massages his belly and then another pint.

“Glass ?”

“No thanks.”

 Back at the bar, horn-filled, brimmin; Rono, ya beauty!

But they bolt. The two girls gone. The discovery takes a moment or two. 

He roars, runs after them,  across the lounge, out the door, slams it shut; leaves the lads scattered, astounded feathers behind him.

And the music, as they say, played on.

Late Afternoon in a Different Time

Late Afternoon

The sky was ablaze with gorse,

I played hide and seek on the tracks between

till a high wind tired of that, so I took the boat out onto the lake,

went fishing for pike.

Countries changed into dogs, bears, ugly guys with misplaced noses;

I looked at the hills, they were wreathed in white thorn,

then turning onto my stomach, I let the sun lie on my back

while I read a little, Treasure Island.

The swallows were wheeling over Wyoming canyons;

I shifted in my rocky lair, but could see no indians coming;

there was a stirring under the palm tree,

and a spider walked up my arm, I watched him for awhile;

he had made a scrawny web of Italy so I blew on him

and the sun moved toward five.

I could see the burst football was not about to play,

so I poked my finger into the blue and looked at it with one eye shut;

the sun was a scorching white ball that no one could look at directly;

I mopped the sweat from my forehead and drained my canteen dry,

then turned onto my side. There were blossoms on the apple trees

and a voice like metal came through the privet hedge.

The voice was calling tea-time; a familiar voice to be sure,

but an escapee from another sky.

Spring Music

Kay’s at the window playing concertina to the Bluestacks,

Clar, Donegal town and the sea, a grinning guitar string beyond.

The wind’s taken up the rhythm, playing the birches;

and the pampas plume, no dancer himself, is jinking to and fro;

a kill-joy stem jerking him earthward over and over.

There are birds on the wires  spaced like a code, clouds perched 

between them in shades of white to cream, ivory and pearl.

A plume of smoke rising diffuse in some distant trees

is solidifying, where the sky begins, into molar Ben Bulben,

and all is plush and wonderful in Spring’s fresh greenery.

Giorria

Noiméad ar a shuaimhneas,

ina thiarnas ciúin, folamh.

Go tobann ag ropadh tríd an scrobarnach

mar a bhí mé í láthair.

Draíocht an nóiméid,

é ina shuí ina áit féin,

imníoch, ach an méid atá nádúrtha dó

í dtús Aibreáin, é ar faire ar chnocán féarmhar.

Agus draíocht a éalú,

an aclaíocht sin agus an diongbháilteas;

treo áirithe aige, an cinneadh agus an bhogadh

déanta ar an bpointe.

Transl.

Hare

One moment at ease,
in his quiet empty dominion.
Suddenly flashing through the undergrowth
because I am present.

The magic of the moment,
him sitting in his own place,
anxious, but the amount that is natural to him
at the beginning of April, him on the lookout on a grassy hillock.

And the magic of his escape,
the agility and the single-mindedness;
a particular direction, the decision and the movement
made in an instant.

I love You

This is an updated version of a poem I posted about two years ago.

I love you

The chives’ purple heads standing on their bottle-green stalks

were June’s bright soldiers above the dun-coloured sandstone;

beyond them, on the hillside opposite, the soft pile forestry

was our wealth, especially in the rich glow of evening sun.

I moved closer to you, held out my hand to find yours already there.

to be links in this chain of beauty; and then I said, ‘I love you.’

It was not just the moment, but the magnificence we were part of;

happiness was bubbling,  the words came like breaking into a song.

Childhood.

A cloudscape that forms and deforms

one carefree afternoon when you’re in your back garden.

A warm sun; lying on your back gazing at the sky;

change as remote as care.

But infinite time that it is, it flashes by,

childhood changing shape without ever having had a shape.