The Walls Below The Mountain

The walls of old fields are everywhere,

walls that counted bones.

Feet dug into wet earth, knees bent, backs arched,

boulders raised to waist height;

carried to walls, walls growing, knees bent,

knees straightened, arms bent, arms straightened;

feet dug into wet earth, knees bent, backs arched,

boulders raised to waist height;

carried to walls, walls growing, knees bent,

knees straightened, arms bent, arms straightened.

Beneath the cling film of skin,

the clank-free movement of levers

and hillside cleared by slow degree;

in this way they daily hauled the sun from east to west.

In Favour of more Sympathetic Planting.

Sunlight has trespassed into the plantation murk,

and, snuggled on a pool of moss,

has made a blazing emerald on the forest floor.

While all around, the abandoned paraphernalia of trees,

their dark axles’ wooden spokes remain defunct machinery

in ocean-depth gloom, seized in viscid silence,

the light argues for life in the depths of planted forests;

it asks for space, and reminds with vivid beauty

that dusk belongs only to nightfall.

Old Skin

I want to write

but the brain is arid.

I climbed up to the attic

where life’s projects are

in search of a hook,

found dull old skin.

So I’m back at the window

looking out at greenery,

listening to the never-ending

downpour of full-stops.

A Death

Your last corridor was of snow-white Carrara;

by the time you were walking it, our goodbyes

had already echoed themselves into silence.

Your feet on that floor would have lisped

apprehensively; you would have had questions,

but there was no one to answer.

Outside your death, we listened; heard you struggling

along that Via Dolorosa; saw the body, not the spirit

slipping away, and cursed the cold marble of dying.

Survision #7 Live and James Tate Prize 2020 Details

SurVision #7 is now live and free. 37 poets, from Ireland, England, Scotland, USA, Australia, Canada, Italy, Ukraine, Chile, and Bermuda, some in translation. e.g. Giorgio de Chirico, Humberto Díaz-Casanueva and Alexander Korotko. http://www.survisionmagazine.com/currentissue.htm

SurVision Books has also announced James Tate Prize 2020 for a poetry chapbook. 1st Prize: €120; 2nd Prize: €70. Both winners of the James Tate Prize will win a chapbook publication and 10 complimentary copies. The competition is open to new, emerging and established poets from any country writing in English. All the poems must be the original work of the entrant. Manuscripts can be between 24 and 30 pages of poetry in length, in the English language. This does not include the table of contents, title page and the list of acknowledgements, if any.

Prose poems and translations of poetry are also eligible; all translations must be accompanied by the same work in the original language. Entrants may enter more than one manuscript.

There is an entrance fee of €15 for each manuscript.

Deadline: 31th of August 2020, midnight.

More info and the names of the past winners here: http://survisionmagazine.com/jamestateprize.htm

All is changed, Donald Trump has written a sonnet

All is changed, changed utterly,

Donald Trump has written a sonnet

and has sent it to President Putin for editing.

It is believed that he and Putin will discuss Akhmatova

and Pasternak in a phonecall this Wednesday

while also spending time discussing the script;

plans are believed to be in place for a series of readings

involving Presidents Xi, Erdogan and Jair Bolsonaro.

‘My sonnet is very beautiful’, the president remarked;

‘in fact, maybe the most beautiful, including Shakespeare,

I’m not sure.’ And how impressed is the president

with Maya Angelou, asked a CNN reporter:

‘Not muchly’, came the terse reply.

Cloud Made off with Chunk of Landscape

Cloud, white as toothpaste, stole mountain,

now but finger-tipped with fir trees

and shadowy lovers’ stacked backs

beyond the water-fresh greenness

of my garden’s greenest greenery.

Cloud japanesed mountains

made colossal with minute droplets

cold and softly breathed onto my face;

distance beyond distances, carried me far

through flatlands beyond, and cities beyond

till under sail travelled over, past all knowing.

Married Couple in the Pandemic

I noticed our fingers: grown old,

bones and knuckles;

my face sort of similar, hers is fuller.

We got so used to our own ways,

hard to live to someone else’s tune;

old habits are comfortable.

The house is empty, there’s no company;

I make noise to hear noise,

talk out loud a lot.

Her fingers on the perspex, that small distance

brought the whole distance home;

I would have liked to touch them.

Speaking into Darkness

I am standing above a sheer fall.

All beneath me is darkness,

but I am told there are millions

living in the darkness;

what I am not seeing is vast,

unimaginably so.

I am told that I should speak into

this void,

that millions will hear my voice,

that my words will mean something

to someone, maybe to many,

that I should speak.

I look into the nothingness.

“Hello, my little angel”, I say doubtfully,

surprising myself with that choice of words.

I suppose I imagine children down there;

one child cowering almost into invisibility

beneath that immensity of darkness.

Seeing

Walking along a country road,

I spot, ahead of me, a bird with brilliant plumage;

closer: a foxglove broken double.

I see ash trunks ‒ giraffes’ necks,

a stand of ferns ‒ green flamingos standing one-legged,

a million yellow butterflies hovering above a meadow ‒ buttercups.

Then, straining to see something extraordinary

in everything; I quite suddenly see

everything is extraordinary.

Lone Ranger Trump

Maybe Trump has been wearing a mask all the time. Maybe that's why he couldn't see the havoc his approach was wreaking. Didn't the Lone Ranger wear his mask over his eyes?

Dead Branches

Defunct ambitions,

abandoned projects;

it is only

people lost along the way

that I regret.

Dead branches still attached;

dry twigs.

Once part of my growth and colour;

vestigial now,

reminders just.

Poem For Now

Then you know its broken

timbers screaming

cracked jagged angular

ribs and canes

nerve endings

iron cacophonies

steel reverb

unreachable lamentations

down in the dark

unfathomable geometries

of chaos

Then you know its broken

Lake

Walk the jetty onto the lake;

lie there.

Eternity. One June afternoon

in that place of peace;

no one to disturb you

but yourself

rushing over the water

to be with you,

to settle,

to find your happiness.

The Saintliness of Feichín

A sea mist clinging to the rocks, dunes, stone huts;

vague dawn light; occasional screechings of sea-birds;

insidious dampness slithering between the stones,

under doors, between blankets and bodies; bodies huddling

closer; breaths’ clouds condensing on faces hard by.

Suddenly the shriek of a man; again and again,

each on the lightning slap of a tong on flesh,

so all, now awake in their huts, are bolt upright, listening,

and suffering the strokes of flails embedded with thorns;

marvelling at the saintliness of Feichín.

After a long agonising period the lashings cease;

the waves are again lapping on the shore, the gulls are screaming;

from Feichín’s hut come quiet moans and latin supplications:

“in manus Tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum”; it is Good Friday,

in mid-afternoon the skies will darken and the temple veil shall be rent.

At mid-morning, he emerges; shock-eyed scare-crow

with shroud covering his body, a scream of blood;

the brothers kneel; thanks is given to God; Feichín is safe.

Already wild flowers are colouring the fields, soon the swallows will come

and bees will make honey to their glorious chant.