That Madness For Power

Isn’t it extraordinary, that madness for power, even

among the elderly; to be prestigious, exalted even

when their bones are creaking out some sos, even

though beneath their shining flags and emblems

are the same squalid cabals, conspiring in the early

hours with barely concealed hatred; no pettiness too

petty, no injury too injurious, except that they might

be seen for what they are.

To be among the trappings of high position,

the gaudily decorated, plaster- thin constructions,

spiders still spinning in the cavities behind them.

To have, on some corridor wall, a portrait painted in a

fashion that has not aged well, and youngsters filing past

wondering ‘How much longer to lunchtime?’

Tragedy

The church crammed to the doors;

tragedy of a young man’s death;

wife bereft, children barely understanding;

a mass mourning.

Behind the rows of congregation, a woman

pushes through to a position

from which she can see the coffin clearly.

Crying inconsolably

in that part of the church where the eyes are dry;

later she will carry her grief home

as though it was their child,

spend the coming nights alone in its company.

Above The Tide

The lonesome cries of waders and sea-birds

from unknowable perches

in the dense darkness of night

come inland.

Souls, wanderers of the wilderness

between heaven and earth,

calling from their purgatories of not knowing

above the tide’s mournful washing.

And the beacon lights

with the eyes of starved animals,

flashing out from between jagged rocks

on the far coastline

where shipwrecks have happened

or they wait for them to happen,

whipping darkness into mesmerising circles

over the tide’s mournful washing.

Goodnight

I’ll lock the back door;

will you check the window is closed

in the sitting room?

The sky’s clear tonight;

we might be in for a good day tomorrow.

The weather forecast’s pretty good;

should get the lawn cut.

Goodnight.

Goodnight. 

Sleep well.

Who the fuck’s texting you at this hour?

“A big unit”, the pundit on the radio referring to a footballer.

Came into my mind after seeing a unit lying on a footpath,

his head on a plastic crate.

I’ve been drunk myself, lying on the road, head spent and

body out of sympathy with my plan to walk home.

Like a boulder in a stream, he’s bypassed as a matter of course;

lying unmoving in foetal position;

glanced at surreptitiously,

totally unacknowledged by those most discommoded.

Undesirable unit;

wouldn't a civilised society offering alcohol in the quantities we do, 

provide seats for crashing out?

At least, of course, if we weren’t units.

Face

Face in my memory,

precarious as a droplet hanging from a leaf;

my longing to hold on to it

the greatest threat to keeping it.

How fragile everything is.

On the green ocean

On the green ocean,

stone ships, wrecked rudderless,

drift

like broken fronds.

I hear the voices,

torn rags

still attached to their rigging.

I hear their words

but no sense;

unpeopled,

they are but yearning yawps.

I see their toil, lives‘ cares,

green now,

green forever

their wakes’ ripples.

No Surgery

The appalling shooting of Jacob Blake has left its bullets in every right-thinking person's mind. But beyond the horrifying crime committed on Mr Blake is the crime committed on his family and particularly on his watching children. His mother's very moving and extraordinarily kind-hearted speech gives an insight into the type of person Jacob Blake must be; it highlights, should there ever be any doubts, the inappropriateness of the police actions taken.
I wanted to write a poem that focuses on the crime done to the children; its effects, I hope can be minimised, but, in general, I think the callous disregard for the effects of violence on onlookers, particularly children, is itself another crime with appalling consequences. I use the word 'they' for the shooting, because none of this would be happening if there wasn't some level of belief that the system accepts it.





No Surgery

When they shot him, they shot his children,

shot them in the eyes.

No surgery can remove

the bullets lodged in their brains

or retrieve the life that should have been:

ball games on the lawn, barbecues,

car rides, the casual banter

and horseplay of families.

No surgery can restore to them the full expression

of their father’s love;

the myriad communications of his body:

healing gestures when words fall short,

the subtle messages of love

from his unhindered face.

When they shot him, they shot his children

with bullets no surgery can remove.

The Wild Atlantic

I think of the sea nosing, whitely sputtering in the crevices

between limestone beds; the chunks of earth’s crust gobbled

by Atlantic’s hunger: headlands shaped by sea’s incursions,

broken headlands, sea stacks with those wild tongues still

rasping up their vertical walls; the insidious creeping through

landward fissures, eventually worm-like slithering to extremities

beneath unwitting green fields; hearing the great gulping yowls

at the backs of caves driven deep into cliffs that should repel like

fortress walls but reverberate with the constant thumping of siege

machines. The frenzy of an ocean contained, but mad to possess;

its ferocity and menace, its harnessing of the universe to drive the

onslaught; its eventual re-shaping of the familiar; this map altered.

Turner's Moods

The cantankerous man throws his wild skies

across the canvas.

Livid tantrums flaring from his heavens

whip the clouds to screaming,

infuriate the waves

so they bash the boats that ply his seas.

And later, when all is becalmed in sunlight,

milky behind gauzy clouds,

that gentleness of his, even tenderness,

will still presage another, approaching storm.

A Painting of Home, Roscommon

On a frosty way to school,

our breaths condensed into word balloons;

the cows had word balloons,

so had Feeley’s donkey (even though he was a loner),

and Browne’s dog, Darkey. We all had.

They all said ‘Mornin.’ when we passed;

we said ‘Mornin.’

and the cows, eating chewing gum,

watched us head on

with a kind of distracted sympathy.

Childhood was that way, we all got on.

I had friends who were trees and streams;

picking mushrooms was part of our friendship,

cows said ‘thank you’ after milking,

trees regularly joined in our games.

I lived where country became town;

the frost came gleaming across the fields,

right to our back doors; we were all part of the magic,

ourselves, trees, cows; all in the painting,

chatting and looking fine.

The baby in the tree

The baby in the tree

is screaming.

High above the pathway

near the black tips

of the sycamore branches

he is gaping,

white membraned luminous. 

How did he get there? 

He blew there in the wind;

it took him

like a flag from his cot

till he was stretched

across the boughs

like the wings of a bat. 

And who sees him? 

I do;

all his hopeless writhing,

too high for the passerby.

And his screams:

too high,

too high for the passerby.

Questions for a Tired World

See our children just born;

after all the suffering that's been, must they 

inherit the legacy of  hardheartedness?

See our children just born,

whose  first instincts are to  be happy; can we 

not make their ongoing happiness our goal?

See our children just born;

can we not love enough

to make love their currency? 

See our children just born:

will we teach them to coexist

rather than live in houses fortified 

against the world?

See our children just born;

will they be brought up to see nature 

so alien that all else should be killed

but that which feeds their cities?

See our children just born;

will we pass on to them the joy of being

or cravings for unattainable lives?

Fireweed, Montbretia, Swallows and Me

It is past mid-August, and the year, measured in flowers, is turning.

The foxgloves gone, they blackened quickly, followed the iris, that

followed the garlic out of season.

Now that fireweed floods the roadsides with carnivals of colour,

the bonfires of montbretia are raging gloriously out of control

and swallows have become skittish, flying broken circles about the house,

we enter the season of apples, pears turning red, plums purpling.

Yearly, I get this feeling of sadness as though programmed into the cycle;

it’s not the passing of beauty; beauty just changes its cloak; it’s time

running away with something that I can never quite identify.

Monday Morning in Kamiyacho, Hiroshima

(Aug 6th, 1945.)

8.15 am,
a woman is sitting on the bank steps, 
waiting for opening time.

Though early; already weary of the heat,
she is happy to sit for awhile.

8.16 am, 

a silhouette of a person 

is etched in the steps outside the Sumitomo Bank;
it  seems the person was sitting there.

Aug 6^th, 2020.

Her shadow sits the days through, though no longer in the sun.

Museum visitors file by; she has no memory;

she will be here for a long time, maybe forever;

it was men that granted her this eternity.


She pleads to all that pass to end this insanity, and all, 
moved by the horror of it, are convinced. Not enough though, 
the shadow-makers of the world still rule supreme.