The Old Man's Song

The old man loves to sing, but has a cracked voice;

when he sings he cracks the song;

a song not written for old men.

And the composer may, indeed, take umbrage, as singer,

word after word, loses footing on crumbling notes.

But the old man, singing his song,

takes his listeners along a less frequented path; he’s singing

defunct dreams, wispy happinesses, worries and triumphs.

Fissures open between the words, and there, sure enough,

is the other song: the song of life passing.

Finest Beauty

Sunray venus, angel wings, coquina;

conch, whelk, cockle, auger. Fine porcelain

finishes, classical symmetries, delicate markings,

exquisite colourings; nature’s artwork

abandoned, worthless litter, on the seashore.

But the greatest treasure is nowhere to be seen.

The finest human beauty is not the face;

and, as the oyster is no competition for most beautiful shell

though inside may be a pearl,

so too the human heart is hidden from the eye.

A Beautiful Place

A remote corner of a field, away from the traffic of feet

or wheels; where blackthorn, elder and briar have twisted

in old age into a tunnel sheltering a stand of primroses in

March, bluebells in May, foxgloves in July. A spring, an

unplumbable brown eye gazing out of the earth, a stream

taking its clear water to the fields.

A place where beauty does not demand awe nor wrench the

soul from your body, but finds its place within your soul.

A place you remember though have never been; that will

return to you at unexpected moments like memories of home.

The Sadness to September

The leaves growing old, drying like skin;

apples on the crab-tree red as tomatoes;

along the hillside, swathes of bronzed bracken;

a plait of smoke rising from a neighbour’s chimney.

The year on the turn: two days ago, swallows on wires,

on their starting blocks; they’re gone now.

There’s a sadness to September: a cool edge to its heat,

an extra length to its shadows, a ripeness

that is the beginning of the year’s rotting.

The Old Men in the Day-Room

A picture of institutionalized men from about 1970. A nineteenth century room, dark but for a smallish window that allowed afternoon sunlight; bare, bleak and empty for the most part. Dickensian. 

The Old Men in the Day-Room

A rectangular pool of sunlight mid-room;

shadow-clad men on wooden benches around the walls,

features lost in the dark recesses of their faces,

bodies rolled, slumped in sack-black coats;

fingers splayed skeletal on the crooks of walking sticks,

breathing like tide gurgling at the backs of sea-caves

eyes peering from below the surfaces of shallow pools.

Those were the men of the workhouse

in the mid-afternoon gloaming of their day-room,

in the late evening of their lives.

Silence between them, between them and us;

sitting there, boulders in the passing world,

their ears no longer tuned to the pitch of life.

Love Mode

‘Let me be your retinal deluxe’,

sweet-talking;

‘your cochlear delight’,

pushing it;

‘your gustatory bomb’,

‘tactile surprise’.

Words, soap bubbles popping;

she wasn’t wearing it.

I removed my shades,

the room was far too dark.

In Díseart Cemetery, Co Donegal

Considered to be Christian since the 6th century, but evidence of  Neolithic burial. Díseart is spare and magical. Religions pass into each other, rituals too. Díseart, among many sites in Ireland, is an example of this.

Silence, a bell without a clapper,

a call to prayer;

cross the bridge

you'll reach a state of grace.

Through the long grass, 

a well, earth's blood;

cleanse yourself

to the purity of water.

Three cairns 

to the the freedom of souls;

then, beneath the stone arch, pass, 

free into eternity.

Rain

Besieged by rain, water;

r for flow

n for harangue:

lakes filling like cows’ bellies;

puddles through the fields

upending the earth;

potholes brimming buckets;

leaves full as spoons,

full of sky;

the whole writhing countryside in my window;

its harangue,

like a world full of religious zealots.

On the Roadside beneath the Mountains

On the roadside beneath the mountains,

a stagnant pool in a ditch, starry green

with algal profusion, dark as profound

thoughts, almost unseen in its humility,

was a Lilliputian’s Loch Lomond or

Loch Ness with unimaginable life-forms;

it stole the prize for the day’s most beautiful,

like a sliver stolen from Monet’s garden.

Pictures of You

Rain, gentle against the window, brought your face to me,

not conversing but going about your myriad chores.

Incomplete pictures: pins in your mouth as you adjust a hem,

hands flicking the needles in the interminable click and flow

of knitting or flour-covered as you lift them from the baking bowl;

you're waist deep in a marmalade-making cloud of steam or beyond all

communication with face down to the light of your sewing machine.

On rainy days, captive in the kitchen and wanting to talk, I sat there

bored. The dim light, condensation on the walls, the hum or click

of the never ending rituals of the kitchen were oppressive, and still,

as the rain’s million little thuds recall, we were close and happy

in each other’s company; the tasks were tasks of love, and those

pictures are my Louvre.

Slaughter House

White filled socket, an eye twisted, with its contorted,

straining body, away from that room. At the end of a rope

taut to the straightness of cane, haunches working, legs

thrashing, sliding in shit; and men flat out dragging,

pushing the heifer towards the slaughter-house doorway.

Roaring beast, terrified as humans are; same recognition,

same fight, same blood gut muscle response, same horror;

and men, angular to their brutal task, dragging, pushing,

hauling to death chambers. At the end of a rope taut to the

straightness of cane, a tongue extending grossly from a mouth.

Into Your Office

Long after you had died,

I opened your leather brief case

to find the smells of your office:

pipe smoke, cigarette smoke, pencil parings,

paper, manila envelopes still inside.

Suddenly, vividly, I was eight or nine,

asking if I can come in,

sit quietly in the heater’s heat,

in the pipe smoke,

in the cosiness beside your table.

‘If you promise to be quiet.’

‘I won’t say a word. I’ll be very quiet.’

And I’d sit on the stool

in the heater’s heat and the pipe smoke

and the cigarette smoke,

beneath the bare tungsten bulb

and it’s smell of burning dust,

under the pine-wood ceiling,

cosy beside your table,

beside you, happy.

Until, of course, I couldn’t keep it going,

had to talk, and shift,

pare the pencils.

That was that,

probably no more than minutes later,

I was ejected.

And then, suddenly,

all those years after your death,

like a genie from your brief case:

your office,

you, my love for you;

and the incursion of those smells into my adulthood,

my home in Dublin;

the shock of something real not illusory

as though your memory was taking form.

Rowing boats across the sky

Voices rippled with laughter;

flashes of bottle-green lightening;

tall as terns on stilts.

Move to your highest,

find a place near the sun;

cast out your coloured net.

Among muses quiet by the ocean,

clink your happiness light as snow,

inhale the flying wings.

Gleaming White

The wind was blowing through the trees;

all was movement; each leaf carried a reservoir,

a film of sun-laden rainwater.

The houses gleamed white on their southern sides,

northern and eastern walls were dark in shadow; through all,

the windows maintained their dead-eyed stare on all that passed.

And you, sitting in that hard light, thinking, perhaps, of love,

watching the bleached days pass, feeling the heat on your skin,

were turning to concrete without ever quite realising it.

Waiting

i.

Each day you come to my house,

without announcing yourself.

You do not enter nor speak,

but I know; I hear your breathing.

ii.

If you would speak,

I would gather your words

like the rarest shells on the beach.

iii.

Tomorrow and tomorrow,

I will still be waiting,

and if you don’t speak

I will wait till all the tomorrows are gone.