In the small hours, in the darkness, early March,
I hear the curlews out on the bog.
Night and bog are the same to them;
they stick their heads through that one black fabric,
declare themselves black stars pulsing, and then
gone; the universe left searching through its pockets.
The question was straight; the answer infuriating, a labyrinth of generalities. So it had to be asked again, the minister prevaricated again, so it had to be asked again.......
No light forthcoming; the minister wasn’t answering, wasn’t acknowledging that she wasn’t answering and was, seemingly, hoping nobody would notice.
Goddammit, stop talking! Same minister does it all the time. I can’t stand her. And no, this isn’t a sexist rant, she just happens to be the one this time, and my head is demanding I offer some resistance.
To my way of thinking, this is a clear insult; does the minister somehow think that she has mesmerised us with canny wordplay, that all of us out here in listener-land are nodding our heads like those dogs that nodded, years ago, in the back windows of cars; is she so arrogant that she believes that her evasive handling of the question makes a good enough answer for a dim-witted population.
Democracy doesn’t count for much in a fog of obfuscation and lies, yet we tolerate it every time we allow a politician to use filibustering tactics in an interview; to talk over or try to drown out an opposing argument; introduce red herrings e.g. maybe X was corrupt, but don’t forget forget how well Y was managed. If the supreme power of a state is invested in its people, it follows that they shouldn’t be stumbling around in darkness.
Whistle-blowers are victimised unmercifully in these systems for daring to throw light on nefarious practices. No matter that they selflessly expose themselves to this for the common good, no matter that they show levels of bravery that are admired in other circumstances; the prevailing darkness suited these politicians, and that’s the wholly all of it.
Nor do cults of personality support democracy, when all the available light is used to spotlight a chosen one. Here the message is, keep your eyes on me, follow me, I am your source of light. And, of course, a spotlight always deepens the shadow around it.
I don’t buy the notion of western democracy as it’s presented. Sure, it’s an improvement on most dictatorships, but it doesn’t confer the freedom it claims to; not as long as public information is purposely garbled and deceptive, nor as long as advertising campaigns funded by lobby groups with deep pockets and partisan views are allowable – advertising is not an open forum – or indeed while there are systems that are overwhelmingly two party driven, when we all know that it takes more than two colours to produce white light.
To say I am troubled by recent trends in politics would be to understate it. It seems to me that the further we have travelled from the pioneers that founded our states the more our politicians have become blowers of smoke. I am afraid that a generation of politicians cleverer than the current will turn smoke to tar, and light doesn’t penetrate tar.
A narrow stream of blood has collected
in a pool on the cracked pavement;
it has run from a hole in the belly of a young man;
he lies there drained of his life.
Tomorrow people will walk over this trace, hurrying;
for what is a bloodstain:
a drunkard’s fall, a late-night brawl,
a remnant of hideous nightlife that blundered into day?
The darkening blood-flow seems almost a mockery
of the life that sailed away along it;
and the dried stain its receipt:
who could be blamed for believing there must be more?
You might like to check out a series of events being hosted by Tally Koren over the next few weeks entitled ‘Changing The Face Of Poetry’. Each event will focus on a different theme:
Sun 21stMarch 8pm GMT |
Sun 4thApril 8pm BST |
Sun 18thApril 8 pm BST |
Survival Feeling trapped Loneliness |
Hope Spring Vision of the future |
Freedom Reflection New beginnings |
You can find more information about the events and submission deadlines if you'd like to be involved at: https://www.tallykoren.com/events
During the course of the events she will look at how poetry can be turned into songs and demonstrate how one line of a poem can become a catchy chorus as she did with ‘Beauty of the Duty’ a song playlisted by BBC Radio 2 and other radio stations over the world: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWIOE7w_hlw
Daniel, sitting in his yellow canoe
on an afternoon sky of wedgewood blue
and pillowy white clouds, is
without paddle and, it appears,
the remotest notion of where he is.
Faraway, but behind him, an island
of claustrophobic greenness may be
a destination, but it is doubtful he’ll
look that way, and if he did, it’s
doubtful that he’d choose to go there.
At the moment, it seems more likely
he will step from the canoe onto the
marble-still surface,
then he'll be something like a flint arrow
in vertical descent.
Sunlight lit the fuse; the trees,
fires in the fields, blazed
silver in the black plates
of their leaves,
out of control;
the wind made their arms sway,
spill their light;
I gathered as much
as I could into my eyes,
so that I, too, might catch their fire.
Stone boxes; ruined, roofless cottages empty as looted coffins
at the foot of Slievemore.
How time scoured the ruins: Atlantic squalls dousing the walls
to their sterile stones,
silencing ghost whisperings from ancient hearths; no presences
lingering beneath doorway lintels
but skittles and jack stones played between the huddled houses;
the voices of children reverberating
between the walls; women laughing, gossiping, cajoling down by
the stream
carried, like rain on the wind, down the years, in from ocean, over
the grassy wave.
Lost spirits laughing, complaining, shouting, teasing, arguing, joking;
the deserted houses with their mouths agape,
tongues missing, and the dream light of day passing over them like
some ancient prankster.
And faraway, someone saying ‘sounds good.’
will make entertainment from this bloodshed;
live sumptuously on the profits;
manufacture heroes on the bodies of our dead;
make villains of us in our own land
for the concoction of stories for foreign ears.
And faraway they’ll live in unimaginable mansions
above the lapping of waves on golden beaches
with the choice of Lamborghini or Ferrari in their garages.
They’ll die in beds feathered with our hardships many stories on;
live longer than the span of whole families
who would have survived on a fraction of their box-office.
He can’t experience anything above
the city racket, his head’s a bag of
loose spanners. Never being able to
find a place inside to be himself
driving him to violence, he pushes
the volume up further to drown out
the noise, sending himself spiralling
towards craziness, his only way with
people, and, in truth, crazy youths have
their admirers. Having no other mode
of being, he considers himself wild and
often is, and when he is not he’s often
cradling his head in his hands.
Green fields,
green the colour of water;
an ocean locked in place
beneath a grid of stone walls.
Lens, curvature of the planet,
green out of sight;
water
pinioned for grazing.
On Oxford Street a woman, falls straight as a Christmas tree
onto the pavement, suddenly dead in pink coat and hat, handbag
firmly clenched and eyes wide, staring at the sky.
Walking behind her, part of the morning throng, I had noticed
her purposeful walk, her style; a country-woman I concluded;
and then she was quite obviously dead.
The crowds flow past, she’s a boulder in their stream.
I consider in an instant what must be done, what is right,
and consider it long enough for it to be someone else’s consideration.
Barnesmore
An Bearna Mór
A river runs through,
a road runs through,
the wires run through,
the wind runs through,
the rain runs through,
the snow runs through.
The moon stops,
its chin in its hand;
its mesmerising stare,
its silver gaze filling the pass;
nothing stirs
but ever so stealthily, the river
stealing the light away.
To the farthest reaches of your skull:
a universe.
But, away, never;
you are always travelling within you.
