Strange how the world turns

Strange how the world turns. Empty houses dotted the countryside in the twentieth century. Emigration hollowed out rural Ireland right up to the nineties. Old cottages in various stages of dilapidation were everywhere. Then came wealth and with it those houses were demolished and replaced, or they were renovated; the semi-ruins of previous decades became thin on the ground.

Now empty houses dot the country again. Half-built housing estates abandoned without even the melancholy beauty of having once been inhabited; ugly building sites on the peripheries of towns;ugly as rotten teeth.

Both situations happened because of the lack of money, but one marks an era that was tarnished by run-away excess, and frequently greed. These remains will, since they have no other redeeming factor, at least remind us of that.

This poem from Sunfire (Dedalus Press, 1998)was an attempt to catch the sadness of emigration and the aging of the resident population as I saw it in the seventies.

A Stranger In The Townland.


In Autumn the farmhouse
with the sun-folded field beneath its chin,
traps the daylight in its spectacles,
then flashes it away.

A swing hangs among the orchard's arthritic trees
without stirring;
without remembering
a frantic liveliness now reduced
to the occasional commotion of a falling fruit.

Once songs of apples filled the farmhouse;
but the children became photographs,
the dust settled on their frames
and soon Autumns were flying uncontrollably by.
Today, between its curiosities, a bluebottle drones.

Now that the conversation with the hillside
is ended, the farmhouse
with the sycamore stole
has become an eccentric;
a stranger in the townland.

It was the Sixties

There is suddenly a new feeling and, unlike the sixties, it's not coming here second hand; it's our very own Irish turning and my instinct is it's good. But for those old enough here is a taste of the sixties, Irish style.


It was the time of Afton and Albany,
Joe O’Neill’s band and the Adelaides,
hay forks sharing pub windows
with Daz and Persil; the Smithwicks sign
and the Harp sign, half-ones of Guinness.

It was a time of pipe-smoking
beneath naked bulbs and neon strips,
the priest in his cassock,
Hillman Hunters, Ford Corsairs,
Wilkinson Swords and Fruit Gums.

Of scarved heads at mass, berets,
the Messenger and the Far East,
dress makers and blacksmiths;
hollowed faces in the County Home,
yanks in the sitting room.

Length of Eternity

Studying Geology in U.C.G. eons ago (geologic time),I came across this wonderful evocation of eternity:

High up in the north, in the land called Svithjod, there stands a rock. It is a hundred miles high and a hundred miles wide. Once every thousand years a little bird comes to this rock to sharpen its beak. When the rock has thus been worn away, then a single day of eternity will have gone by.

(From The Story of Mankind by Hendrik Willem Van Loon)

I mention it because I really like it and secondly because elsewhere on the net this day is calculated, see http://www.maths.manchester.ac.uk/~cds/articles/svithjod.html

Poems to do with Lovers, Loving and Loving no More

People change, time moves them along,their loves change like trees, like fires, like buildings.Most keep the narratives in their heads or poets "tell it slant". From Sunfire and Turn Your Head:


Visit


When I am sleeping
you come
softly over these stones;
I turn deeper.
You slip words into my ears,
liquid syllables,
sickles sliding down.

Night-time turns drunk;
longing for more,
your tongue to enwrap me;
I turn deeper.
You trickle down dreams;
our limbs braided,
we slip into one.

When you pass

cups miss mouths,
ladders slip,
buckets crash down,

cars veer,
cyclists swerve,
drunkards sober up,

poles and policemen collide,
business men miss kerbs,
schoolboys drool.

Me? I’m just your wing mirror,
enjoying the devastation
behind you.


-----------------

It's a certifiable moment
a punch-drunk second
a pulse's high tide.

A dog eats grass
a water drop shivers
a barrel fills to its brim
an apple falls
a body drifts
a face buckles
a lover screams.

At the tip of an orgasm
passion powders;
the creek turns to dust.

Fifteen Irises from my Black Humour to You.


The mallards go off like a shot gun;
each a storm of wings
and black as a keyhole.

The pond, empty now,
is gripped in a glacial sulk.

Fifteen irises from my black humour to you,
their shadows only;
the pond will part with no more.

Netherlands American Cemetery

I was going to write about the Margraten Cemetery after my visit two weeks ago. War is an abomination; but the sight of all those headstones, all those names, all buried in the beautiful green countryside at Margraten;seeing all that on a sunny Summer's day left only sadness and a confusion of thoughts in my head. What would the world be now if those soldiers,(8,032 buried there), had not died?

This inscription on a wall there is beautiful:

EACH FOR HIS OWN MEMORIAL
EARNED PRAISE THAT WILL NEVER DIE
AND WITH IT
THE GRANDEST OF ALL SEPULCHRES
NOT THAT IN WHICH
HIS MORTAL BONES ARE LAID
BUT A HOME
IN THE MINDS OF MEN

From The Netherlands

In the Netherlands for a few weeks. It's been warm, unusually warm, mid to late thirties. That's not a complaint. I've enjoyed it here; I've like the Dutch and the countryside is postcard perfect. And the cycling is a pleasure. But that's nothing to do with this post.



She Leaves.


She leaves
a country of mountain tops,
pencil points in nothing
and crosses on current arrows
to where the sun shines on a space.

Angels
look over the rails,
cheering ferries on the sea

of her worries;
for that is where she bobs,
among all the sparklets
on the sea-top.
And fears
scratch their fingernails
down the glass

she has left;
not left,
left, not left.

Armani Stops at our House

I was sitting opposite this guy one Friday evening. We were both waiting in the lobby of one of the bigger multi-national companies in Dublin. He had the camera ready to go for the weekend. The words for the poem came quickly.

Armani Stops at our House

Ferrari
sunbathing on the verge,

Armani
surveyed from the wall.

Rolex
grinning up a cuff,

Nikon
stole grand-dad’s gappy smile.

Ray-bans
snapping the moment shut,

Gucci
stepped from the grass;

Pirelli
spat dust into our gateway.

Cezanne's mountain

I would love to write a series of poems to accompany Cezanne's many paintings of Mont Sainte Victoire near Aix de Provence. I love the play of light, different times of day,year, catching the mountain in different moods. His ability to find so much in the same inanimate rock, to paint it in different guises, like characters on a stage. I love the diamond facets, the iceberg, the turbulence, menace,ghostliness, disappearance, its solidity, its transparency, remoteness, closeness, blueness, whiteness.

That ability to see so much, to make the mass so ethereal but as often so solid and present.That would be an achievement for a poet.

It would be nice if someone would translate the following YouTube video (thanks to manonous for uploading), but even without translation I enjoy the painting of Cezanne's mountain.

Here's my start:

Cezanne's Mountain

1.

Like ice,
like iron,
like glass,

like air, granite.

The sun inside it,
through it,
off it.

Purpling into thunder,

convulsing cumulusly,
bulging
into storm.

2.
Sugary brilliance this morning,
the brow of Provence
clear as the first day:
a tooth,a molar

In Sickness There Was Only You

Frequently the years knock rough edges off a character. In this instance, an acquaintance was on her deathbed before I got to see the lovable side of her personality. A great pity.

In sickness there was only you


light as a feather,
relieved of the weight
of position and pride;

neither bluff nor brashness
nor the strength
to be more than your dying self.

The Truth

As much and all as we admire the truth, sometimes we must keep it tethered and locked away. Sometimes it’s just too fearsome a beast.When Homer Simpson said "It takes two to lie. One to lie and one to listen",he was right; we must sometimes make a judgment as to what the listener can bear to hear.

And if sometimes it’s difficult to tell the truth, sometimes too it’s difficult not to. This from "Sunfire".


The Wind Claps The Slates

The wind claps the slates;
all night they are hooves running berserk,
all night the wind is inciting them;
all night.

At twenty past two and twenty past three
and twenty past four I am looking at you;
how I would love to have hooves to come
crashing through your sleep, to burst into
your solitude.

And there I would, for better or worse,
demolish the muzzled years with as much
violence as reverberates beneath iron shoes,
as causes such a frenzy in stone that slates
stampede.

Wassa Wassa in Rathmines

Wassa Wassa – 3.00 pm Rathmines Sq (Previously swimming pool car park).
A huge success at last year's festival; Wassa Wassa, a West African percussion, song and dance group, are back again this year with their traditional rhythms and dance, contemporary and traditional African songs, adding their own arrangements and wearing traditional costumes and hats you won’t forget!

A New Rathmines Festival

Festival Under The Clock is a one day festival happening on 20th March. One of the events on the day is MuteFish, a band that mixes trad Irish with Eastern European music in a very exciting, very energetic way. Here's a sample.........come for the rest!

Programme of Events (Festival Under The Clock)

TOWN HALL RATHMINES
(Please note there is limited capacity in the Town Hall. Admission on a
first come basis. All events are FREE.)

Saturday 20th March

1:00pm Anatoly Kudryavitsky
Reading by the Russian-Irish novelist, poet and literary translator.

1:45pm Vereneja
Dance group with an eastern European
heritage, perform dances from all over the world.

2:15pm Ostroha Dance Group
Slovakian Dancers performing traditional
Eastern European folk. A Cultural event to be enjoyed by all the family.

3:00pm Vladimir Jablokov
This Slovakian violinist and his quartet
are a must see, giving the audience a
truly unique performance.

4.15pm MuteFish
Traditional music as you’ve never seen it before. A high energy performance.

8.00pm Eric Lalor
After touring with Des Bishop on his
record breaking “Fitting In Tour” Eric Lalor has truly made a name for himself. Belly achingly funny.

9.00pm Don Baker
Irish blues musician and actor. He is a legend. A performance not to be missed.




FAMILY FUN DAY
RATHMINES SQUARE
(previously swimming pool car park)
Saturday 20th March

12:00pm Historical Walk of Rathmines leaving the square.

2:00pm Traditional Irish Music, there will also be face painting, balloon modeling, stilt walkers.

3:00pm Wassa Wassa Dance Group. AInvited back after a wonderful performance at last year's festival, don't miss this riveting performance of African music and dance.




ANCHOR BAY FILM DAY RATHMINES TOWN HALL

11.00am Little Princess Energetic and Charming a must see for any little boy or girl (G)
1.00pm Irish Premiere of Wow Wow Woopsie
Animated movie featuring the voice of Beyonce Knowles. (G)
3.00pm Paper Heart Comedy and romance; another great performance by Michael Cera. (15)
5.00pm I Sell The Dead A frightful insight into the life of a 19th century grave robber. (15)
7.00 pm Irish Premiere of The Graves
A horror to satisfy the most eager of horror fans.(18)
9.00pm Irish Premiere of Slammin Salmon
The latest comedy from Broken Lizard

Festival Under the Clock 2010, Rathmines

http://festivalundertheclock.webs.com/




Festival Under The Clock happens on 20th March 2010 in Rathmines Town Hall and on Rathmines Road.

A totally free, one day festival with blues man Don Baker, violinist Vladimir Jablokov, comedian Eric Lawlor. Also Mutefish, folk dancing from Eastern Europe and street performances at the newly built Rathmines Square (old swimming pool car park ).And if that's not enough there's a mini film festival too running from morning to late with a programme that covers all ages.

The day is organised by students of Rathminess College in conjunction with Dublin City Council.

It’ll be party day in Rathmines. I’ll post details next week.

The Empty Countryside

This poem from Sunfire is based on rural Ireland of the eighties,when the country was dotted with houses beginning to decay as they became peopled by elderly people or empty houses where parents or grandparents had died, children emigrated or in Dublin, no money to renovate. Today there are similarities, but it's the Chinese, eastern Europeans,Africans, who came for a while,that are leaving in their droves after the short-lived boom.

And there are thousands of empty houses, newly built houses, unfinished, half-finished; housing estates on the edges of towns left to be abandoned building sites. Without ever having been inhabited they lack the atmosphere which inspired this poem,they stand like rotting teeth on the landscape.

Inheriting The Land

Here the sea is no more than a sigh in a shell;
conversations speed past, pole high, Dublin to Galway
and music is the wind whistling beneath a door.
Slightness describes Summer's step,
stonework its skies; a little light drips
from its edges but it's falling from a miser's hand.
Across the fields the church, within its necklace
of dead congregations, is a rusty hinge;
a place filled with a century's stillness.
And the ivy-choked trees lean closer together
like old men guessing at each others' words.

If you were to fly over these patchwork hills,
along the hedgerows and through the lightless haggards,
you wouldn't meet a soul. The old farmers are sitting
in their twilight kitchens, their families standing
on the mantlepiece in the other room that's never used
with their faces tanned beneath American skies.
Only the din of crows seeps into that silence;
crows more numerous than leaves on the sycamores,
always bickering, hogging the light,
building their cities, staking their inheritance.