A familiar state

Writer’s Block

 

Nothing lands on this plain,

nothing moves

but its seeping emptiness.

 

Goggled pilot

high above

this snow-gagged wilderness,

 

loop or spin,

I leave no shadow;

the paper grins.

At one with nature

The reliance of humans on nature has suffered from the rise of modern religion. The disappearance of deities of the earth and our own elevation into the realms of being made in God’s image has stunted our regard for the rest of nature; nature in the service of man has blinded us to our reliance on it. Ancient societies (and not so ancient, but always disdained for their ‘backwardness’) understood the interdependence very well. Our global and daily desecration of the environment would have been seen as criminal under a different belief system. This poem by Thomas Hardy catches our oneness with nature very well. 

Transformations 

 

Portion of this yew

Is a man my grandsire knew,

Bosomed here at its foot:

This branch may be his wife,

A ruddy human life

Now turned to a green shoot.

 

These grasses must be made

Of her who often prayed,

Last century, for repose;

And the fair girl long ago

Whom I often tried to know

May be entering this rose.

 

So, they are not underground,

But as nerves and veins abound

In the growths of upper air,

And they feel the sun and rain,

And the energy again

That made them what they were!

 

The Silver River

 

 Jacket, shirt and shoes,

 his socks and trousers

neat on the bank;

 a small crowd watching from the bridge.  

silver river running  

 He was coming from a game of cards, late,

 the winnings in his pocket.

 There had been a woman,

 they had visited the priest.  

silver river running  

 But that’s long ago now.

 He worked the farm;

 a good worker, his neighbours said,

 always busy with the tractor. 

silver river running 

 He lived with his mother,

 who cooked his meals and managed the money.

 Now she was a great farming woman,

 everyone agreed. 

silver river running 

I have a photograph of him holding a child,

he didn’t look comfortable;

he sat for a while in the garden

but didn’t stay long. 

silver river running

 

A carefree lazy time

Summer Orchard Evening

 

On an evening

when apple was eating the worm,

tree grating the sun

with some clouds, dusty birds;

the green cloth

was spread to the orchard wall.

 

I watched bees collecting post

while cat was a tea cosy

with dozey trip-wire eyes.

Suddenly dog alarm in the hedge

comes bursting from the undergrowth:

big game hunter

and cat gone steeplejack.

 

Then dog winks

and we stretch out,

and I go back to being a microscope

eyeball deep in daisies.

Light: Man-made

Light: Man-made

 

The lights go out

down our street, through the town, country, world; 

all that fits so easily inside a head. 

A new light

tipped slightly upward in a glob

of hardened brain tissue: 

one aerodynamically perfect,

copper-bright

bullet.

 

Seamus Begley "The Bold Kerryman"

Here is Annie Laurie from Seamus Begley’s new album, The Bold Kerryman. What a beautiful voice he has.

The song is based, in all likelihood, on a poem written by William Douglas (1672 - 1748), with amendments in the 1850's by Alicia Scott, (Lady John Scott), who set it to music.

Douglas wrote the poem for his sweetheart, Annie. But Robert Laurie, Annie's father, was not in favour of the romance leading anywhere, owing to her young age and Douglas's political views. He, a soldier, was later exiled for his Jacobite allegiances.

Given the beautiful melancholic atmosphere of Begley's rendition, it would be nice to conclude this piece by describing how she died of a broken heart,  and he lived out  his life in total dejection, till eventually they  were buried side by side near Maxwelton brae. In fact, they both found marriage partners and lived long lives. And, well, sorry.........................................maybe I've just ruined it.

 

 

Annie Laurie 

"Maxwelton braes are bonnie
Where early falls the dew
And it was there that Annie Laurie
Gave me her promise true

Gave me her promise true
Which never forgot will be
And for bonnie Annie Laurie
I would lay me down and die.

Her brow is like the snowdrift
Her neck is like the swans
Her face it is the fairest
That ever the sun shone on.

That ever the sun shone on
And dark blue is her eye
And for bonnie Annie Laurie
I would lay me down and die.

Like dew on the gowan lying
Is the fall of her fairy feet
And like the winds in summer sighing
Her voice is low and sweet.

Her voice is low and sweet
And she's all the world to me
And for bonnie Annie Laurie
I'd lay me down and die"

Magical Fore

 

 

This is Fore. It is one of the few places I know where a stone building sits as comfortably into natural surroundings as though it were a limestone outcrop. Fore is a place of outstanding beauty; the ruined Benedictine abbey actually succeeds in drawing  attention to the peace and beauty of the valley around it. The immediate impact comes from its lack of commercialization; it comes on the traveler as something magical, something that  rose from the green fields beneath it. There was a time when Clonmacnoise had the same magic, but poor and tasteless development put an end to that.

Consequently,(and not surprisingly), some magical myths have grown up around Fore. Here are the 7 wonders of Fore: the monastery in the bog, the mill without a race, the water that flows uphill, the tree that has three branches/the tree that won’t burn, the water that won’t boil, the anchorite in a stone and the stone/lintel raised by St Fechin’s prayers.

Reflection

 

The sunlight on the back of your neck,

ear-lobes, hair;

the page-reflected glow onto your chin,

dimming upward towards your eyes;

all else, darkness around you.

 

If I’d never seen that you are beautiful;

that day, the light that chose to steal up behind you,

to settle on you  so gently, but dazzlingly;

that light would have been light enough

to reflect forever in my mind.

A Reflection on Love and Age

 

So, I suddenly find myself within a few weeks of my sixtieth birthday. And, of course, (life being a countdown), I have been expecting it.

However, the notions that I had of what it is to be sixty have all been revised. I see age in the mirror, but not sixty, not by a long shot. Nor do I see it in the faces of my relatives and friends, not sixty, not seventy. I have to assume that others do see it, (all too clearly), but still, I, somehow, hold out the hope  that I am an exception.

Which brings me to the point of my reflecting on my age. I met an American girl many years ago; her name was Sara. She spent sometime in Ireland, during which  she attended a writers group. In truth, I only spoke to her a couple of times; in her work, I recognized the subtlety that the  very best writers possess. I got what she was about, and she  understood my efforts. Today, I still have the testament to this in the book of English translations of Lorca she gave me that last night she attended the workshop.

Occasionally, I have  googled her name to see if she has become the writer she promised.  Yes, there is someone out there writing under her name; it doesn’t appear that  she has made it big, but at least she is still indulging a passion. Is it the same  Sara: we never got past some friendly words, I’ll never know.

She comes into my mind, because I think I fell in love with her. Not a wild physical love, but I think one falls in love with those who see the beauty that you see,  (imagine), in yourself. And those who see that deep internal beauty, see it because they too have it. And so you meet a soulmate.

It has happened a handful of times my life; that surge of recognition of a soulmate. It happens in brief encounters, maybe brief enough not to have found the negative; and so the person remains unsullied, perfect in your mind. The memories persist like hauntings. They persist as tiny, nagging, life-long longings.

At this age, I can permit myself to say that certain things are life-long. I can say too that there are feelings that persist. That aging is not as it appears in the mirror, because some things just haven't changed.

A Memory of my Father

A Memory of my Father

 

Shaft of Sunlight,

reflection off a million specks

of dust,

fed his face with lines and grace.

 

Soft light paints old faces

the friendliness of sweet Autumn apples.

He talked on;

I looked in.

Depression. One Fruit

I must have written this on a quiet night. Occasionally I get depressed. Then the forward flow  of life is arrested and a disappointment settles over all. It might be triggered by something in particular, but the soft grey that settles has no particular focus. It locks out light and leaves you sitting energy-less and incapable of rising to the words of love that the sufferers around you deserve for their forbearance.

Fortunately, it's not a very regular visitor in my case, and after a day or few days, I'm back, slightly dented maybe and sometimes with a poem that has come from my deepest self. 

 

No Title

 

This evening I will leave my mask and crutch,

go to the well, immerse myself

till there is no chill;

till water, moss, sky and I are all one marble.

 

So when you find me, my love, this  smile,

my limbs and fingers will be milk-white;

rosaries will be hanging; petitions,

stuffed between my jaws, fluttering in the wind.

 

And the reason will hang: a faint quivering

of atoms in the air around you,

an SOS in a register just beyond audibility;

and the mask’s smile: a mouth full of soil.

Yesterday

 

 

A poem you said I should write. 

 

An African nurse on your ward,

born the day after her  grandmother died,

called Yesterday.  

She was gone as soon.

Nurses from the agency come and go,

good relationships are important

for the patients, you explained.  

And now you are gone; who will carry your spirit?

Tried and trusted strategies for improving political image

1.       The party leader during prolonged applause should let his/her gaze travel along the balcony, whether there is or is not a balcony. In the latter case, the gaze should be pitched at an angle of elevation of approx. 35 degrees.

2.       The greater statesperson is instantly recognizable by his/her being first to extend an arm to usher the other into position when the event is being televised.

3.       The greater statesperson is instantly recognizable by his/her being first to extend a finger to point to something in the sky when the event is being televised. (This might be a cloud shaped like a pigeon or Italy.)

4.       At election time the leader of a Irish party must walk through Ballyfermot in particular formation.  The  preferred  is shown below.

 

 

 

 

 

      A variation on this, which has been much used in the particular instance of whistle-blowers    making public statements is shown below.

 

 

 

5.       When the party leader is making a statement which is to be screened on the main evening news, it is imperative that he/she employ a small group of Father Dougal wannabes to form a semi-circle behind him/her. This group receives basic training in head-nodding, while  one member  of the group receives additional instruction in looking to the left.

 

6.       In the interview situation, the effective politician must always anticipate. At the earliest indication of an unwelcome thread in the questioning, he/she  must be  prepared to recite large portions of Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’. Versatility is essential, on other occasions it may be more appropriate to deconstruct the plotline of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ or sing a little Tom Waits.

7.       In the interview situation, there is no need for the politician to answer the question posited as long as the answer addresses a topic which rhymes with the original e.g. brown envelope, brown antelope; water charges, otter miscarriages.

8.       This final point is obvious but important. The number of women in a cabinet has a minimum threshold that must be observed, however this number must be kept at this minimum. The reason is basic, overt coloration in clothing can sink, not just the individual, but the  entire party.

 

Pain

 

Frida Kahlo knew more about pain than almost any artist I can think of. No surprise then that her paintings need go no further than herself, indeed often no further than her face to represent pain. She learned to live with physical pain, she had no choice: she and pain were one. In her painting ’the broken column’, the column depicts unbearable pain, but is also the backbone of her body.

Frequently, the strength of her imagery comes from her maintaining an austere but otherwise quite inscrutable expression, she lets the symbolism supplied by the various animals or plants that frame her head carry the message. It is understatement that carries the weight in these works.

I mention it because in poetry, time and time again, (even among many poets who are highly lauded), the  urge to spew high-flown verbiage, strangling their poems at birth, leaves me, for one, longing for a good ole football match.

 

The Clouds have overrun the sky

 

 

The whole countryside’s a fluster:

meadows quivering, a tree is screaming,

the boulders have clapped hands over their ears.

 

The word is that the stars have been burgled,

a stream’s stolen the silver,

and a cave, (whisper it), has swallowed the moon.