The Four Strings On Her Violin.

A tunnel, in which she flitted like a bat with no more than a candle

and a breath of wind coming from somewhere further along,

where heart will explore in search of.............................................

of darkness; with limited life; search until pointlessness.

Second: a meteorites tail blazed across her face, made her magnificent.

All the faces in the auditorium were bulbs, all switched on, all magnificent;

and some cried, and the tears were seeds of her light.

Third, sandy beach: contrary, mix of gleam and dull gray; saw edge,

bilingual, grit between the strings, speckled, pocked. And its sharp edge

of sunlit sea.

Fourth, the arc of a day. From cumulus clouds down to the domes

and spires of the city, she flew time measured in the passing of the sun:

the sharpening and blunting of light. Clouds here and there interspersed

with the blueness of infinity, and day, the unit of our lives, lived in the

sound she was creating right there, in front of us.

In the Lagoon

Sun shining half-heartedly backwards into a sulky sky;

you may come upon me, lost in my beard,

drifting oarless in the lagoon, surrounded by trees

drooping listlessly into the water.

There may be a herring gull perched on my head

scanning the shore with avaricious intent

and perhaps a verse of poetry written to my memory,

in chalk, on the side of the boat:

‘He was a poet of meagre talent,

verbiage yes, rhyme he hadn’t.

Could pick an image, lacked rhythm;

just didn’t have it in ‘im.’

The Moon is a Blood Orange

The moon is a blood orange:

half devoured, rotting,

lolling just above the town.

A shade of Autumn ripeness,

of succulence

as Caravaggio might picture it.

Like a blown rose’s tarnished beauty,

like young love, its transience 
prompts a blissful melancholia.

Silver Birches

Today I came on a stand of birches

dazzling in late evening sunlight.

A tableau of, maybe, a dozen nudes;

splendid, shameless.

Torsos of Elginesque splendour,

arms twining upward in Grecian gracefulness;

statuesque beauties

nonchalant in Olympian lasciviousness.

Re-election in A Time of Death

A privilege of money: access,
access to everything.

To presidency?

Of course.

At what cost?

Cost?

A privilege of money:

the meaninglessness of this question.

Night Light

Night Light

Aerial photographs: night-light of the human sprawl,

cities’ cancerous creep.

Our web, spun across the globe,

corralling wildernesses, removing their essence;

grotesque with carcasses rotting in its threads

and its promise of a planet empty of all but us.

Blogging poetry in a time of Covid

I couldn’t finish my coffee without dealing with the houseflies circulating above the table. I just didn’t want them there. I got out a towel and starting at one end of the room and continuing to the open french doors on the opposite wall, I did a reasonable impression of a helicopter flying out of control with the kitchen towel. The plan seemed good, they were scattering, and I reckoned most of them would flee to the grander world outside. I closed the doors, returned to my coffee, and practically all of them returned to the place above my head.

That, of course, was a declaration of war. I got out the hoover, put on the small nozzle attachment and went after them with Miele know-how. They scattered in every direction, but not one disappeared into the hose, and so I’ve retreated into another room and am distracting my anger with this piece of prose.

Of course, none of this would be an issue if I wasn’t retired. For not quite a year now I have been an altered character; my role on this earth changed dramatically: I have become an almost full-time blogger poet. If I am not writing, I am considering what I might write about; I look at my surroundings and life as a reservoir for topics. I go searching for ideas like someone who was lost their keys in a meadow; I construct and abandon lines continually; re-envisage, re-edit, reword; sometimes resurrect some old poems, repackage, rework and on it goes. With all that time, I’m posting at least every second day (and that’s a rate I’d have advised against, but now writing is the wind in my sails, and I’m keeping them full).

So I sit in this room with all its windows, looking at a sizable swathe of County Donegal and beyond. It suits me very well, this life away from the demands of others, many of which didn’t sit very well with me. Alone with my thoughts congealing on the screen, particularly now, with the pandemic raging like an invisible storm. The blog prompts me to consider my experiences in a deeper way, particularly nature which now fills my view. A consideration of my recent poems shows the extent to which nature has filled my recent life, indeed, at times almost to the point of being overgrown.

Chunks of time spent in my own company, even without the restrictions due to covid, are, of course, necessary for  this writing. That’s the way it must be for poetry, a shortage of direct acclaim that explains why many poets crave live performance. I mention it because, in the grand spaces of time I now have, I would welcome feedback, comments and opinions; I would like other people's reactions to what I've written or how others might have reacted to the same sights and happenings. For me by the window, your comments might be a source of ideas and encouragement, an education in alternative views i.e. a widening of my perspective, and of course company.

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.