How the Irish became the most knowledgeable race on earth

  The Salmon in the Spring, the Hazel and the Hermit

Into an open gob the hazelnuts fell,

so that over the years the salmon grew

into a colossus.

A day came when one fell and devoured

the very instant of  dimpling the surface,

it caused the salmon to spew from its intestines

the knowledge of a thousand years

that cascaded downhill

over the shilling bright stones,

through the ignorant meadows to the lake,

where it became part of the ever-turning

cycle of life, in water, weed and silt.

A hermit, who lived by the lake,

dousing his face, drank some of this potion

and was instantly replete.

In time a hazel took root in his belly

and he convulsed

so that the stones unearthed by his flailing feet

filled the lake

and sent its waters flooding out

onto to the plain where the people lived;

so they, too, in their turn, drank;

and by this means knowledge and poetry spread

from the time that was before

to the times now and those yet to come

And  that, dear frends, is how the Irish became

the wisest, savviest race on earth.

Karst Man

 

When I tell you, the man who lives on those hills is made

of the same karst he stands on,

that butts through the thin cover of his fields;

that he and his forefathers, back to neolithic times, 

used to construct the walls, their net on the landscape; 

it’s not a poetic conceit.

I have seen him standing in spring-limpid sunlight,

his legs and arms a trellis for briar and blackthorn;

a perch for robin, chaffinch and stonechat;

I tell you, it was the place that coded his DNA; 

to the spring water of his eyes, gently sloping fields of his voice,

subterranean streams of  his belonging. 

It was the snow

 

that brought me back,

its peace and space;

refinding myself

in its absence of clutter.

With each new fall

more deeply cleansed;

the world simplified,

a fresh start.

A Book from Stone

 

Well, not really. But sometimes it feels that way.

I keep the blog to amass poems. Publishing online keeps me at it; knowing that there are readers out there gives me impetus. 

There comes a point when I have to decide there's enough to carve out a collection; I've been deferring; editing is a chore and there is a serious amount of editing to be done to re-shape these poems for a book publication. But now is the time. I have about six years of material, poems that have been produced like diary entries. I will disregard about 80% of them and spend, perhaps a year, maybe more, getting the rest into a shape that I am happy to have representing me. Somehow a book seems to demand a level of care that the blog doesn't; I  hope that's isn't an insult to regular readers.

I mention it because, though I do post newer drafts of poems on the blog, there'll be more now as I rework the pieces. I don't tend to get feedack but feel free if you feel the urge; for now, though, I have to address this chunk of stone.

 

Laid Out

 

It’s often the hands

locked and clawed

that snag the eyes.

Now yours,

so recently warm,

bound in rosary beads;

already a statue’s.

Bog

 

Bog

Sinking into the soft mire, spagnum sponge;

ooze rising inches above my feet: beer brown,

freezing cold. I take a handful and squeeze;

water, so much water drains through my fingers;

I slap away the fresh vegetation; hold my hands

to my nose, am filled with the smell of fertile earth.

Heathers, mosses, sedge and bog cotton;

a wilderness, once a lake, its margins still visible:

green fields and farm houses away in the distance:

Here, in the realm of insects, plants that devour them,

sundews and butterworts, their killer genes expressed

in the mucillage, tentacles, in the traps of their leaves.

And down, down beneath my feet, rich black turf:

countless years of heat, insulation: walls and roofing;

from bountiful earth fuel from the growth of millennia.

There too, the preserved remains of the past: old roads,

wooden tracks, submerged walls, jewelery, weapons, tools;

bodies wearing facial expressions that have defied time.

August Hedgerow Momentarily

Photograph by Josef Koudelka

 

Thin as splinters,

butterflies

borne on white wings

like flags,

flitting over the hedgerow

like scraps of paper

wind-blown.

Dallying over the brambles,

wings

bright as lighthouses;

careless

like children playing

as birds watch,

beaks like mousetraps.

Beneath the Trees

 

A gentle breeze,

the mottles of light and shade

continuously shifting,

pleasing the eye

as asymmetry does,

but continuously,

exciting the retina,

and cumulatively;

creating a giddiness ‒

optical intoxication.

What Young Should Be

This is written in the context of the ugliness of modern warfare, where population are slaughtered.

What Young Should Be

It should be a state of invincibility,

a guarantee of safety;

believing in the powers within;

I am up to it, all of it.

It should be a view of infinity,

a horizonless plain of time;

space for all the dreams,

and I have those dreams.

It should be painless,

rejoicing in the body’s capacities;

with exhilaraion in movement;

I break into carefree running.

It should be a flood of freedom,

an unstifled education in finding oneself,

revealing many futures;

and I have those choices.

Back Gardens

 

I’m on the train, heading out of town,

passing yards and back gardens

with that unkemptness that would

never be seen on the street side.

And suddenly I think of smiles and

pleasantness; the gracious conversations

we present to people while inside

our opinions are stacked mum.

How, wading  through the back gardens, 

we might admire the front;

how we live in other heads 

having developed in semi-independent ways.

A New Level of Madness

 

The 21^st century: a new level of madness:

men, I would not leave to baby-sit my child,

with the shadows of their fingers stirring

above nuclear buttons. The same cold-heartedness

as Genghis, Vlad, Stalin or Hitler; the will

to wipe out, not armies, but children at their meals,

at school, in hospital wards, babies

who have still to recognize themselves.

Their lies as nature withers; our children's

futures left arid by their glory-seeking;

this civilisation in straight reverse.

We brutalise with greater ease, level homes by the city,

kill innocents in soaring numbers;

the 21^st century, and, incapable of learning,

we have given these  vainglorious men the care of our billions.

Droplets of Water

 (a rewrite of a poem from 2022)

Droplets 

along the sharp edge of a stone

like a chain of headlights

in December traffic,

sidling onto moss greenery,

streaming down an algal thread

to a pool of pellucid water

over a mosaic of coloured stones.

Beads of water, taxis,

carrying you in iotas 

to pools, your thoughts

in subterranean caverns

where the beauties are pin-sized

and, though forgotten,

were once your fireworks.

Summer Downpour

 

on asphalt, concrete,

glass and slate;

drumming steel, aluminium

wood, copper, tin;

slapping tarpaulin and canvas,

polyester and polythene;

raindrops, billions,

thunderously:

a summer downpour

slowing now

slowing

fingers,

fingers tapping

buckets, barrels,

blocks, boxes, bricks,

hollows in canopies,

puddles, ponds and pools;

flicking leaves,

chattering light

as the sun finds crevices in the jet sky

tipping

tapping

now below the frequency of seconds,

dream-like, 

to isolated beats,

the new world of

water-lensed

colours teeming thunderously,

giddily,

answering sound

with a symphony of light.

Distance

 

Distance

A train tunnelling through the night-time lights briefly

before the sound, self-weaving,

eventually becomes another thread in the wind.

From over the fields, a dog barks; perhaps a fox

stirring the undergrowth, a flurry of wings in a coop;

the commotion broadcast along the chicken wire.

A bird is calling from the unknown of  vanished daytime;

a child listens; a key turns;

another vastness opens in the sweeping of invisble wings. 

Still Those Conversations

 

Faraway it seems

and yet all around and close;

time like snow has fallen on your memory.

Those conversations sluicing

through an afternoon

in a snug in an old pub;

dna spirals of cigarette smoke,

window-light trapped in the coils

and your voice

with its oak-timber grain,

stained over time,

cured in porter and smoke.

Faraway it seems,

but still in amber light,

still lifting from the floor boards.