Distances
There’s a land out west
To which I was wed,
A land in the setting sun
Where the sun never sets,
The light on the dancing trees on the hill
Strong as the wind that blows through my dreams
And endless days lifted aloft
On strong arms that now lie still —
My life as the sea, ebbing and flowing,
Ebbing and flowing with the swell.
Wonder
The kind of day that sets me back in childhood reverie -
Familiar west wind blowing in bare trees
Under a grey and water-laden sky,
Man and beast thrown together
In this landscape nothingness.
Wonder if we are facing west or east,
The ones we loved all the while,
The ones we are leaving still,
Or a new love somewhere
That opens up new skies
Filling our days, these last times, with definite light.
Think the sum of the missing parts, miraculously,
To make up a whole in the God-given scheme of things.
Riverman
Nature has reclaimed the earth,
Called it back to herself
In floods and flowing rivulets.
We picked our steps
Between the water and the wet hedge,
The sun, for days now, hidden from view
In a sea of cloud and heavy mist.
Encapsulated as a dewdrop on a leaf,
Senses sunk in the vaporous smell of the sodden earth
And held fast like children to her bosom,
We are the free ones soon to be liberated,
The expectant ones, the exultant.
Transcend
Be true to the day that rises,
Silently like any other,
Inexorably like all the rest
In fulfilment of its own plan.
The day that, like all the others,
Carries us forward in its bosom,
Touched as we still are by the tears and fears,
The childhood scrapes and falls,
The half-loves in the half-light,
By chimeric dreams you and I enthralled.
And called, some of us above our years,
Above the joys, above the tears,
In the sun that rises again anew
Complete with promises of life,
O miracle of miracles, in this body of clay
That fit and lift and stretch and bend —
like glass in the hands of the blower
Or dough, the breadmaker —
We are jewels called forth to shine,
Transcend, we are the new Jerusalem.
Watch-Light
Who keeps watch from one unremitting day to the next,
Not breaking the continuity therein.
Swept to higher ground,
Conscious decision made to come down -
As clouds rolling in from the south that, somehow we
know,
Will not infringe greatly upon the high -
This parallel truth dawning, this watch-light,
Mystical reckoning of man-nature-God
Where silence speaks far, far louder than words.
The Lotus-Eaters
The burning of the weeds continues,
Night and day, all summer long.
Weeds you can’t tell by name
But whose habit is familiar.
The one of weak root that entwines itself
Round rosemary and blackcurrant bush,
Growing as it goes until it sits victorious
Like a crown atop its host.
The fire burns all summer long,
Red glow aided by used timber,
Overgrown bush and spreading tree,
The remains of the day.
Not yet the disused and spent weaponry
Of the redundant warrior.
We have moved into the still realm of the ITCZ,
Intertropical convergence zone where trade winds,
North and south, cease to blow —
Not a twig or leaf moves and the air
Oozes droplets of misty water vapour
That caress our cheeks and weary brow.
Our eyes scan a sea where no warships roll,
Look out over the immeasurable land
Where no one buys or sells anymore
And the booty is handed out in rich measure
And all are satisfied to the core —
Young and old alike enthralled
By the righteous demands of love
And truth and justice, and moved, moreover,
By the ineffable beauty and majesty of our warrior Lord.
Let Everyone on Earth
The Lord is in his holy Temple; let everyone on earth
be silent in his presence.
Habakkuk 2:20
Silence of the Good Friday hours.
Silence of the refectory hall.
Silence of the Judaean wilderness
Where he fasted the lonely forty nights and days.
Silence of the bereaved,
Of the long walk back to the crowd,
The slow walk back to happiness.
Silence of the languid autumn nights
As, overcome, nature begins her descent again
Into the bosom of the earth.
They came, sporadically at first,
Then continuously in a stream
As you gave us to drink from full and holy cisterns.
Thoughts on a Peruvian Prayer
‘Poetry is mine,’ I heard a voice say, ‘and the body of
believers.’
Time to pick up the pen again then and write, I thought,
As Cisneros did or Gerardo Diego —
Versos Divinos, Angeles de Compostela
Amor Solo, or in some other way,
Thus ending the silence, growth of the great barrier-reef,
Crust of coral rock, thoughts hardened to an anomalous
mass
And not sifted or free as the bright fish that swim
In the cerulean blue of sky below, above and beyond.
The Spirit Is All I Need
For Brendan Kennelly
I stood in defiance of your call —
Your smile, the sun on dancing leaves,
Mine, a beam of light pure as milkwood
That absorbed you in its embrace.
I must fight, I thought, and not risk defeat;
With cunning I viewed the skilled warrior
And did not know if he would receive
As friend or foe the child lost to love’s face.
Pathways
My chest is become a map,
Veinous ways a web of paths
You walk across.
Your steps fall, heavy as stone,
Down some obscure lane
On Dame, d’Olier Street;
Fall silenced at the cross Of redeemed, beleaguered love
I am stretched upon.
The Dogs of War
The dogs of war are at my window,
Snarling jaws circling for the kill.
To go outside now would be certain suicide,
I sit, heart pounding, waiting for daylight to come.
Was it that I was my father’s favourite child,
Even the Father’s prodigal son
Or just that, having loved and lost,
I had finally loved and won?
Goodbye Old Star
Fairy light of star
In a winter twilight sky.
Haze on the forest slope,
Houses sunk in evergreen
groves,
Smell of silage and cattle-fodder fills the air
With a sweet musk perfume.
Emerging from behind a cloud,
Venus breaks her moorings
And heads for her appointed zenith
Way out over the western horizon.
Earth lifts up her heavy sighing
To the tops of barren, ivy-clad trees,
An old soldier’s journey draws to a close —
Trees would fly free in the heavens
Ere soul kissed soul again
In freedom’s sweet embrace.
An Exile’s Dream
If you love me as much as I loved my dog
When she lay bleeding to death
And I hugged and caressed her
And she miraculously survived, it’s alright.
As I loved the hounded terrorist sitting in his den
On his final fling of freedom,
Media and mediators turned cold,
Chilled by his numbing deeds —
Only he and I saw the hidden escape route,
A tunnel through the barned hay,
And we crawled our way suffocatingly to the light,
It’s alright. Or, as when, surfacing finally from sleep,
The man reclining on raised ground with his friends
And tents pitched high in the heavens above,
Viewing it all from afar and me with such an intenseness
of love,
It’s alright, Lord, it’s alright.
Unwanted Legacy
For Paul Higgins
The kids didn’t want teaching, mama,
So we left them alone.
They were hungry, just as we were,
Only nobody came to our rescue back then.
Just like now ’cause when we tried to give them the word,
You came along with your cohort of rampaging friends,
Shouting, “Look, there he is, stop him,” and ye snatched
The food right out of their mouths, sending us away.
The seed that would have grown inside them,
Life-giving, fruit-bearing.
Instead we have disease and destruction, sickness and
decay.
“The education system only serves Satan,” I heard the
Spirit say.
Words at Dusk
There is nothing in my life,
No love in my heart, I have not surrendered.
Empty though not empty-handed,
I await the coming;
Give back as I am given
Loved ones I cannot reach, yet carry still,
A teenage girl’s light prayer,
A man’s mid-life frustrations — these I let fall
And, shot on our screen, a young wife’s tearful farewell
To her bullet-ridden husband dying on the floor…
And, from yesterday, some strange love I hand over
But keeps coming back again and again
And stronger still as the sun bringing yet another spring.
Lambs drop in the field, covered in ewe’s blood,
A whisper of a prayer falls from my lips
As I stand at dusk by the river in flood:
O bring this love again and come, Lord Jesus, come.
The Cost
We came downstairs, out into the afternoon heat
And resumed working on the summer beds,
Digging carnations out of the dry, parched earth.
We made it,’ you said non-comittedly as you came
And sat beside me on a rocky ledge,
‘I’m glad we’ve come this far,’ I said.
Raised up on this, our platform of faith,
We looked out across a plateau
On horizons yet to be reached.
Looked down on the climb successfully negotiated thus
far—
Though we had lost a little something along the way,
perhaps,
What matter, no victory is won at no cost in any war.
From the Garden
They took the quarry from the stone
And the water from the mill;
They placed a no-go sign outside your door,
The place of your still moving will.
They took the meadow from the long grass,
The valley and the hill;
The white-curved moon they thieved from the sky
And a trillion stars harnessed for war.
O war of wars! What giant step
Slowly and stealthily taken
From small turning back
Of one man, woman, in the garden.
Showdown
Night and the seasons wrap themselves
Round us as winter draws in.
I welcome the shortening day, the departing sun -
It cannot rob me of what I do not have
And of what I long, eternally, to hold.
I am in love with this darkness,
My life’s course not far from run.
All that’s left to do is wait -
Wait by the deep-girthed beech
Prematurely devoid of its leaves,
Dank smell of decaying wood in the undergrowth
Drawing out the senses in narcosis-inducing ease,
With the animals that come and go -
The fast growing kittens in the fruit bushes,
Dogs lying languidly by the open door,
The two flighty fillies settling into their stabling routine,
Knowing they will be cared for as winter slowly
approaches
And nature shuts down on us once more.
Over the Boundaries
We met by the high walls,
This time as friends;
You were taking the rubbish out to burn —
Bits of broken timber gathered in a pile
In the shade of sycamore and tall oak.
I observed your efforts, standing
At the borders of my own lot.
“You don’t think of me now,” you said lightly
As I approached, causing me to protest.
“I follow your progress all the time,” I said.
The sound of your fast beating heart —
Result of strain, struggling with the fiery cohorts —
As we walked arm in arm, drew me on.
We walked long, out over the boundaries
Of our lives, over time present and past,
Seeking new ground, leaving old faces behind,
The cynicism and mistrust,
Two unsung heroes from some Greek tragedy
Or Hansel and Gretel lost in the deep woods.
Let the Cricket Sing
Creamery carts, their milk-tankards full,
Harness jingling as iron hooves met stone,
Their coming and going, as we rose and sank in sleep
The glorious summer mornings long, echoed our own.
I stood, a timid figure, on the road
Waiting for his familiar form to appear
And ran to meet him when it did,
I was only three or four.
We drew water from the well,
Brought the turf up from the rick.
Dreaming up monsters in the dark,
We fought our fears out loud.
A summer’s evening upstairs in bed, truth dawned,
I cried and would not stop, I have a pain in my tummy,’
Was all I said when she brought me down and asked,
when,
‘You are going to die and Daddy too,’ was all that was in
my heart.
When the Circus Came to Town
I must have been only five or six —
It was before we moved from the old school up to the
new,
The one with flower-gardens and concrete paths.
We sat then on long, hard, wooden benches
And suffered the daily onslaught of teachers’ censorious
re
marks
While they, the circus folk, basked in open sunshine,
No roof over their heads but a canvas dome,
Moveable caravans for a home. We envied them so,
Endless days and nights on the merry-go-round,
Juggling balls, standing upside down on their heads,
Leaping through hoops on white, crested-neck ponies,
Walking across open spaces, through obstacles of fire.
They were gods in our eyes, exempt from all laws
And if we could have gone with them when they pulled
up pegs
And broke camp, we would. Dreams of being tight-rope
walkers
And acrobats — we made do with lessons from Joy instead
As she played with us briefly in the schoolyard
Before moving on, time out from skipping and hopscotch,
Hurling ourselves at her on instruction
While she caught us up firmly astride her hips.
When the circus came to town, to our village,
And set up shop in Bill Reidy’s field next door,
We passed by their tents, Josie and myself,
As often as we could each day,
Heads filled with romance,
After the cold and rain of winter,
Our young lives temporarily rescued
From the monotonous drabness of our ways.
Vignettes
The river flows past manor walls
Steadily on its course past woodland gardens
Where oak and silver birch and rhododendron held sway
And we walked in dappled shade amid riotous scent
On to the wild wood beyond.
Past the well-kept lawns and rose-beds it flowed,
The french windows, piano notes drifting through,
Now lost on the wind.
That old colonial post turned emancipation house
Where suffragette-in-arms ran guns with her friends.
Where choir and choral group raised orchestrated voices
To the tune of ’Murder in the Cathedral’ and The
Sheperd’s Farewell’.
The shouting from the playing fields still haunts,
Tennis-courts open to estuary breezes
That blew westerly up the mouth of the wide river