A reminder to me
That the suffering of man
Sounds so much the same
In everything but name.
LAMBS
By the last rays of the winter sun
I seem to smell the signs of spring.
Those ewes we’d bring
Into the shelter of this lofty barn,
Its back turned against the gales,
Clean straw beds among the bales.
Young lambs learn quick to stand,
To find the ewes that fuss around
And knock them off to stand again
On spindly legs like drunken men.
I remember all these happy things
And later saw them dance in rings.
LAND OF THE LEACHTÁNS
The slow call of a crow outside
Seems to echo back to childhood-
To a sloping sunburnt hill
In the land of limestone leachtáns
And grey stone walls I’ll always love;
Where we saved the hay together,
Often watching out for rain
And hurrying if we felt a drop or two-
Resting only when my mother came
With tea and rhubarb tart at four o’clock.
My father smoked his pipe contentedly,
Blessed himself and spat on his palms;
Resuming play we both made hay
And trimmed and tied each work of art.
With the brown pony we all called Dan,
My brother Mike, sunburned and strong,
Gathering in the hay with a tumble rake.
A curlew calls mysteriously-
Drawing back the veil of night,
Reminding me of Bailemhóinín
And the Carheen river quietly flowing
From Lios an Fhíona,
Draining the low black bogland,
Scenting sweet with furze and heather.
LANDING PLACE
I can see afar those flowing fields
Sloping down from old stone walls
To that deep and embedded dip-
Cupping the presence of the pond
For thirsty cows and cattle around.
Rush and reed hide water hens;
Landing place for goose and duck,
And its swans unexpectedly return
In peace as straying memories do.
Spell bound pond in Tír na nÓg,
Treasury of young dreams of love;
Frost its face had frozen over-
Our sliding place in the setting sun.
TAILBACK
In a traffic jam and I can see
Daffodils bedeck the ditches,
Benches in a people’s park.
Sideways there is a swamp
Where in the water preening
Stands a swan unperturbed.
A proud heron flies up above:
Once a tall and lordly one
Upheld its native landing rights,
Strutting around the grass
Within a nearby roundabout,
Reclaiming its own wetland.
As my patience in the tailback
Further ticks away from me
A brazen ambulance overtakes
This queue of cars and breaks
With flashing lights of blue
The traffic rules to save a life
By Limerick’s Shannonside
Across The Whistling Bridge.
MEETING WORDSWORTH
I’d reached a clearing in the wood
And there I think I met Wordsworth:
As happy as he was by ‘sylvan Wye’
When first I lived within his poems
And often walked with him in step.
The poet who told us in his lines
Of his God in nature, written above
His ‘Tintern Abbey’I read and loved
And visited in later life in sunshine:
A ruins to remember for its peace.
WILD STRAWBERRIES
Rustling the ditch’s foral skirt for strawberries:
Red and wild, elusive little rubies of delight,
Hidden as they hang, no bigger than a haw-
Vying with the velvet bells of purple foxgloves,
Filling the colour void and ringing out the days
Of violets fading in the shady wood unseen;
Overlooked by ferns in unfurled flags of green.
AUX PIED DE LA CROIX
Du balcon de ma chambre en haut,
Un matin à Medugorje d’or doux
La vallée s’est baignée au soleil levant,
Les coqs des villages ensemble exultants.
Dehors au coin du petit potager la bas
La fumée monte d’un feu aux cieux,
Mais qu’est-ce qu’ils font si tôt avec
Les tuyaus dans le tonneau d’eau?
On dit ici qu’il y a des petites distilleries
Qu’ils font du Schnapps, bonne à boire:
Ces gens choisis de nôtre Mère
Dans ce lieu bénit entre ciel et terre.
Vicka la visionnaire de la Vierge Marie,
De la voix débordée de la joie d’esprit;
Pendant qu’ elle nous de l’abri parlait
La pluie en Bosnie sur la foule tombait.
Jacov modestement de ses visions parlait:
“Il n’y a aucun artiste pour décrire sa beauté;
Les beaux yeux sont bénis d’amour infini
Et sa voix maternelle est une vraie mélodie.”
Les jeunes toxicomanes en santé libérés
Guidaient les pèlerins au Dome foulé-
C’est l’heure de l’apparition pour Mirjana,
Sa réunion sacrée avec la Reine de la Paix.
Le démon qui criait dans le corps d’une fille,
Vert de peur de la présence de Marie,
Il se tu d’aboyer quand Elle pris la parole;
Le soleil a dansé—un disque bleu doré.
Dieu et son peuple à Podbrodo en harmonie;
Les pèlerins se rassemblent au pied de la Croix.
Descendant enjoué à la messe matinale
Les cloches au loin sonnent très musicales.
Le parfum de roses-de Sa présence si douce
Senti au chapelet à St. Jacques le soir;
Le choeur chante en croate un fervent cantique,
A l’ouest au soleil—une manifestation mystique.
Ecouter les grillons et les chiens de ce quartier,
Regarder la lune, la gardienne de la nuit;
Si le monde un jour change et choisit la paix
Bien sûr on commence à Medugorje.
MEDUGORJE
I breathe from my upstairs bedroom balcony
The air of a soft golden morning in symphony:
The crowing of cocks for Medugorje’s new dawn,
In the valley so silent in the heat of the sun.
Outside in the garden, in the corner there,
Smoke from a fire incensing the air;
Those men walking around and I wonder why
There’s pipes from the barrel that’s standing close by.
Some speak of mini distilleries here,
Of spirits called Schnapps, your life to cheer,
And the chosen people of the Virgin Mother
In the days of war lived in peace with each other.
Vicka the visionary of the Holy Queen,
Whose joy was truly a sight to be seen,
Stood by her door her story to tell
As the rain on our Bosnian brollies fell.
Jacov spoke of Her beauty so quietly:
“To be able to paint Her was highly unlikely;
Her heavenly eyes are best described blest;
Her voice is a melody,” with love he confessed.
Liberated young addicts of the Cenacolo Home
Directing us all who had come to their Dome;
They usher in Mirjana , very soon to be given
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A message of peace from the Queen of Heaven.
Loud crying in fear from a girl possessed
At the coming of Mary, for the demon no rest.
His barking so evil stamped out by Her glory;
The gilded blue disc of the sun told the story.
God and his people on Podbrodo in harmony;
Around the White Cross the feeling was heavenly;
Descending fulfilled to the mass in the morning
The bells from afar were musically charming.
The stray scent of roses at the Rosary was stunning
In the Church of St. James at the time of Her coming ;
The Croatian hymns were fervent and constant
And the sun in the west was now a gold monstrance.
The crickets sing on between the hills stark
As the full moon is guarding the night from the dark;
If the world is to change and have peace in its heart
Medugorje is the place where we’ll make a new start.
EAST TO LATVIA
They are a people quiet and deep,
The Latvians: here in Riga
They remember Ninety One-
The year the Russians left.
In the centre of Boulevard Brivibas
At the monument they call Milda
Two soldiers guard with honour
The freedom of a young Republic.
On the Duagava in a Bateau-Mouche
Upon its riverbanks I saw from me
This city noted for its noveau art:
Alberta Street was Eizenstein’s idea.
The Reval Hotel top reveals
Weather cocks on timeworn churches;
The fine cathedral’s five cupolas
Are gleaming gold as the sun sets.
Their Cardinal in his purple cap
On the altar steps for mid-day mass;
The silent Luthern pews for prayer,
Greek Orthodox weddings in pairs.
By our restaurant in Doma Square
Smoothly pass the Cadillac cars,
Bouncing along the cobblestones;
A happy girl goes home with flowers.
HURLING HERO
Maroon and white clad hurler,
Galway’s hero so swift and strong;
‘John Connolly is on’
They gladly shouted,
The long awaiting sideline throng;
From the dressing room he’s running,
Pulling low and swinging high
In the hunt for Galway glory
On a summer’s eve in Athenry.
INFERNO
The wild creatures of the bog land
At midnight time of gentle sleep
All curled up in their slumbers
In furze bush and rush and reed
Had to flee in frightened furry
From a sudden racing raging fire.
Each furze in turn first crackled
Then it blazed high into the sky,
Lifting off the cloak of darkness
Where I look down from the hill,
Overflowing shining light on me.
Our songbirds sleeping silenced
And the magic of that cuckoo’s call
I heard I’ll hear no more I fear.
Blue lights flash and sirens wail
On winding roads to this inferno.
Tonight our backroom bedroom
Is lit by burning bog land light
But tomorrow no furze in bloom
For me; only burnt black I’ll see.
SUNDAY MORNING
We thought the same on the shimmering sand,
By the towering cliffs with their tufts of green,
That here the time and the place was at hand
On a Sunday to savour the pleasure of being.
The passionate tide was out past the Point-
That Arc de Triomphe at the cliff’s high head;
The playful waves our fears did anoint:
‘To be or not to be’ that’s what Hamlet said.
Deep and black through the dark of the caves
Ran a ruthless river released by the sea,
Relentlessly entering the hall of Hades
Where no one would want ever to be.
So we looked aloft where the seagulls nest
In the cosy clefts high in rock above our heads;
In snow white pairs on their eggs they rest,
Screeching in bliss from their wedding beds.
Stack of shining rock red, black and brown,
With the water dripping from its sculpted face
To circles wheeling when we both look down
Into the pool of sunlit water at its sandy base.
Between ebb and flow our life time is short.
Neptune she rinses out all her seaweed hair
In the tide when it’s high in this happy resort
And often the sea as it sighs falls asleep there.
UNKNOWN
All on a day around they lay:
Unfinished poems in pieces;
Cups of tea about, half drunk,
Forgotten and turned cold.
As cold as poems unknown
Sent of to fght for life,
Often to die for dead poets
Who haunt themselves alone.
VIGIL
The penny candle wick burned on still
In its shallow well of clear melted wax:
It was a prayer to seek Our Lady’s care
In our bedroom on a night vigil in bed.
In Dublin’s fair city, up in the Coombe,
Our daughter was soon to give birth.
Then all of a sudden our vigil was over
As the mobile beside me went wild
With the joyful news of a new baby girl!
Her dad’s words at dawn so pulsating,
Like a shot of hot punch for the nerves;
With all the fresh pride of being a father
He talked of the baby’s light brown hair
And the sound of her cry on being born.
Beside him her mother was feeding her,
Still tired from the labour of childbirth
But so happy to look down on the dream
That at break of day had been delivered.
Happy in our new life as grandparents
We drew the curtains to start a new day
As the light of the long burning candle
Went out just at the end of our prayers.
THE HAND OF MAN
It was the hand of Man not the will of God
Sealed their fate on their Haitian hillsides:
When the awful earth quake came to pass
The houses that were badly built collapsed;
Condemned for their impoverished lives,
Crying of sundered families suffering loss
Reaching many a mile to hardened hearts.
We now can compensate, albeit a little late,
For wilfully in our wealth forgetting Haiti.
DAYDREAM
When black clouds in the evening all hang low,
I can see no sunset and there is no afterglow,
My mind flies far until I land in sunny Thailand;
There for a change I am a turtle on the beach
That’s snowy white beneath a canopy of blue.
Sliding down to sea and diving deep below
I swim above that rainbow coloured seabed,
Off the land of Thai: lost in the Isle of Koh Tao.
THE ROMANIAN
Seated at the entrance to an alley,
A music man on a shopping mall
Played his own plaintive melody
On a fine tuned Romanian fiddle
Attached to a shiny trumpet horn.
Playing to us, an elder of his race:
A conversation without speaking,
His heart and soul in his playing-
Saying what he couldn’t say at all;
His brown felt hat upon hi
s head,
His bike leant up against the wall.
IN TRANSIT
The sudden snow that fell last night
Now clothes a world struck silent
By snowflakes falling slowly
As magical as a million falling stars,
Softly settling down below on earth
A night as white as pale moonlight.
Into this Christmas card like scene
A Council friend came in the end
To grit the road with salt and sand
And twice he repelled the glassy ice
That had made my hill a skating rink.
I had to call my plumber in the thaw
Who with a spanner and a copper cap
Stopped leaking water from escaping
As easily as I would turn off a tap.
And all this while with a little smile
An optimistic exile prepared to go,
Her sights on sunrise in Vancouver;
Going from minus zero to minus zero,
In transit, our youngest hopeful hero.
ALWAYS EIGHTEEN
The clearness of a dream
I had in bed last night
Has dimmed at dawn.
I’m awake, remembering,
Its dialogue in a deep sleep
Now almost vanished
In the wash of awakening.
In the dream, so real I swear,
She appeared:
Into my head as I slept she crept-
Always eighteen.
As lovely as I left her
At her father’s hearth
As we said our last goodbyes
To all the years of my unspoken love.
‘Love’s Labour’- I began to say,
(Speaking of the title of a play)
But there she stopped me
In my mid line
To finish it herself this time:
‘Love’s Labour- is never- Lost’
Contradicting
Both Shakespeare and myself.
That was the only thing she said
As with the dream she left my bed.