NEW YEAR

New Year is nigh, just three pints away,
What’s new about another twelve hour day?
Just a little step closer to making your way
To splashing about in the ether.
Well wishes and happy and ‘go mbeirimid beo’
A new path to follow, a new way to go.
New resolutions, to melt as the snow
In the gateway manned by Saint Peter. 

This is man’s way of measuring life

With calendar, clock, sun-dial and strife
And regular noon bell of angelus wife
Calling him home to the dinner.
And we thank the ‘Great Nothing’ for seeing another
And think of the old man and suffering mother
Remember the twin, the gone-away brother,
And the priest who was scarcely a sinner.
 
Tomorrow is different, all perfect and new.
We’ll visit the graveyard surrounded by yew
And promise all that which we’re certain to do
All proper and perfect, all pure.
The next day we’ll falter and stumble and doubt,
The old year in and the new year out,
Resolutions me arse, what’s that all about?
An annual load load of manure!

 

 

 

PEARSE DECREED

“We suffer in their coming and their going”

And the certainty of never, ever knowing,
The pleasure’s in the reaping, not the sowing
And we gape and wonder still.
Permanence is shorter than a nod
The bog supplies the heather and the sod
The master educating with a rod
Bending the truant to his sally will.
 
Little future in the past, they say,
I stride alone now, she has gone away.
Better for her; futile the dream to stay,
I’m half as old as Father Time himself.
Permanence, a futile human dream,
What is milk without its halo cream?
Dull the sleep without the mystic dream,
A fairy land bereft of gnome and elf.
 
Nature knows not nature, as man decrees,
On silver wings she flew across the seas,
Faster flew than all the birds and bees
On wings that coaxed the wind to do the flying.
From pocket to socket, the tear of long goodbye,
Feeble friends and nodding kinsfolk sigh,
Watching trail of jet-smoke in the sky,
Useless as a poultice to the dying.
 
I walk alone now, the company is rare,
Futile the smile for she who is not there,
Melting; the leisure, the pleasure and the care
What was, will scarcely be again.
Only man is grateful for the past
Despite the knowledge it could never last
A furnace never worked without a blast
Greedy the man, that wants ten out of ten.

(here's to the honey-pot in Arroyo de la Miel)

STICKS AND STONES

We sowed a bed

Of purple heather
In overcast
Acrylic weather,
It prospers still.
And calls the fumbling
Bumble bees
Who sip the nectar
On their knees
And sac-fuls fill.
 
We planted oaks
A seedling pair
From forest bed
The lawn was bare
Before they grew.
Mine is giddy
Hers is shy
Six feet apart
Under a sky
Of lapis blue.
 
We made a shed
Of sticks and stones
And filled it with
The withered bones
Of old beech sap.
And sods of turf
From Ring Dong bog
A spade and fork
And bed for dog
We call him Jap.
 
There is no shadow
Without light
Where be the day
Without the night?
A twilight den.
We spend some time
Long leagues apart
Yet still return
To the start
And smile again.

FALLING LEAVES

I watched them, half not looking

As if their falling was the start of end.
In ones and twos they glided down
And settled on their mothers bosom
In the bend.
 
Beech they were and oak, some ash
Brothers and sisters of yellow and gold
Wrinkled and spent and going home
Barely born, never knowing the human fear
Of growing old.
 
I watched them in their ones and twos
And multitudes of carpet leaf,
I thought of her in distant climes
Her human thoughts of love and loss
And sometimes grief.
 
They made my simple heart sad
Even though their choir was singing
With one, yet thousand voices
Of re-birth and root and all-renewing
The gift of bringing.
 
Memory is the curse of man
That carries the message of always parting,
Nature knows no mercy or sorrow
Or what to store up for tomorrow
No stopping; only starting.

 

(A TRIBUTE TO NAT KING COLE AND HIS WONDERFUL RENDITION OF ‘AUTUMN LEAVES’.)

LESS THAN PERFECT

I knew her well, a long time ago,

Look at her now!
Like others, a spring chicken once,
Now winter lingers always on her brow.

The brevity of human glory,
The ominous land of old age,
The grim simplicity of life
Chronicled on crumpled page.

Accusation; more hideous than crime,
The fact that beauty has no height or width
The very likely sleeping truth
That all people - love may merely be a myth.

Look again, where to find new wrinkles,
Genuflection; serfdom in her eyes.
The silent echoless cavern of her mind,
Her truth; a rearrangement of her lies.

Her love is but a mirror of the lover,
The keyhole found, but the key is wrong,
Her wailing, piteous and shrill
Was once her maiden song.

Knowing too little, feeling too much,
That’s her lot, as all her sister peers,
Memories, embellished self-deception,
Once smiling eyes, now well of bitter tears.

She swims a sluggish river known as treason
Certain in doubt that doubt will come again,
In ever shifting battleground of fear
The ink of malice in ever moving pen.

TIME AND TENSE

“Those who concentrate on the past have no future”

The priest said to me in his habit of dark,
Shiny shoes of the man pointing east and west
Holy water sweat bubbles; his sacred mark.
 
He could close his face up like the door
Of the confessional, shiny and hard and blank,
Now he knows that the future he promised
Us all was fool’s gold in Heaven’s bank.
 
Still he’s the one taught me to think of the tenses
Present continuous and future the same?
The past just a long list of very dead bodies
Or a lichen-dressed headstone that carries a name.
 
The futures packed into the next twenty minutes
When the angelus bell sticks out her brass tongue
Forget all the joys and the compliment sorrows,
All the winners and losers, every song ever sung.
 
Still, sometimes I think of my father and mother
And the  grandparent quartet that I never knew
Who moulded the man I am, better or worse,
Not one of the rabble, but one of the few.
 
The future was here a few seconds ago, now past
Like the shower of mist and of sheen
And the hands of the clock, and every new season
Converting the yellow and brown into green.
 
Answerable to no one but myself and me
And I never ask any questions of time,
Questions of asking and never reply,
Hour hand, minute hand, second sublime.

 

SEARCHING.

The lighthouse keeper follows the sun,
The prisoner tracks the moon.
Inverted bats weep in the cave of sleep
When they hear the banshee’s lonely croon.
 

Driftwood drying on a desolate shore

Fronds of lacy seaweed hair
Adorning the petrified wooden shafts
On the suede sand dunes; bare.
 
I know I was but a footstool for her
But she had such perfect feet
Of velvet toes and heels and soles
Monumental arches complete.
 
Only hatred can sharpen a mind
Dead men’s fingers no longer probe
Useless as the eyes in leather shoes
Or the seas on a cubic globe.
 
The gods conspire against us all
The world is not kind to the weak,
We must abandon ever finding
That which we most eager seek.
 
Still we search for the unfindable
The ties that always bind
And march upon a hidden path
Where the seeing is always blind. 

Horizon ever stretching further

As elusive as the Pimpernel,
Heaven’s sorrows a gateway
To the Saturn sins of Holy Hell.

As blind men we must fumble round

Not knowing what we seek or hide,
Blessed is the one that finds the way
That he might look inside.

 

 

 

SHE

Shoals of hair, coil on coil,

Salmon cheeks, walnut eyes,
Fair of face as the planter’s daughter
Even Aphrodite sighs.

Never learned how to frown,
Mocked misery at the gate
Calls the sun to rise each morning
With smile no queen can imitate.

Wise beyond her tender years
Inbuilt instinct for the game
Of otherness of other people 
Of sameness of the same.

Parents have no claim on her
One off child of grace
Heart of gold, soul of silk,
Sister bright of stars in space.

I recall the magic of tongue
I remember the lip and the cup
She taught me all I know of life
And that water never flows up.

And she believes in life and love
And the power of absolute trust,
Yet still she factors in the fact
That an iron gate is the promise of rust.

TALAMH.

 
 
 Land, first born of the first born,

Here before us, here without us, alone.

The ancient eye of landscape watched our coming

patiently, through pebble, boulder and stone.

Land gave us whereness and temporary roots,

Foundation for our frailty and need,

In return we gave her rape, ruin and pillage

To power our engine of greed.

Mother of meteor, father of fossil,

Vulnerable to religion’s daughter,

Silent parchment of all commandments,

Her message is ferried by breeze and water.

Rock and mountain, grain of sand,

Ledge and ravine has soul.

Intruder man knows lesser Gods,

Lesser than her grounded mole.

What is ‘here’ or ‘there’ without the land?

Where is home and away?

Every place is where she leaves us,

Allows us to come or stay.

Birds and beasts her allies,

Seas and mountains her stores,

Trees and rivers her jewels,

Etna and Vesuvius her pores.

Man, an earthen vessel himself,

Self proclaimed Lord of all,

Stone, the ultimate conclusion,

Certainty, the coming of another fall.

Ever changing skin of vegetation and colour

Every heartbeat an ever filling glass,

Earth, mantle of our useless bones,

Secure in the knowledge, ‘these too will pass’.

 

(Talamh is the Irish word for earth or ground. The only truly solid element)

 

 

UISCE

Water, liquefied air grounded by gravity 

Far greater Leveller than even Shirley’s Death,
Dew in the morning, fog in the evening,
Translucent halo of angel’s breath.
Binding member of eternal elements,
Ancient conversations with the stone,
Tears of the earth, border of life and death
Life that can live alone.
 
 
At the wedding feast of Cana
The host was mute and hushed,
Then the humble water met the Lords gaze
And the humble water blushed.
Since baptism in Jordan’s river,
Since Ararat of two by two, 
There’s no will but the water’s will
The white swell and the blue.

 

The well connects the darkness and the light,
The seaside ties the water to the land,
The river joins the country and the ocean
And rain provides the life in everyman.
Ice, the surgeon with eternal scalpel
Carved each valley, glacier, river bed,
Elusive mist, cloak of every mountain,
Snow, a scarf for headstones of our dead.
 

 

Water, first mirror of the universe,
Never strays outside its own desire,
Tide, slave mistress of the moon,
Diviner of thirst; of flame, a sole defier.
The first swim of this life
In amniotic whirlpool of the womb,
The last swim of this life
In all embracing moisture of the tomb.

 

Uisce, (Irish word for water) is the most obviously visible

of all the Classic elements. Treasured more than its brothers
and sisters it is widely regarded as the source of all life.
But it cannot work in isolation!

TINE

The Gods, in playful mood
Snipped a forelock from the Sun,
And Prometheus in turn
Stole this Fire for everyone.
In the name of the Fire
the Sun and the Stars
This forever flame
Borrowed it's colour from Mars.

This fire got life from friction
As does every living thing,
From flash, flame and flicker
The cricket learned to sing.
Fire conspires with air
To bring liquid flame alive,
Yet still the mystery remains
Why only the pure survive.

And man believes in control
Of this element for himself
In forge and kiln and stove,
Red matches on the shelf.
The stake; democracy of fire
Invented by soul-savers
Not to lead better lives
But be owned by soul-slavers.

This fire produces Light
Frail shadow of the Dark,
Impatient fire never still
Using every spark
To brighten conversation
At the hearth of every grate.
Shape-changing theatre of tale,
Matter into nothing; nothing matters; too late.


Tine (Irish word for fire) is perhaps the most feared of the elements
and therefore deserves maximum respect.


  

AER

Air, home of the spirits,

Breath of God.
Kinetic sculptor of all shape,
Defining master of sea and sod.
Air, benefactor of all bellows,
Human, and made by hand,
Shaping a wraith of cloud,
Polishing a grain of sand.

Air, ferries life to each of us

And randomly takes it away,
She lends form to the dance
Gives voice its say.
Air, great runway of the heavens,
Gives grounding to earthly aspirations,
Sounds the death knell of ones
And twos and all passing nations.

Air in singular majesty
Decides what might be,
Syllable, phrase or sentence
Or page of history.
Air of contract and expand,
Accordion never still,
Stroked by invisible fingers
Tuned by ethereal will.

Air, lavish larder of countless scents,

Home of myriad memories and dreams,
Unseen guardian of mists and moisture
Eternal proof of all is not what it seems.
Air, life source of every flame,
Greater than gravity your power,
Ferryman of dark and light
Pendulum of every hour.


AER (Irish for Air) is everything and deserves to be revisited.