Ukraine.

 

What’s what in this land of Cyrillic colours

And shapes of capes on Cossack and charger?
What colour are tears from eyes in this place?
The pale of the pure, the golden of grain,
Or the crimson on bloody lace.
I know the milestones of history here
Like all other places; just dates of wars.
Slaughter campaigns, sanitised names,
Skeletons driving burnt out cars.
Advances, retreats on land and Black Sea
Victors and victims like you and me
And Geronimo.
The past filled with Ottomans, Lithuanians, Poles
Where are the sanctuaries, holiday homes?
A gulag is no place to go.
Life is not linear but instant; now.
Great paintings of peace depict only death.
Where hide all the peace correspondents?
And bandits with plans for each vacant berth.
Do lovers still bask under alabaster moon?
Or rejoice with the sun when the clock strikes noon
In Saint Michael’s square in Kiev.
Does the bread taste the same, the milk and the game?
The honey from Ternopil’s flowers
On the banks of the Seret River above.
The leaders great warriors or mice with money
The people defiant and strong
Must the question be asked “Is this my home?
Is this where I truly belong?"
Who can withstand the three sided pressure
Of the gravitational field of power
Not shadows in a material world
Where seconds are splinters of every glass hour.
Ireland never knew the wrath of invader
Just dark strangers who claimed us as one of their own.
Told us the rules; where to live, where to die,
For their sins, we still must atone.
Another UK without the sweet Raine
A kingdom still ruled by a queen,
They have blackened our name, reddened our soil,
Yet each spring our grass still grows green.

 

(The Dnieper and the Shannon still run free)

Al's Place

I got an e-mail from Al,

Zheimer’s at dot eye e.

It read “you’ve outstayed your welcome there,

Now you must move in with me

For a spell.”

It read, “Consider your baggage carefully,

I don’t have a lot of land,

What you don’t need, leave behind

You must come hand in hand
with the water; not the well”.
I resurrected my valise and trunk
From the cobwebs in the loft
One to go, one to stay,
Hard decisions and soft
Down to me.
William Trevor is indispensable
Heaney, Joyce and Yeats,
There may be room for Mark Twain
Robert Frost, perhaps John Keats,
Or Robert Kee.
Mothers auburn hair must come,
The smell of ash and beech
Bubbles on a blackberry
The pinnacle of speech
on Attenborough’s velvet tongue.
Pain and regret must stay in the trunk
With all the failures, accounts overdrawn.
A myriad of wasted days and years,
Every bishop, rook and pawn,
Each hymn and psalm ever sung.
The words of honest men will fit
A pair of speckled eggs
One drop kick from O’Gara
A glimpse of stunning legs
On Jolly Angelina.
The voice of Leonard Cohen
The notes of Matt Molloy
The box of Sharon Shannon
The small unbridled joy
Of concertina.
Weddings, divorces, giving up for Lent,
I’ll leave these all behind me
With hypocrites fools and fakirs
Don’t need these to remind me
Of sins of the past.
Porter and gin, whiskey and rum
No room for that much trouble
Maybe a pint of Ratharney well water
Or the smell of a stew a bubble
After the fast.
Trade Unionists, usurers, teachers,
Politicians, rapists of the earth,
Will have no function where I’m bound for,
Better a handful of dirt
in my overnight bag.
My children as children I’ll bring
That way there’s room for all,
A panorama of Irelands face
From Dingle to Donegal,
One valley, one crag.
The Inny’s a must and Newcastle wood
The heavenly blackbird song,
Gaelic and soccer I can do without
As well as the two faced throng
At funeral mass, mercy lacking.
Lots of room for a smile, a joke, a kiss,
A strait flush or winner at ten to one,
The truth takes up little room
Now that I’ve begun
To start packing.
Angela’s mischief; priceless;
Shannon’s incomparable smile
Goes in the going bag
With Barry John’s unique style
Of hanging down his clothes.
The sea, the sun, bog and canal
Green grass, cerulean sky.
There must be room for these
To travel when I say goodbye
To the land of ‘I suppose’.
My glasses, China and Niamh,
Are tucked in my valise
Everything else left behind
Perhaps room up my sleeve
To carry ‘Amongst Women’.
I’m almost packed now, ready to go,
One way ticket in hand
Al will be expecting me
To join his forgetful band
He knows I’m coming.

 

 

 

Here and hereafter.

Grief; the silence in the hen coop
when the fox has sneaked away,
Unless you believe in purgatory
why would you kneel and pray
For the dead body facing eternal life,
facing eternal death,
No one we knew ever came back
to tell us either way.
 
A commoner's oath is as good as a bishop's,
if a swear has meaning at all,
In church the congregation cough
and contemplate saints on the wall,
What else would they do when priests never work
and idle their lives away?
That’s why a conscience is singular,
that’s why we fumble and fall.
 
Wisdom and truth are not popular,
an ancient lie; a lie still remains,
If you die with your arse pocket full of sins,
nobody ever complains,
Except the forgiveness seller
with no money back guarantee
There is plenty of play; none of it fair,
still the doubt remains.
 
Do we face our maker, father or mother,
in limbo’s gravelled yards?
Are we face to face like a knave and queen
in every deck of cards?
Are we tossed in a bed of phantoms
like eels in a canvas bag?
Will a searchlight pierce the heart,
rending the soul to shards?
 
A cacophonous jay from a churchyard yew
is to be our matins song
No word of hell in the bible,
never the mention of wrong.
Only the ten commandments of man
to rule the unruly mob,
If you’re amused with the topical air,
why not chorus along?
 
The borrowed horse ploughs poorly,
Lean; the pigs in the neighbour’s pen,
The devil stars in the nativity play,
making faces at the three wise men,
Only successful prophets are remembered;
Nostradamus, Old Moore too,
The world is bedecked in fools’ gold,
the smallest lie is divided again.
 
Consider the state of the mind,
lifting the latch of death’s door,
Dreading the vista on the other side
losing sight of the moment before,
Death is nature’s way of telling us,
the time is nigh; slow down,
Are we “Crossing the Bar” like Tennyson;
is there really another shore?
 
When you’re amused and content with your dreams,
why would you stay awake?
Folly can be dealt from the hand of wisdom,
but do not wisdom forsake.
Only blacksmiths and demons, if demons exist,
know the secrets of fire,
What does it matter if you pass in your sleep
or are burnt alive at the stake?

Newcastle Woods.

Newcastle wood in silent sleep.
Safe as secrets, buried deep,
Where bones and branches lie below
And only weeping willows weep.
 
Ash and holly, great oaks grow,
Beech on high, brush below.
Mottled hoof prints, fallow deer,
Squirrels reap what breezes blow.
 
My collie partner knows no fear
We wander pathways far and near.
Male blackbird of the yellow bill
Tenor to the untrained ear.
 
And I have stressed it in my will
To lie down there at Harmon’s Hill,
Jim Dillon’s ghost is watching, still,
Jim Dillon’s ghost is watching still.


(In the style of Robert Frost, the greatest man poet of America.)

 

The Hermit

He lives in the house of the cats on the hill

he knows the despair of a floundering flock,
A squatter, no mortgage, no conscience, no bill,
the slow hand of God, just the hand of a clock.
Choked in a harness of celibate white,
cloud patterns painted on canvas of sky,
Sings muffled psalms in the dead of the night,
Life on the ground still passing him by.
Still bullies and beckons and tiptoes around,
Cossetted child of sterile and flat,
Never dug the soil of the peoples own ground
yet still he lives off the fat.
All men of power are ruined, by failure to see

the vampire of wealth sucking money,

Yet each man must risk the sting of the bee
to savour the flavour of honey.
No road is leading from him to the people
who shod his horse and loaded his cart,
Knows only the lofty, the shelter of steeple,
Hard kernel of chestnut; his heart.
Are his cares of this world, his shadow a shrine?
Is concern overflowing his cup?
Is his song of decline as yours is and mine?
In a collar that never turns up.