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!