The Dark, the Shade and the Light

Wild raspberries in a cloak of moss

Briars on an old stone wall built long ago by man
Or men, servile at the pitch and toss
Of an English landlord who finds himself an also-ran.
 
I dream of the dead days, days when we were muck.
We churned the hatred with fear,
Better not to dream of future or maybe luck,
And all we thought we cherished, never near.
 
Tyrant; the priest who came to visit too
And promised sweet salvation, key and lock,
A place of always rest under the poisoned yew,
Wood pulpits, rosary beads, lambs in heavenly flock.
 
We lived on spuds and cabbage, dared not fuss,
Five stolen eggs to garnish Kerry’s Pink,
While all the while the landlord lived off us
And priest and planter decreed; we had no need to think.
 
What now? Papists and pirates are vanquished; still.
Recollections of relinquished grandeur, sterile as a stone.
Exiles, pariahs, nothing left but an empty till,
Too many remembered sins, too many dogs without a bone.

 

 

 

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’.)