SPANISH JOURNEY
Puffed-up clouds so light
They do not press the air above
The double tree-lined walks of Arranjuez:
Evening dazzle of late October blue
Is dulled to purple on the horizon's hills,
Terraced once by another generation:
Tracked now by sheep that chew the stump
Of wilted grass to slowly break
Its hold on that inhospitable grey.
From shining San Cristobal de Los Angeles
See how the white clouds have darkened
Over distant Madrid and at Villaverde
Find the logic of all the previous
Rusting rodded structures, in a steel matrix
Of fifteen skeletal floors, open to the rain,
With walls and floors of air, waiting
Newly-conceived, from some God of Housing
To create in it a bricky body and a cabled brain.
We enter Madrid and deserted houses
Litter the lower slopes, like dried husks
Devoid of fruit, for high-rise flats
Have captured all the people on the hill.
In echoing Atocha station our train
Squeals itself into the wah-wahd hell
Of scrambled announcements and once more
Out on the street, raw stumps of silent beggars'
Legs resume their quiet shout.
Tomás Ó Canainn
COMRADES
Always in Ireland we have found it very hard
To distinguish between a dirty baby and its suds.
Tending to throw them both away through the open door
Of our opinions. But I've known
Men of both courage and honour
Who could always tell the difference,
Who brought their mortally wounded comrades
From a bitter skirmish at night
Through a hostile city to a place of refuge
Where they died nursed and minded
And never betrayed.
Such men were soldiers
however wrong their cause. If it was wrong?
Those who ordered these men into danger
Somehow never managed to be involved
But managed to wear all honours available afterwards.
Alfie Allen
ART TREASURES
Into the secret silence of Manod
quarry the deposited like Hamelin's children
the National's collection of air-conditioned art,
safeguarded for prosperity inside a Welsh cavern
to escape for five years
the blitz of a city's acid heart.
Impressionism in central Gwynedd,
Rembrandt next to Ffestiniog's slate,
sculpted to remember, not to be erased,
the palettes of durable colour,
an exact style entering the darkness
brightening a craggy mouth in Wales.
Byron Beynon
A LADDER TO HEAVEN
A spider thread
Hangs from the ceiling
Above my bed.
I watch it come closer
And closer every day.
Now they are sending me even
A ladder to heaven - I say,
They are throwing it from upstairs.
But even if I am so horribly weak
Merely a ghost of my old self
I think that my body
Is still too heavy
For this delicate ladder here.
Hey soul! you go first.
On tiptoe!
Marin Sorescu
Translated by Gabriel Gafita
Marin Sorescu's last poem dictated on
the hospital bed the day before his
death Saturday 7th December 1996
LITTLE CHEF CAFE RHOSTYLLEN
Two miles from birth place, three choirs and pub bards,
you could go anywhere; San Francisco or even
Gaerwen.
Musack repeats as far as Dunbarton.
Staff soldier like, proceed with coffee, chits and menus.
Through the Marches there has been a bloodless fried
coup.
Our land invaded by paper hats and bloody lollipops.
Enigma chant gothic church blues. Alone yet surrounded,
I take of this strange contemporary eucharist.
The till sings "hosanna". its priestess beaming blessing
"Have a nice day." No bara brith today. Only Hash Browns.
Peter Read
CHRISTMAS CAKE
Knife slices brittle white;
Sinks in soft of golden almond;
Arrives where spices befuddle the bright
Pink of intoxicated cherries and sultanas.
Piercing the currant's shrivelled skin, my wife
Cuts another Christmas from my life.
Tomás Ó Canainn
ON THE BORDER
They were all charm.
A polished pair
from the posh side
of Gloustershire.
He bought me a drink
and spoke of his son
an officer type
in some damned regiment.
"I'm so awfully
proud of him, y'know."
They were going to Rhaeadr
which she pronounced RADA
as if it were some bloody acting school
then on to Pembrokeshire
which they thought would be quite quaint.
"You know, there's a bleeding tree at Nevern,
a tree that actually bleeds."
She looked at me, eager for response.
"They say it will go on bleeding
till the Welsh get their own prince.
They'll have to wait a long time, won't they?"
She laughed a well-bred laugh.
"I don't know," she said.
"We're working on it."
She did a double take. "Oh. You're Welsh?"
Herbert Williams
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DEPOPULATION
They say this is no place for the ambitious.
The young men leave, trailing
A pity for the people left behind,
Nailing the coffin of the town they go,
Finding refreshment in familiar lies.
Far from the accustomed hills they build
The structure of success which they were told
Would monument their paragon advance,
If only they were bold enough to leave
The moment they were old enough to go.
So now this is no place for the ambitious.
With every decade it is more
Conclusively a place which people leave
The moment they are bold enough to go.
Some have no regrets. But others find
A virtue in the ruin left behind,
And long to verify the truths
Their fathers read, and tread
The ways that scored their rooted enterprise,
And nurture a simplicity, until
A darkness comes to cover up their eyes.
But ambitious they are, ambitious to a man,
Made ambitious by their education,
Prisoners of their nourished talents.
So they display the customary
Pity for the people left behind.
But their bleak hearts speak
The bitter language of the dispossessed.
Herbert Williams
THE LIE OF THE LAW
The grief of living through an age
when my sex was indefensible,
all slanders against me made credible;
my life, my hope, my children so easily stolen,
like apples from a tree,
or feathers from a crippled woodsnipe;
to be like a thistle
crushed beneath my husband's foot,
and for him to point at his grazes
and say: (his heart leaded with deceit)
look how she has hurt me.
The law erected no hedgerow
of whitehorn around me for protection,
only staves I might slip upon while fleeing.
Patrick Cotter
From The True Story of Aoife and Lir's Children
INCIDENT ON THE BRIDGE
This morning,
being the third morning into Lent,
I was up early to endure
my allotted penances in the Cathedral.
Later, upon crossing St. Patrick's Bridge
I espied the chaplain of our esteemed University
walking towards me with a somewhat haughty gait.
Pleased with himself, the world and its mother,
he was about to bite
into a large glossy orange
with the full and terrible array
of his gleaming teeth,
when he was struck in the chest
by a bullet from a high velocity rifle
which ricocheted off his solid gold
miraculous medal and neatly perforated
his skull without disturbing his hat.
Needless to say I saved you the orange.
Gerry Murphy
A FOUND POEM ABOUT FREEDOM
It is earnestly requested that readers use the books with care;
Do not, if you please, soil them, or cut, or tear,
Do not, turn down their leaves, or write in them, or indeed,
Make any marks on them at all - or wet them with dragging thumbs
This should be especially avoided.
Any injury to books will be dealt with
As the rules and the byelaws provide.
Now this is a proper respect for the lifeblood of nations:
Mind speaking of mind over centuries, continents, worlds.
At home our new library clicks with the song of computers.
The Chair of the Library Committee beams at the glorious
sight.
'I look forward' he says, 'to the time when we're fully
updated.
When there's no longer a need
For these shelves of unmanageable books.'
Sally Roberts Jones
SUMMER RAIN
This morning I awoke and hearing my heart sing
I was astonished.
I greeted a familiar rose I had not seen before;
A poem, by Ezra Pound, a dozen times read,
I read for the first time;
And the driving Irish rain,
Cursed ever for its cruel monotony,
Held my hand as I danced.
Déaglán Tallon
LAST WORD
She like the planet, lovely and hurt
by squalorous man, shocked the fiesta.
'Why not?' she smiled, congested with grief,
'why not just nuke the whole disaster,
let nature start again...?
It would be like having a good shit.'
But, they reasoned, there might not be time
for a wiser model to fumble from the wreck
before the Sun, swollen
to a red giant, and devouring its children,
gobbled up the Earth.
'Well,' she said, perhaps we should all
self-obliterate , leave the planet in peace
to the birds, the gorillas, the wiser whale.'
A noble indication, but no, they said, it is
now too late: our machines, our systems-
we cannot simply walk away from them,
there'd be anarchy, melt-down, a thousand
Chernobyls, death world-wide to bird and beast:
we have made ourselves indispensable.
Nigel Jenkins
From Ambush 1998
Published by Gomer Press
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