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POETRY II |
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In Honour of Ann
She takes the bus to Wicklow to visit The Hag.
Willingly enters the domain of the damned;
sips tea from a cracked cup, smokes cigarettes,
listening to the walls lament.
She downs a few at the local, stands The Hag a jar,
smokes more cigarettes, tells The Hag she's tired
and takes her leave; sinks through the shroud of
that demented hush, alone; knocks back some of
The Hag's Valium, creeps to her childhood bed,
pulls the covers over her head, and waits,
waits for the hammering;
the shouting and the hammering on the door,
"Y'bitch, y'two faced whore, let me in!
Y'trollop, let me in!"
She listens, savouring every sound
and laughs and laughs
the simple, sublime giggle of The Goodie,
then she sleeps.
Patricia Casey
"To John Who Complains I Never Write Nice Poems To Him".
If you died
I
Would have
No
Past
Or
Future
Only
Now:
No dreams
No time.
Conscious for only each second that passes
As the earth spins
With Me
On it
With out
You.
Margaretta D'Arcy
Aiséirí
Lig amach mé. Tá mé ag éirí as blaosc an bháis.
Féach, 'dhianspré an tseandiabhail, tá liom.
Fágaim don mhaidin tú: socraíonn sin
gach bás, agus bascann an tEarrach an catafalc.
Tuig, caithfidh mé creidiúint san aiséirí.
Seo é, láithreach bonn. Bhíos marbh is táim beo.
'S é do bheatha, a shíoraíocht! Ní féidir éag
níos uafásaí ná mar tá éagtha agam. Níl ifreann eile
thar dhubhfhuath mo chroí féin a dhúnmharaigh
gach beatha; a chonaic bás i ngach toircheas,
madra, cnó, fir; a thuig an bás
mar bháschríoch. Tagadh buama, tagadh
m'fhuath is millteanaí, maireann beatha thar
an mblaosc phléascach. Níl an ríomhaire buan.
Níl aon chruthú agam, tuigeann tú,
níl, ach gur aiséirigh mé.
Eithne Strong
from Nobel published
by Coiscéim 1998
From Sleep in Doolin
I hear my voice singing in rain
on a cold day in Miami
in November. Why Miami?
I know no one there, none of the
women I've been lucky enough to meet
have ever come from Miami.
Next I'm back in 1969
or maybe '70 and gran
is still alive, giving the zone
comfort I haven't felt since twelve.
The third dream is a nightmare
I am fourteen, at school, and what
really happened, but I can't talk of it.
And I can hear my voice singing
I know it is my voice
But I am no singer.
Noel King
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Old Orchard Car Park
Gnarled is not really the word for it.
Sycorax-like, these leftover trees
seem bent into hoops almost. Crabbed ?
Some rooted term there must be to ease
their arthritic, knotted otherness but
if there is such, I am unaware of it.
Their mossy, venerable antiquity,
like country dialects uttered on T.V.,
or the ploughing up of ancient bones,
gives them a sort of runic mystery.
Pearmain, Pippin, Laxton's, James Grieve.
The gramarye of naming charms the tongue
with grafted flavours sharp or sweet.
Some alchemy of ancient orchard-song
conjures blossom into buds of flesh.
Each summer month largos the fruit until,
chanted into crispness on staves of bough,
it's pitched. There's none to gather now,
and none to hear the heavy apple rumble
or stumble under heaviness of baskets.
But still...
pegged on the air, a lingering ripeness,
tantalising as a taste almost remembered,
hangs like the fruity rumour of apples.
Brian Smith
Our Brief Field
Under the cut grass huddled
The shaped stones of another place,
And these we used to border our brief field.
The weather woke out of its black
Dream and gave us back a nervous light,
And by this we bent to our grasp and haul.
Like a lapsed lover trying for a hold
On a sliver of old love snug in the heart,
We thought of nothing else in the world.
Fred Johnston
Making Tracks
Late last night
we drove across the Pennines
lashed by howling
All-hallows drench.
Heavens settle
to exhausted drizzle
as you carry
a plastic watering jug
and two cones
of chrysanthemums,
search high and low for the rag-
cladded standpipe.
I can't help wondering
if this time we visit
your father's and brother's grave
not just out of respect:
pluvial silence
might bless or disapprove -
for there are people
who truly believe,
to our dead,
nothing is invisible;
that our news, my love,
is not news.
And now - how gently you kneel
to arrange and water
the blooms
while the wide trailing arc
of your long dark winter coat
spreads over their earth.
We are making tracks
pressing the black leaves
into the wet grass and muddy paths
as I reflect upon
love and inscriptions -
a date, a dash, a date:
perhaps we can determine
the details of our lives.
The big things
happen on their own.
Gregory O'Donoghue
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