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Vol 2  No. 1
Winter 1999

Newsletter of the Munster Literature Centre Sullivan's Quay Cork

POETRY 3

    1  Missing  Oliver Dunne
    2 
The Pause  Fred Johnston
    3 
Remembrance  Robert Welch
    4 
For Dylan Thomas   Kate Davis
    5 
D H Lawrence Belles Lettres   Kate Davis
    6 
Self Portrait   John Liddy
    7 
The First Date  Giovanni Malito
    8 
Grave  Tommy Frank O'Connor
    9 
Eire's Blue Musician  Patrick Aidan English
  10 
Slow Air   Jim Daly
  11 
Breaking Out   Julie Anne Carleton
  12 
Frankish Days   Zlatko Tomicic
  13 
Aboard the Ark: Ham's Version   Matthew Geden
  14 
Shadow on the Earth  Sarah Iremonger
  15 
Aspiration   Fergal Gaynor
  16 
The Return to Pannonia   Zlatko Tomicic
  17 
Breacadh   Liam Ó Muirthile
  18 
For Esther   Tomás Ó Canainn
  19 
In Memoriam F. B.   Rosemary Canavan
  20 
Landscape with Lovers   Rosemary Canavan

death of a bird1.gif

Death of a Bird'  Digital Print   Michael Cunningham

The Return To Pannonia*

When I return to the woods
by the low rivers,
in the rye and the crimson,
in the streams, in the reeds,
in the bulrushes and in the eyes of the deer,
passing through the Bosnian mountains,
towards the hyperborean Pannonia,
when I return
in mud and in fog,
in the reeds and in the swamps,
in the plains, in the corn and the straw,
when I leave behind the angels
with their instruments
and with flowers in their hearts,
the naked beings that lived
in the rocks,
when I leave behind
the coat of arms of the two roses,
the ruined olive mill,
the horse with the fiery mane
that saw me in the nights of self-denial,
the wormwood bending from the wind
above the bloody Krbava,
the spike and the scythe
outside the breathless earth;

when I set out recalling in my memory
the sharp rock in a hungry youth's bitterness,
the sublime rustle of the wind in the pines,
the planet Mercury shining near to the sun,
the mysterious sadness
of the ancient warrior.
When I leave the town on the shore of the Croatian sea
where the decomposed body of Saint Donatus stood
on the Roman square
with the sepulchral epitaphs
of combatants and lovers,
of the disobedient city of King Stephan
where still there stands a sign
of the death of Kotromanicó
close by his son Tvrtko and Vuk;
when I leave Casku and Nin :
The world will shine in the eyes of the living
like on those of the Trojan warriors.

                                             Zlato Tomicic
                                              Translated by  Nizeteo & Tatum
                                                From "This Night " Hamilton 
*Pannonia is a Roman province which included the territory west of the Danube in today's Croatia and Hungary
.

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Breacadh

Breacadh bog cnámhalt na lámh
Cnagadh ar chabhail do ghiotáir
Down on Jollity Farm Finbarr
Everything's a perfect howl Finbarr
Ar fhuinneog mo sheomra leapan ar urlár
An tí in am mharbh na hoíche Finbarr.
Mo chéad smaoineamh m'fhiafraí
An bhfuil an ceol sí seo leis
Le beith ar an CD?
Pé seisiún go rabhamar ann
Pé gig a bhí ar siúl ann
Pé tromluí go ndúisím ann
Do chreatlámha ag breacadh
Rithimí snag-chnagtha giotáir
Is tú marbh, báite a dheartháir


                              Liam Ó Muirthile



                                             

For Esther

Five A.M. and that eclipse is yesterday's news:
Aurora waits at my hospital window and Mozart
Radio- plays a sonata that Bridget Doolan
Taught me almost thirty years ago-
Neither thinking that I'd yet play pipes at her funeral
And her stopped fingers never again move over Mozart.
Vincibility is the hard piece I am learning here
As dyes are pumped via my shaved groin
Along every one of my bloody arterial highways
While consultant Cahill and his Whitecoats televise
My red rush-hour traffic and the blockages
Abstemious people are not supposed to have.

Let me travel back, Lord, sixty years
To chew red meat and smoke and drink,
Think bad thoughts, eat streaky bacon
And sing the song those others sang:-
" Call her here, call Esther there
Call Esther every bloody where,
Cholestrol, for all I care."

                               Tomás Ó Canainn
                               Friday 13 August ' 99.

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In Memoriam F.B.

dear Uncle, how he would have laughed
to know he would be
refrigerated over Christmas -
like an outsized, superfluous turkey -
only to be roasted on New Year's Eve
the crematoriam finding space at last

 
                             Rosemary Canavan



Landscape with Lovers

the power of wind
in the place, the bright light
bleaching the sky

rutted tracks
that held nuggets of quartz,
sapphire pools

our touching lips
seemed part of
the force of place

but it was cold,
the dog barked
implacably

when we joined
like horses
like paired birds

I thought seed might
cobweb my hair, make it
ray out with stiffness

but he saved it
sowing a dark chasm
with riches


                 Rosemary Canavan

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