Banner.gif

Vol 2  No. 1
Winter 1999

Newsletter of the Munster Literature Centre Sullivan's Quay Cork

POETRY

    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
 

Missing

When I was asked
to name the counties of Ulster,
I could only name three.

I do not blame my teacher,
but myself, for the loss
of our counties.

                       Oliver Dunne






The Pause


You wonder why they bother,
Hemmed in here by jokes and weather.

They dress to half their age,
And burn incense; sandalwood, sage.

They learn Irish dancing, the flute;
England is rotten, so they root

About in dubious Irish clay
For an innocence, a start, a way

Of seeing with the eyes closed.
Some are genuine, some are posed;

Some worship the sun, the moon,
Others study, by candle, a rune-

Their faces say I once was
           And am again- and pause.

The edge of the mouth is a book,
Small poems are written there: look

At the child behind the eyes,
Sad, in a sad grown-up's disguise.


                  Fred Johnston

 

Return to top of page

Remembrance


(For Michael and Edna Longley)

As I turned the corner I saw
the incline up towards the turn
where stood the house I had once
wished to own.

The houses opposite were boarded
up, their plaster crumbling, mullioned
windows with stone-cut casements
fitted with plywood.

The gutterings were filled with grass
and weed, hanging down the crazy walls.
I was here, at last, in the town whose name
I could not recall.

I was trying as hard as I could:
Tempo? Kilcock? Kilrea? no,
and then I heard them coming up behindó
father and son, walking slowly.

The older man was limping, using a stick,
the younger, middle-aged, plump, and pink,
had an upright bearing and a large shock
of cloudy hair, slightly grey.

They stopped at the kerb though there was
scarcely any need, this place being traffic-less
and empty of life apart from us;
the mild air carried their talk.

The son was telling of his last command,
how the colonel had funked the final order,
leaving him and his company in the usual crap,
falsely fortified in the dread redoubt.

Isolated from the main attacking line,
they were without a flanking defence when
the assault wore down, so there was nothing
for it but to run under open fire

back into knots of canny Charlie all
the fucking way. He saw poor bloody Anderson's
thigh blow up. The two men started off across
the street, the son now holding his father's hand.

                                         
                            Robert Welch

For Dylan Thomas

To lay the ghost


push back kettle drum
over your hob knob of knowbody deeds
in the cross country way you make
you break into your thoughts with needs.
you set to flesh out as best you can
the fallen man
to plough and show his seeds.

push back
in the frowning warm dark now
from writing longing on the page.

flesh is gone now, boy.
no harm
quiet voice haunting
shadowed rage.
no more heart roistering.
this is a new stage.

push back kettle drum
lie down under the crust of earth
be soothed, silent, blessed,
be calm. 

                    Kate Davis
 

Return to top of page

Dylan/house 2.jpg

Dylan's house at Laugharne

Interior of Dylan Thomas' study at Laugharne

Dylan/room.jpg

Return to top of page

D. H. Lawrence   Belles Lettres


today
at a thin time
your thoughts fell
into my hand

hunger
for the stuff of dreams
the journey
to ideas
larger than self
and broader

hunger
persistent as illness
for beyond the everyday
and mundane

reading of your hunger
my hunger was less sharp today


                                  Kate Davis

Return to top of page

Return to Munster Literature Centre

logo.gif