LONELINESS
CAT’S TRICKS
CONFLICT
SPRINGTIDE
SUNDAY MORNING
TREES AND FRIENDS
CAPTIVITY
CONGRATULATIONS
ENTANGLEMENT
POEM
SPUR
THE FLOWERS
THE PULL
TO AN OLD FRIEND
THE PATIENTS’ CONVENTION
SACRIFICE
PILGRIMAGE
LATIN
BETRAYAL
SECRET
THE KNOT
DARKNESS
MY MOTHER’S FUNERAL
PRAYER
THE MAD
EPIPHANY
FREEDOM
FROST
HOW
THE SHORTEST TIE FOR THE THROAT
THE SMILE
MY DEATH
DESIRE
THE HANG OF YOUR LIP
THE SCORE
CLAUSTROPHOBIA
THE STEEL-BLUE SUN
THE BOAT
SAMHAIN
SHEBA
MUD
OCTOBER
THE BIGGEST CHANGE
AFTERNOON
THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE
ORDER
HER VOICE
GALWAY
THE DEAD
LONELINESS
Blackberry-taste
after rain
on a mountain-top.
Train whistle cold cuts
cell-silence.
To solitary ears
the whispered laughter
of lovers.
Brendan Behan
CAT’S TRICKS
If I had known, little man,
that they were a cat’s with a mouse,
those tricks you played on me,
I’d rather have slept rough
than step along your path.
Máirtín Ó Direáin
CONFLICT
The black pall of the night ripped
by horse and bareback rider;
a young boy in the mouth of dread
longing for sleep and listening.
On the threshold of the otherworld
a sinner's soul, quivering;
a priest comes with the Sacrament,
God and the Devil, waiting.
Máirtín Ó Direáin
SPRINGTIDE
(To Caitlín Maude, on hearing
her recite her poem)
As you recite
- if reciting's the word -
no woman nor man
you, to my mind,
but of the sea's clan,
its blue and green
competing in your eyes
as words break banks
at springtide:
your throat a pen
or parchment, a valve
as your poem comes boiling
from your full heart.
Máirtín Ó Direáin
SUNDAY MORNING
My grandmother on her knees
in the graveyard praying
on a sunny Sunday morning,
slight her prayer
mixing sweetly with the humming
of small sky-creatures.
A coloured butterfly
its heavenward course scattering
on the slender wing of the breezes,
and I forgot to answer
my grandmother's prayer, and followed
with pleasure the wonder.
Máirtín Ó Direáin
TREES AND FRIENDS
Trees and friends, my poems
since they first introduced themselves:
collected works, a wood in bloom.
I shake my fist at lumberjacks;
lumbering, saw-fisted critics.
Máirtín Ó Direáin
CAPTIVITY
I am an animal
a wild beast
from the tropics
famed for the beauty
of my form
there was a time
my fame sustained
the trees of the woods
but now
I lie down
and gaze with one eye
at that solitary tree
hundreds of people come
every day
who would do anything for me
but set me free
Caitlín Maude
CONGRATULATIONS
I rejoiced,
congratulated them
They smiled
And were grateful
But devils, envious,
Black, escaped
From their souls’
dark corners
so my rejoicing
was left there
lacerated, rent
among them
and I wept
with disgust …
Caitlín Maude
ENTANGLEMENT
Walk, my love,
by the shore tonight –
walk and give over
your tears –
rise and walk tonight
never bend again your knee
to this mountain grave
those flowers are withered
and my bones decayed …
(I speak to you tonight
from the bottom of the sea –
I speak to you each night
from the bottom of the sea …)
I walked by the shore one day –
I walked to the end of the shore –
wave played with wave –
the white foam licked my feet –
I slowly lifted my eyes
and out there on the deep
in the tangle of foam and wave
I saw the loneliness in your eye
and the melancholy in your face
I walked out on the deep
from knee to waist
and from waist to shoulder
until I was swallowed
in sorrow and loneliness
Caitlín Maude
POEM
We live from day to day
with the ‘more’ and ‘less’
of death and life
no little smell
the smell of death
but the smell of life
is huge
small, death’s choking
but too great, the cry-
catch of life
Caitlín Maude
SPUR
Give me a hammer
or axe
till I break
and ruin
this house,
till I make a threshold of the lintel
and floor from the walls
and the scraw
and roof and chimney
tumble around
the strength of my sweat …
Now hand me
the planks and nails
so I make
this other house …
But God, am I tired!
Caitlín Maude
THE FLOWERS
A child
I went out that morning
Hidden, wounded -
I came in
a grown-up
my soul naked, flayed -
the first flowers of spring
- yellow flowers – wisps,
in the middle of the garden
nothing was there
but an unreckoned spur of the moment
in which I tasted
something
not of this life
in which I was taken
from knowing
myself
so I understood
that I was cut
by the blade of loveliness –
its name graven
with cleanness
with sharpness
not the flower’s blossoming
but the life’s-breath
of loveliness and crucifixion.
Caitlín Maude
THE PULL
The drop soaks me,
the wind pulls me from side to side.
My heat, do you think,
does it pull the stars from heaven,
the sun from its path,
the moon from its pull?
Caitlín Maude
TO AN OLD FRIEND
Rip the heart from the centre
east, west, north and south
in every direction
till it meets the circumference,
limitless circular memories
one day
you brought in
your ruined gear
you shut off every door
each little well of understanding
with your vast furniture
I can’t but remember,
my friend,
it’s just as well
you were only a friend.
Caitlín Maude
THE PATIENTS’ CONVENTION
Listen, doctor,
listen:
your pills don’t go
to the marrow,
they don’t straighten the bend
or hit the mark.
Up and down
that stuff turns
between muscle and nerve -
the pattern dispersed,
the river-pebble
can’t be put back
in its proper bed
Caitlín Maude
SACRIFICE
Lady, if I were to give you
these eyes
as a pledge
if I gave these legs
and arms
how great would be your favour
and your thanks
if I were to give my life
how bright and everlasting
your prayer
how bright my soul
in heaven?
But I’ve seen, lady,
your high house
full of wonder
and bliss
love and life
your two children
and your beloved husband
your beloved husband
came to me in the night
and I didn’t scream.
Caitlín Maude
PILGRIMAGE
Observing the rituals
keep
the head bent
the heart heavy
The soul cultivated
in an arid expanse
Qualified at last
for steadiness and esteem
in a nice semi-detached
when a quiet wee sin steals in
like a thief in the night
Then stones break into flower
the surrounding countryside lights up
the soul walks the tightrope
between ‘yes’ and ‘no’.
Caitlín Maude
LATIN
The city’s rottenness
the singing of the birds
sweet as God’s first day
fresh, clean, clear.
Caitlín Maude
BETRAYAL
The infant looked into its mother’s eyes
but recognition didn’t wound him
because it wasn’t there.
She was sitting at rest, easy
in the exactness of her form
She who was always right.
Good mother.
She’ll never see
the wound in her infant’s eyes.
Caitlín Maude
SECRET
A word is spoken
but concealed.
It is hidden with the telling.
The telling is the hiding.
If a door opens
it closes.
Talk is a door
that opens and closes.
A word is a hidden weed
when silence is spewed.
Why should I stay mute?
Caitlín Maude
THE KNOT
I carve and polish
the image of my love.
The sharp bend won’t yield
nor the twisted knot
but I won’t put aside
the chisel.
Although the wood is full
of soft wood
this is my tree
from which I carve
and am carved.
Caitlín Maude
DARKNESS
Lying on my bed tonight
and the blindness of night on my eyes
I think without anger, without emotion
or as much as a tear on my cheek
on the lights that have gone out in my life
each light that lit there put out
with an incredible calamity that blew
like this wind screaming in my ears.
It is strange to me that I was yesterday
so hopeful and wretched a boy
but the darkness is sleepy and placid
there is no care at all on my eyes
and the wind is no freer in its fury
than the man with no light to be snuffed.
Seán Ó Riordáin
MY MOTHER’S FUNERAL
Sunshine in a June orchard,
the afternoon rustling like silk
a cursed bee lilting like a scream
tearing the cloak of noon.
An old worn letter being read by me
with every word I drank in
a sharp thorn piercing my breast,
each word drew out its own tear.
I remembered the hand that wrote,
a hand recognisable as a face
a hand sure and true as an old Bible
a hand like balsam and you sick.
And June dropped straight back into winter
the orchard a white riverside graveyard
and in the middle of the mute white round me
I saw level on the snow the black hole.
Brightness of a girl on her Communion day
brightness of the wafer on the altar
brightness of milk’s steady trickle
when my mother was buried, brightness of the sod.
My mind was scourging itself, trying
to taste the funeral fully
when there flew through the silence meekly
a robin without bewilderment or dread;
and she stayed above the grave is if she knew
that her purpose there was hidden from all
but the person waiting in the coffin
and I could only envy that strange companionship.
An air of heaven came down on that grave
the bird had a terrible holy gaiety
my ignorance kept me from this mysterious business
and that grave before me was far away.
My lustful soul was washed by the sweetness of sorrow
a snow of purity fell on my heart
and the memory of that woman who bore me for three seasons
was buried in my heart that she bore pure.
The small farmers came with a violent shovel-sound
and the clay was swept with energy into the grave
I looked the other way, at neighbours wiping their knees,
at the priest with the world in his face.
Sunshine in a June orchard
the afternoon rustling like silk
a cursed bee lilting like a scream
tearing the cloak of noon.
Myself writing small halting verses
I would like to catch hold of a robin’s tail,
to banish the spirit of the knee-wipers,
I would like to journey in sorrow to day’s end.
Seán Ó Ríordáin
PRAYER
‘Will you say a prayer for me?’
I said to her that morning,
And she said ‘I’ll sew your name
Like a thread through a frieze of prayer.’
And I now see her mind
Like a pony in the church
And my name like a tail
Hovering in the air.
Seán Ó Ríordáin
THE MAD
Noonday noise: their bustle-sharpness spins,
will sharpen till her mind's in smithereens,
the walls around her narrow-sharpening,
such answers as there are sharp-darkening.
But she'll be safely locked away by sunset,
room, answers and herself securely blunted.
Seán Ó Ríordáin
EPIPHANY
Last night, the Epiphany: a spirit whipped
through the storm, cut loose as if escaped
from a madhouse on the far darkside,
screamed mad at us through a tumbled sky
so a goose-honk was a near gate clanging,
a chattering stream had a mad bull's bellow,
my candle snuffed like a sharp face-blow
that ignites a spark of anger.
I'd like that self-same storm - just once,
some night when I'm heading home
worn and weak after life's dance,
the sin-full sun fading, dropping;
that each second be rained on with blows from the sky,
that the world become a queue of screams
to drown out the silence coming for me
like a far car-engine stopping.
Seán Ó Riordáin
FREEDOM
Tonight I'll step below,
mix with those
whose everyday I hope
will enslave, deliver me
from this furious freedom
howling within:
I'll tether this pack
of swirling thoughts
which hound my solitude:
and I'll seek the ruled, the regular,
church thronged with minds
alien to free-aloneness,
will listen to the chink
and barter
of their shilling-thoughts
and I can give my heart
to those whose minds
shop second-hand; and I'll be
with them day and night,
humble, loyal
to the stub of their ideas
- for I've had my own,
mind-looming, growing
limitless, immeasurable -
and I'll give my heart
as fiercely
to all that's bridled, bred:
to custom, regulation,
congregation, poor-daily word,
appointed hour:
to abbot, bell, manservant,
timid comparison,
smallspirit:
to mouse, guess, microscopic
flea; chapter,
line, letter:
to the pomp and greeting of goodbye,
card-playing under stars,
well-wishing:
to sky and wondering farmer
thumb-guessing autumn
wind, corn-dreaming:
to the collective: understanding, memory,
shared, bearing, teeming:
to silver fry-thought.
And I'll hate now and forever
the affairs of freedom,
independence.
Pity that man's mind
fallen in the deep trough of freedom,
he walks no solid, God-created hill
but hills abstract, self-phantomed,
each upland pitted with desires;
he climbs without attainment
those unhorizoned hills,
no limit to his freedom, to his longing,
no relief.
Seán Ó Riordáin
FROST
As I went out one frosty morn
I saw white linen pinned on thorns.
I stretched out my hand to fold it
but it rebelled, cold, slippery-solid.
No living cloth flew from my reach
but a cloth-corpse laid out in a ditch;
it put me rooting in my mind
till a morbid metaphor I found -
I knew my family's frozen blood
when I kissed you, cousin, in that shroud.
Seán Ó Riordáin
HOW
How will we say what has been unsayable;
how flesh the word true to the syllable?
How nerve ourselves to the impulse of the unsaid:
as our tongue the bone, our soul the marrow-cell?
Seán Ó Riordáin
THE SHORTEST TIE FOR THE THROAT
I see the man in front of me
in great pain, I see his death;
But it’s easy for me to put him
and his pain and his death
on the long finger;
if I do that, I won’t live;
I have enough pain with the one
currently in my presence:
Although I’m that man out there
he isn’t me yet,
and I don’t care what abuse he gets
as long as I don’t spend today
suffering:
Although blood recognises itself
I have no pity for my self –
a long way from home:
Each me that has lived is forgotten, sickly,
those of me to come each one an alien:
Each me has enough
with its own ills.
Seán Ó Riordáin
THE SMILE
He had a smile on his face
because he got word on the wind
that he’d been made professor –
and hadn’t yet been told officially.
And on my face a smile too
since I’d got word on the wind
that I’d been pronounced dead –
and no official date as yet.
Seán Ó Riordáin
MY DEATH
I know my death,
have known a long time;
I feel I died long ago,
the same death I’ll soon undergo:
when I remember my death
it’s not something that never happened
but something that left my mind,
something I forgot.
When this notion comes to me
I understand that my death
is bigger than me:
my death is bigger
than the whole life I’ve spent.
I’m a rich man
like every person
because my death is my wealth;
you can’t take from it, though,
you can’t spend your death
until it matures;
land you can’t sell
or money tied up,
our death is in the spending of our life.
Seán Ó Riordáin
DESIRE
Full, full, full,
as high tide the measure of my desire,
High tide, brimful.
A swimmer: vision so bright
she shimmers
Cooling, peace, cream smeared on burned shoulders,
minnow on canvas, a frieze of joy
on the front of a great sea.
Knowledge: a bottle to cut me,
an enemy in the sand expecting my foot.
Réamonn Ó Muireadhaigh
THE HANG OF YOUR LIP
I recognised you by the pout on your lower lip,
it left its seal on the paper of my memory
twenty years ago in Killarney;
you were always last, and the company
of scouts out for a walk in the country;
tripping, even in your shorts;
your head high between play and scorn,
your mouth balanced on a dark word.
Blood mingles now with the Last Oil,
it runs back again into the lakes,
my sorrow burns in the campfire;
morsels of your brain fall onto my coat,
like sugar from fir trees in Kerry,
smelling of unwholesome sweetness.
The angel of pride makes a lament in my throat.
Here in your house in Banbrook, Armagh,
I hear the bells of the cathedral;
the shotgun is lying motionless,
a colossal quiet hangs on its gloomy barrel,
its morose metal silent.
The horrid gun discharges suddenly,
the brain blown out of the matter of my dream.
The echo returns slowly to my thought;
I put a frame around the bed,
the floor,
the grey blanket
and the pout on your lip.
Réamonn Ó Muireadhaigh
THE SCORE
You sitting alone
in Boswell’s Coffee House
in Covent Garden,
paying no attention
to comings and goings,
the veil of quiet
pulled back
over your kind face
your dark brows,
your black eyelashes,
the edges of your mouth,
elegantly knit
in the music score
- a Chinese puzzle -
before you on the table.
London, 1996
Réamonn Ó Muireadhaigh
CLAUSTROPHOBIA
Coming back on the train
from Taranto on Good Friday,
thinking of Christ of the Passion,
barefoot men
in white clothes
carrying Jesus through the streets.
My carriage-cell doors were closed,
but darkness burst its heavy walls
and my bodily sense was robbed.
The train shrieked sharp with dread,
My heart lost its steady beat
my pious breath was suffocated
but a demon sound came safe from it.
The panic broke my demon-dream,
I was found lying next morning,
limbs stretched in the sleep like death
under a starched red cloth.
Réamonn Ó Muireadaigh
THE STEEL-BLUE SUN
Sultry under the steel-blue sun
waves moved with the a rounded ease;
lukewarm crests were running in,
pouring comfortably over toddlers’ feet
a breaking wave hung on the wind,
lifting hardy waders
the peace of summer lying on the horizon,
stretching its legs from time to time
in contented pleasure toward the bathers.
The same green was on the crests of the waves
when our Joseph was killed,
his thirteen years drained away
under that sun’s dazzling path.
I carefully stroked his designer bike
I gently traced the chalk of his face
and delicately pushed the bloody petals
back over his head.
His expression was lost in a sacred sweetness.
The heatwave was in each breath of wind
as it freed midday’s tangled rays,
swimmers dived headfirst with the strength of relief,
the foam kept gnawing at the sand.
Réamonn Ó Muireadhaigh
ORDER
The noise of life
in a wave
the din of the sea
in a shell
the sound of words
in a poem
in the peace of eternity
utter silence
Mícheál Ó Ruairc
HER VOICE
for Dolores Keane
Like a blackbird and thrush
singing together on a hedge-top
a bright frosty morning
at the start of spring.
Like a lark rising
from a bog on a summer day
filling the centre of the firmament
with its sweetness.
Like a snipe in autumn
throatiness in its voice
sad notes for sunset
in the riverside marsh.
Like the loneliness of the wind
whirling by the sea in winter
its bleak, pained voice
echoing off the cliffs.
This is why we love her,
This woman whose voice stretches
over the ridge of years
to the dawn of our people.
Mícheál Ó Ruairc
GALWAY
Where are your eyes,
brave holy Ireland?
The same green water
and it wailing on
the same green stones
and green prefab houses standing
under a torn sky
as if it were a torn shawl
and the smell of the fish
of the tarry lines
the putrid rubbish
the decayed seaweed
under arches forgotten
long, long ago
and the merciful grass
growing on their summits.
Now from time to time
and the night running
on tiptoe
through crooked streets
the old loveliness escapes from shameful places
and wanders a while
like a noble ghost
darkly silently
Galway
noble dark silent
under the water’s
lashing tongue and
under the bright vulgarity
of today
there is always breath in her
but barely so.
Little shops little lights little houses
like steel boxes.
An ugly thing something so paltry
it chokes the air around it
and she to be seen now
looking out from a black cave
crawling bandylegged on her stomach
looking from side to side with eyes
inquiring, piercing:
then, and daring swelling in her
she comes out
sniffing the air
like a knife-nosed fox
sniffing the air and
paper flowers
synthetic flasks
plastic bubbles
being hung by her
from coil to coil
here under the broken shadows
of Galway.
The levelled bridge
of metal of wood
above the water-run
the forgotten walls
the blind roads
the weedy backstreets:
the waves’ gloomy music
shreds of torn paper
drinking the rain
the grey-white geese in the mud
in front of the last house
with the thatched roof
the clouds hanging in the sky
above Clare in the west:
the lightning trembling
above the bay.
Here she is now for you
that cursed evil spirit
and it clearing away the stones
pulling the straw down
from the last poor house
plucking out
of a little steel box
mean ugly houses
for exhausted people.
Is it that you can’t construct
a beautiful new house
in which to live?
Is it that you can’t
wear a báinín suit
without losing your self-respect?
Is it that you need
to imitate
the paltriest things there are
being formulated by those who crush you
on the ruins that are left
in their wake?
You were
a beautiful woman in the mouth of death:
and now my fear is great
that you are changed
by those who rescue you
that you are so changed
that soon you will be
a thin-lipped person:
your voice like a parrot
your mind like a counting-house
your mien like a newspaper.
O keep the beauty you had
and you in the flower of your glory
and you in the mouth of death
that you may live again
yourself, yourself
yourself between soul and body
dark Galway
noble Galway
proud Galway.
Micheál Mac Liammoir
THE DEAD
People drinking tea
and the fire’s blaze in the room
November’s half-light as vivid-green
as a peacock’s tail
outside the window:
the sky is too beautiful
to be hidden under curtains
is it too beautiful to light a lamp?
Yes surely, surely, that’s why
only the two lights are in the room
the fire’s light
the sky’s light.
Here’s the evening’s company
here they are
talking quietly
laughing silently
and the flames from the hearth
whispering like sea waves
and them dancing on faces
in gold in amber under the light
under the shadow of their hair
and the half-light of November tangled in it
it is so vivid-green so blue
as a peacock’s tail
and now a woman
is filling out tea
the tea in an amber stream
under the fire’s blaze
and what is in the trickle’s shade
a pale gold fountain
in the land of ghosts.
And suddenly a cat comes into the room
A cat.
Suddenly
silently
and he rubs against the fire’s blaze
against the warmth
of peace
and sets about
washing himself
in the surety of the half-light
in the surety of the month of November
month of death
month of the dead:
and a smile comes
to the face of each
in the surety of the cat
in the surety of the tea
in the surety of the fire
in the surety of the peace
in the surety of the dead.
An angel is above the house
and its wings
spread.
Micheál Mac Liammóir