Tag: cork

Ages Apart 

Ages Apart

I was talking to Pytheas of Massilia on Friday.

He was still in the grip of a cold he caught

returning from Thule.

Twas as if the world’s oldest albatross

– whom some call Wisdom –

sang with a bee hummingbird

that fled Cuba from Irma to Cork.

Such was the storm song …

such the Artic bass …

My Greek lapsed as I left the Parthenon,

his Irish, foreign, tinged with Scots Gallic,

guttural.

We stuck to sign language,

ice on his fingernails.

I put that down to the disgrace

that few believed his stories.

Wrapped in song,

building melody

on staves of flesh,

major and minor,

there was little between us.

Harmony.

Ceremony.

Destiny.


Two men with hearts

dependant on blood

lightly to coagulate

in hurricanes predicted to return

(and persist).

__________________

I must tell Tim Miller

Pytheas read his poem

in the Shetlands,

despite the middle-aged ‘stupidity’

never learned from pilgrims.

Smiles we made over gin and tonic,

over ice.


We called our chorus

‘Brothers from Earth’


We are brothers from Earth,

conceived in shadows’ stage,

conjoined and free in birth,

alive in every age.

Reunited

I left the house of my reincarnation
before the swallows returned
the year they cancelled the Grand National.

I walked out the door
before dawn disappeared, drove through a dream
as if in a dismal draft of corked Dolcetto.

I pitched my leaky tent in Wiltshire
’til forced out by a wife’s thirst
for regeneration.

Winter hardened the road I travelled
as I wished to wallow like a pig
in the hot mud Bladud found.

I sailed back to the Province of my birth
in a ferry beset by bleeding ballast,
into the storm of a tiger’s saliva

whipped by Irish bankers, Roman bishops,
windy politicians and uncivil servants.
The rant of ravaged youths, refugees from famine,
coursed through my bloodstream, out my throat
and stained my pen.

I wrote resurrection out of my will.

until I flew to the city of surprised eyes,
composer’s minds,
mouthful feasts

until I sat opposite my child in Southark
speaking of the Golan, green with cotton,
forgetting Masada and the Dead Sea

and lived to swim again
among dreadlocks, hijabs, sidecurls, pale people
and more

until at last I greet myself
arriving at my own house
in my own skin

and we smile again
reunited over broken bread
and the words of one imagination.

Only you

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Only you

The weight of the raindrop that trickled
under my waterproof.

The shape of the arm of the snowflake that smashed into my left eye.

The arc of the rainbow that landed
on the dock of the Port of Cork.

The pixels of the iris by which I see
handwriting painted in my black Moleskine.

The taste of your nipple between my infant gums
the day we first met.

The pounding of your gait growing stronger in ears
listening to the “Mad World ” of Gary Jules.

Only you,

and you alone…

Road-opening

Road-opening

The Council shut the road outside Crawford Woods

on Thursday

without warning

blocked the way down Church Hill

forced us all to detour

crawlingly

day after day until sundown on Saturday.

They even parked a road-repairing, four-wheeled, monstrosity

–  a rhinoceros of a stone-chip spreader –

outside the house of Adrian and Eimear

so obtrusively

we couldn’t avoid talking to each other

for the first time since Halloween.

‘Twas sticking plaster on potholes

for the sake of bumps in the night

tyres in the daylight.

 

II

On the third, day the cock crowed

before the sun returned,

we could turn left again

to embrace our over-hanging trees

and shadow side.

Shards covered over

at least temporarily,

boulders removed

so earthworms can move forward now

beyond the known universe.

Road-opening without ceremony

an invitation to return to fruitful ways

–  the journey of a lifetime.

After the concession

After the concession

A black bird sits on a telephone line,

suspended between wooden poles

aged by water.

This is no day for tears,

no moment for regrets,

no time for tearing-out hair.

There are other black birds

and a seagull catching light

over the Northside.

There is a hill to descend

a twisting road

past cars

and fading disintegrating leaves.

There’s even sun in my eyes.

It’s easier to say nothing,

to notice the knot,

to register the wish

to lock the toilet door

and simply sit.

Oh yes, there’s reason to be thoughtful,

there’s always reason to reflect,

looking at clouds heavy with mist.

There’s always a will to inaction,

a will to ossify.

Black bird statues

behind a crooked spire,

the one with the lightening rod on top.

The off-licence shut,

the graffiti craves attention,

I see Aer Lingus was looking for my vote

‘smart makes the right choice

for Stateside flights this winter’.

The wounded leopard must go back for more food,

the thirsting camel must trek on,

the beehive must protect and cherish

and guard their queen,

even when forced to swarm.

This is no day for tears,

it’s a day my mother did her best to prepare me for,

and my father knew would come.

Remember Job is more than one man,

and black birds are ever present

whenever there’s a breath to be drawn.

___________________

 

Live-streaming poetry by Selima Hills & Matthew Sweeney

[Note:  This is 39 minutes.  To see all comments & heart –  click on the Periscope.TV link in the tweet above.]

Paul O’Mahony live-streaming two poems from the anthology  Staying Alive – real poems for unreal times“

“Cow” by Selima Hill (1945 -)  – from 15 minutes 50 seconds in.

“Sleep with a suitcase” by Matthew Sweeney (1951 – ) – from 30 minutes 36 seconds

To write a poem now

 

cafesmall

To write a poem now

To write a poem now
forgotten how,
fingers all too stale,
grown pale.
Unused soul went to sleep,
troubled deep.

Christ rose from the dead,
threw off sheets drenched in blood,
woke up, pushed the stone back
so light and birdsong dawned,
his dream made flesh,
again.

Fear revisited,
traces linger instead,
as if painted over.
Whitewashed over…

Jesus wrote his poem
on the road to Emmaus,
recovered from Gethsemane.
The words even ascended into Heaven
and were repeated.

To write a poem now…
the least I could do.

__________________________

Note:

I wrote this in 2011 – shortly after I recovered from a long bout of depression. I began it in Ely near Cambridge UK, & finished the first draft in my local much-loved haunt Cafe Beva, Glanmire, Co Cork.