ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Martin Delany is a former businessman and a native of Dublin. Following a bout of ill-health in 1999 he has found time to commit to paper ideas, thoughts and imaginings carried around in his head for many years. He now divides his time between Ireland and Spain. This is his first published work.
© 2007 Martin Delany
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced
in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, taping or information storage and
retrieval systems—without the prior written permission of the author.
ISBN: 978-1-906018-00-9
A CIP catalogue for this book is available from the National Library.
Published by Original Writing Ltd. 2007.
I dedicate ‘Flying South’ to the memory of my father Eddie,
who died in 2000, and my mother Molly who knew I was planning to
publish a book but never got a chance to read it.
She passed away in December 2005.
I
POEMS
A Country Graveyard in County Kerry
There is a place for my dead beside a high mountain
and turbulent water, the trees bare cowering to their
side avoiding ungentle winds, ocean sand nestling
at their base sucking life from the yielding bark.
I have been through this graveyard many times savouring
the withering flowers wafting in the wind, the weeding
of old graves, the scent of mown grass on sun beamed days,
the laughter of men digging new highways to eternity.
On marble stones shining, filled with the history of
people, time and lands from across immense oceans,
I have wished for these dead a heaven of earthly delight,
for them no praising of a god or singing with angels.
On this day I feel them close to me, their primitive throb
snaking and curling through the barriers of wood, earth
and stone and reaching out to me, taking on the mantle
of all mankind, helping me to understand how
They lie slumbering one on top of the other, closer
now than in life, uncomfortable with their closeness,
children puzzling as to their being there, being quiet,
the elders hoping for a sign to shake off the musty earth.
Lying shabby now, aware of their nakedness, their lack
of weight, younger bodies pressing down on those below,
all marking time amidst the creeping uncertainty, the cry
goes up ‘How much longer must we spend here?’
On a cold afternoon, in a sand soaked cemetery, their
song has found a way into my questing heart. When the
light fades and dies the dead remain with us, waiting
forever, cast down in a limbo of betrayed dreams.
Ancient Hearth
At the end of day in a street of my youth
I am a young child again racing to tar strips
laid down by councils on pitted roads.
Mothers are calling us to tea and hatted
fathers, in three piece suits and brown shoes,
are bending to the wind homeward bound.
On other days the egg man appears with two
dozen shited feathered eggs, account book
and heavy fawn cotton workman’s coat, his
large hands mocked by snotty, hidden boys
whispering ‘Fingers’ across matted hedges.
I smell our first television blaring out its call
as I run between it and father cleaning his
new Austin, white with mauve stripes running
front to back, mother cutting the postage
stamp lawn, my brothers and sister tumbling
together blissful in the new mown grass and
then tea of brown bread and queen cakes,
jams of past autumn and bottled plums
grown heavy on bending shelves in dark sheds,
stored and preserving the creeping progression
of family life painted in hand written labels
on sticky timeworn jars.
Now I am a tiny cowboy, the Lone Ranger or
the Cisco Kid, terrifying little nurses pushing
plastic babies to labyrinthine tea parties.
I am a frightened child at the banisters,
cigar smoke curling up, tipsy guests stumbling
into bedrooms in search of discarded fox head fur.
Older I am kneeling beside my father’s bidet,
white bowl of mystery, thoughts of washing and
caressing private parts filling young mothers with
nervous anticipation as they queue to look at this
ceramic monument to depravity wantonly standing
alone inviting them to squat and partake in its ritual.
All this in my mind’s eyes, now to then, to now
again, as I feel to scale a wall, climb into a
bedroom blue, take refuge in a warming bed
and deep in magic night reinvent my ancient hearth.
Approaching Traffic Lights
There is grace in his suffering, a serenity when
he craves the ordinary, no more false longing
for extraordinary happenings, no highs and
lows but restful stability in an unstable world.
I also never wanted to be ordinary and my life has
seen the same steps, but on a separate path, to where
the road now divides and we can read, in our merged
knowing, our tacit agreement, the unspoken journey.
A Prayer at 3.00 am
Dear heart, wake me from this sleep
and grant me wishes from your deep
that sometime in the darkest night,
in frosty sky or pale moonlight,
we lose ourselves in love’s delight.
Go heart, go quietly to our place
and feed across a universe of space
and kiss the lips that hiss a kiss
of summer wine
and fall between the shade that
counts a throb of silent time
and kneel till time and time is gone
and wonder what took us so long
to crawl to an embrace somewhere
and find each other quietly there.
At the Villa Nelle
Speak softly to me on this cold night
touch my heart with love not frenzied lust
reassure me of our future bright.
Stay with me close in this dwelling white
swollen with decay and festering rust
speak softly to me on this cold night.
O be my angel, my glowing light
our lives for ever joined you must
reassure me of our future bright.
Fill my arms with your body slight
I kiss your cheeks and silent ask just
speak softly to me on this cold night.
Direct my passions and soaring might
and protect our love from winter gust
reassure me of our future bright.
Enter my soul and allow me write
poems of aged wisdom and of trust
speak softly to me on this cold night
reassure me of our future bright.
By Appointment Only
There is a smell of distrust in the magical garden
perched on a hill overlooking mountains and
shimmering coast, an evil perfume floating across
my nostrils sensitive to any change in an atmosphere
of sta
bility and harmony, contributors to a
joined life of meaning and common thoughts.
She wills the house on me, carefully excusing the
void rooms, robbed of history in an agreement
to dismantle a family, strip it of meaning and purpose,
sad paintings gummed to soiled refrigerator doors,
gentle reminders of kinder, loving times.
For I also have tread through a house and smelled
destruction, visited and rested in rooms echoing with
anger now scattered, brooding in other places, other
lives now open to my embrace by appointment only.
Cold Mountain
Feel how the wind races
across the long valley
leaving nothing untouched
In its path to the mountains;
no slow warming of land or memories
no wish to return to gentler times.
Could we have but reinvented
golden time or reset a clock
on the long road to a beginning
where childhood is more than ankle
socks or Saturday bath and Sunday suit
set out clean.
What sum I ask for intimacy, a kiss, an
understanding of generations and their
place in the heart?
But then no gift from others of prayed wisdom;
instead from me a fatal fascination
with disengagement,
a slow slide into indifference
where your going and my leaving
stand equal on a cold mountain.
Counting the Time Not Passed
I have loved the smell of hops, the twinkling
glass of black gold, the rising smoke and
sensual hope curling round endless night.
I have wanted and courted magic days,
tangled years of imagination, shining
winter to winter and lighting a life of
incessant beginnings. I have ignored
crowds of silent lovers, shuffling forward
line in line, chained feet, marching toward
a long valley where others wait to meet and
in faint voice weep one last lingering moment.
I have measured and schemed and sought to
turn back death’s hold, observed others join
the silent crowds, and prayed that I will, in
the unfolding of time not passed, feel the
future slowing, going on forever.
Dear God
I hope it is not an awkward time to talk but I want to say
thanks for the wake up call last Saturday afternoon. I had
not expected to hear from You so soon but I need to tell You,
up front, I always wanted You to get in touch, but not yet.
Let me also put on the table that when I fall asleep with
You, please forgive me in advance for not being so attentive in
my hurrying years. Somehow we both seemed to drift
away from each other – other things to do I suppose.
With all these tubes and measuring instruments embedded
in me I have not been able to get around as much as before
and this has given me time to think about You and Your kind
invitation to join the others in Your lovely home.
I admit I did waiver, there were moments on that mountain
when I felt I could join, should join You. But now I am
getting better and I am not so sure any more. May I make
a suggestion and ask that Your next call be put off for a while?
You see I like my life now that they tell me I have more time
than I thought last Saturday. I am making plans for the future,
I am going to be very busy for a while and perhaps the best way
to leave things is that we get in touch when I am ready.
Dun Laoire Harbour, Early February
Cocooned in wool I stride out the West Pier
as the Stena Line backs lazily into its parking bay,
its underbelly emasculated of decks, a great
hole to view the East Pier, the wind howling
across the enclosed water, rattling the flagpoles like
crowds of drunken dentures struggling home.
I pass a group of French students, beautiful gazelles
in their blossoming womanhood, but sullen and
bemused by my country in a freezing February,
my hearty ‘Bon Jour’ doing nothing to lift waning
spirits as they turn into an impossible cold gust.
Resting for a moment on a wooden bench an elderly
shabby lady joins in my survey of the harbour.
At her feet an empty Liz Clairborne bag sways
precariously and I fall to wonder about creatures lost
to the world who wait for bright sunshine to wreak
havoc on unsuspecting people, but also brave a cold
afternoon to pass on their obscure references to
letting them down, or deal a smack across an unready
face or initiate a stormy going with a flourish of words.
However this lady sits stoically and nervously I move on.
At the end of the pier a man with a mobile phone is
shouting ‘Baste the joint then turn down the oven
to 190 degrees’ and I am transported back to
the butt end of the Great Blasket. I am shouting
into a mobile ‘Hi! I am on the Blasket Islands.’
I cannot hear a reply, and energised by fresh air and the
accomplishment of reaching the end of the island
I shout louder, my words drifting away in the still
Summer day, my contentment pricked like a balloon.
Turning for home I face into a harsh freezing draught;
struggling to stay upright I bend into the gale, the air
like a messenger of despair in a grey shifting sky, a
warning now ringing inside me that I have passed more
than half my allotted days to walk this harbour wall
and the coming in is ripening into a more gruelling
journey than the shallow going out.
El Torcal
Half-awake I hear a symphony of belled goats on
the road below, their bloated udders hurrying
to a favourite rendezvous.
The garden has greedily taken on its Spring costume
and already the campo flies are about their business,
interfering in the lives of all creatures, disturbing
my naked vulnerability under the flowering shrubs.
You are by my side, rivulets of sweat flowing slowly
down a valley between your brown breasts, dropping
suddenly in to the well of your belly button, the water
gathering and seeming to steam in the mid-afternoon heat.
Above us El Torcal is being engulfed in a fog tumbling
down the porous limestone shaped by rocks and water
into chalices, teeth, knives and other mineral oddities.
The cloud fall on marine fossils buried in an ancient
vast sea, the bed of the ocean rising to deposit sediment
in the path of the fog’s cooling march to the valley.
I turn to wake you as the clouds get even closer and the
temperature quickly drops some ten degrees shutting
down a small universe living and dying in the garden.
Gathering our clothes we run expectantly to the house
and in the darkened cooling room make love joyously,
without rush, examining our bodies as a coroner would,
turning parts from side to side, weighing and measuring
familiar pleasure as it mounts in expectation of a final release.
Sated we lie entangled, slipping into a time between
waking and dreaming, m
using how our lives are shaped
by constant willed exposure to each other, the slow dripping
of joined thoughts tumbling into lanes of fragrant memories.
Flying
He died among the reddening poppies,
flying from a height, coming to rest
in a flinty patch of broken earth.
As he flew he did not notice rain
settling gently on the green
valley below, vibrant in summer
clothes, alive with an infinity
of offered promises.
Boredom some said, others despair.
Flying South
The life vest is under my seat, an age of
fifty-three crouches on my shoulder, and you are
reading the weather in some far off place, twenty
below. As the plane banks under a cloudless sky
bays of foam and sand rush towards the small
window, until flattening out we enter the north
of our final destination for the thirtieth time.
We descend with a great roar of throttle,
a shake of tables and movement of overhead
racks, tight repositories of documented lives,
until in the final moments we swoop in over
green watered fields of plumb watermelon, set
down beside old twisted cork and olive trees
Emerging through the narrow door and down
steep steps I am once again entranced by the
light and warming wind.
For My Father
Gathering for the last time
we stoop to whisper silent song
holding back what can be held
to stay his journey to the stars.
But no cold kiss or stroke
of wispy hair
moves that solemn head to rise
and meet the stare
of a final touch on arm
before the sealing solid lid.
Now he wanders the universe, drifting
out along the Milky Way,
reaching for all the prayed wisdom
of his belief,
while we, arm in arm, throw a final rose
to the void.
Friday Afternoons
The Miss Browns sit snugly, smugly,
Flying South Page 1
