an account in bird-talk
of the day's events.
Shifted place
in short fidgety flights
or rode the draught
to night-shelter
on a stunted sycamore,
its shape, leaning downwind,
betraying the prevalence in this place
of the north-west wind.
Suddenly startled
they rose skyward
in a whoosh of wings,
protested in shrill squeals,
massed, and floated down
like a fairy temple from the clouds
to roost again
and re-commence
their nattering evening gossip
before drifting off in ones and twos
in short skirrs
to their night-hides
until all is still
and the paired perch-lines,
strung between poles,
are left softly humming
a lullaby to
the tune of the night breeze.
On Christmas Day, 1997, one of the worst storms in living memory blew across Ireland. All over the main land the electricity supply failed and those without an alternative cooking system were left without their Christmas dinners. On Inis Meáin, in the middle of Galway Bay, facing directly out into the Atlantic, however, the electricity stayed on. The storm was, of course, as ferocious, if not more so, than it was everywhere else. I was walking along Baile an Mhóthair in the mid morning and I saw a very old man, walking with the aid of two sticks making his way along the road very slowly and perilously against the wind.
“Who, in the name of God, left that old man out on a morning like this?" I asked myself. And then I thought that if anything happened him it would be easy to blame the fairies. My imagination took over from there. It was aided by the sight, when I reached the shore, of a fine mist being blown back off the tops of the breaking waves and they reminded me of the finest silk veil such as I had seen in my mother’s work-room when she was making clothes for a bride.
THE WEDDING GUEST
You were eighty, if a day.
Battling on wide-set legs
of an aged seafarer
through the enfolding winter dusk
into the face of a storm
that had driven the boats ashore
to hide, upturned, like crouched beetles,
behind a low stone wall
above the chattering pebble beach,
out of reach of a swell
that rose to touch the harried clouds,
sometimes hiding
the cross-water shore from view.
When you spoke your guttural greeting
in the ancient tongue of the long-dead
the toffee smoke of your tobacco
scudded away and lost itself
in the bridal veils of finest silk
flowing back in the wind off
the upper cusp of falciform breakers,
white-fringed with fingered foam,
where little people-of-the-sea leaped
in carnal dance and dashed ashore
in frantic search for guests
to join their nuptial celebrations.
They said I was the last to see you alive.
In the new morning,
in the washed freshness of the after-storm,
they found you.
You were face down
in the pooled gold of a sunbeam
in the sound between the islands.
You had gone without protest,
limbs and head in perfect star-shape,
while a deep-blue sky held aloft
the translucent viaticum of a day moon
and the wind, quieted to a breeze,
flowed through chinks in stone walls
and the slats and meshes
of piled lobster pots
and hummed an airy music,
a music for fairies to dance to.
PART II
NATURE
CANAL WALK
(Winter Morning - On The Royal Canal)
Fog on the canal.
Blackbirds skittering across the tow-path
Leaving puffs of powdered frost
From bent-over grasses
Hanging ephemerally in a weak sun-beam.
Dirty-brown fledgling swans
Forage in the flotsam
Floating half submerged
In black half-dead waters
Where a deep overnight freeze
Left aspirational ice-bergs
Already doomed to fluid nothingness
By a misty morning sun.
Ivy bushes laden
With their hard Lenten black berries,
Parasites on strangled trees,
Sacrificed to the god of survival,
Their creeping tendrils
Laying siege to old walls
Covering ancient tethering rings
Almost rusted through. The memory of them
Only a brown stain on old stone.
Is the Christ hidden
Under the shiny green leaves?
Or is it only a myth
Because there never was a Christ
For souls can only save themselves?
Or is my soul hidden too,
Buried in the overgrowth,
While I sit exposed
On the stark limbs
Of an old elder tree?
DANDELIONS
(Spring, 2010)
Whether ‘twas the weather of the winter gone
that caused the dandelions to grow this year
in such profusion, I cannot tell.
I only know that I have never seen before
fields filled with myriad golden eyes
shimmering like shiver-spasms
across the meadow
when the Spring winds blow.
Or perhaps it was last year’s
Autumn winds had passed the time
playing tricks on gardeners
by blowing the puff-ball clocks,
scattering their seeds
to re-emerge in Easter sunshine
and come to bloom in mirror reflection
of a star strewn sky
on a clear dark night.
They dominate fields and farmlands.
Road verges and motorway medians
are lit up like runway lights
and while the ochre blossom
of fresh Spring gorse
flames in the hedgerows
grasslands are dressed in sequined clothes
interwoven with golden guineas.
Then overnight the landscape changes
and the fields are filled
with little granny-fairies
gossiping and nodding
in tune to the wind
of passing traffic
or the flutter of birds’ wings
flying in from far off places
and skimming low over the land
joyfully announcing their return
from far-flung winter habitats
As the sun sinks
the evening breeze invades
the nodding heads and blows them away
till the air is filled with tiny seeds
floating to Earth in the moonlight
on little silver parachutes
to bide their time ‘till next year
beneath their parental lions-tooth leaves.
DIRGE FOR A SWAN
Floating, half submerged,
In stagnant waters.
Once white feathers
Matted and blackened
With waste oil.
A dead swan
By a canal bank.
Are you the beautiful Fionnuala,
Beloved foster-daughter of Bodhbh Dearg,
Protector and carer
For nine hundred years
Of your brothers,
Victim of Aoife's jealous rage?
Did
you fly here
From the wide waters
Of Derravarragh
Where you conversed by day
With your kinsmen of
The Tuatha De Dannan
And sang at night
A sweet lullaby
For their underworld children?
Or did the west wind
Guide you from Innisglory
In beautiful Errigal
Where you swam in tears
For three hundred years?
Did you pass this way seeking
The clear waters of a mountain lake
Silent but for
The tinkling of a waterfall,
The sweet song of the linnet
Or the sigh of the wind
Carrying stories on its back
From beyond the mountains
From your father's home
Among the white fields of Armagh?
Were you surprised
To find instead
Belching metal monsters,
The cacophonous din
Of city traffic,
Lines of metal poles
Protruding from the morning mist
Like a succession of Calvarys
Bearing murderous power lines
Which broke your tuneful flight,
Scattering your snow-white feathers
Onto the ash-pits and tip-heads
Of an untamed suburbia,
And brought you to earth
To drown in the discarded filth
Of a long disused canal.
THE LEVERET'S LAST NIGHT
Your first day became your last night.
Hush now,
The night-creatures will hear your mewling
Carried downwind
Reverberating off the hardened earth
Beneath your cold form
Among the frost-stiffened grasses
Where you wait for your mother's tawny warmth
And the blood-hot milk from her teats
To swill around your day-old toothless gums.
The creeping cold is on you now
And day-break will see you dead
From starvation or hypothermia or both
Or a tasty morsel
For a wandering fox whose radar ears
Will fasten on your waning death-cries.
The suck your growling gut aches for
Was spume in the wind
Or paled the crimson mess
From your mother's torn belly,
Shredded by the savage teeth
Of a carefully matched pair
Of half-starved hounds
Who pissed themselves with the excitement
Of the kill
That heated the loins of the handlers
To near spurting point too
As they debated with fierce intensity,
Determined that justice should be done,
Which hound caused your mother to turn first
As turn in terror she did
Into the closing jaws of the losing dog
Who thought he was the winner
And celebrated in style by seizing
Between yellowed teeth her frantic head
While the loser, who really was the winner,
Held her rear left thigh
As they tore her panting body asunder
Her fluids flying in the winter wind.
"First kill today" tutted the slipper.
"Always reminds me of a baby crying" replied the judge
Turning the card
Wondering if there was time
For a quick one
Before the next race.
SPRING, AT LAST
15THFebruary, 2009
I knew it was different this morning.
A finch flitted to a fir tree,
Groomed himself on the highest branch
And sang matins to the new day.
I stood with my back to the sun
And felt warmth in my wintered bones.
In the distance a church bell rang
As the bird in sweet welcome sang.
Drab grey yielded place to bright yellow;
Golden gorse-buds speckled fences;
Butter-coloured primroses peeped
From cover in south facing ditches,
While the spear-tips of daffodils,
Green yesterday, are tinged in gold.
They sway gently in a soft breeze,
Waving welcome to Spring’s reprise.
There ‘s a white mist on the river;
Grey clouds dissolve on mountaintops;
Newborn lambs dolldouced on pastures;
A cock pheasant called from the copse.
Wrens picked moss for nests in stonewalls;
Larks soared over heathery hillsides,
Warbling delight that Winter’d passed;
Telling the world ‘twas Spring at last.
Most, and probably all, of the people in Ireland are familiar with the story of The Children of Lir. It tells of how a jealous step-mother turned her husbands' four children into swans and banished them to various locations for hundreds of years. Lir was a chieftain of the Tuatha Dé Danann who were an ancient race, common in Irish literary mythology. They were said to have populated Ireland long before the Celts. When the Celts defeated them they went underground and are believed to have been the progenitors of the fairies who are so much part of Irish storytelling and mythology.
One of the places where the four swans lived was on Lake Derravaragh in County Westmeath and they are said to have lived there for 300 years where their father, Lir, often visited them. When I visited there in 1994 their story came to mind and led to this poem.
This story features also in the poem, 'Dirge for a Swan' a few pages back.
VISITING DERRAVARAGH
The oaks are thin now
'Round Derravaragh.
They mute the rustle of the waves
On the lake waters
Or sing with the wind
That dances with the leaves
On lichen covered branches
And hum a sibilant song
Through steel wire fences
Strung on creosoeted poles
In dead-straight lines
Running down to the shore
Making four-cornered fields
Where once there was openness.
There are still swans on Derravaragh.
Gleaming white; creatures of light.
Wrens gather swans-down
From twiggy nests on narrow land-spits
For tiny cosy nests
Among grey stone walls.
Did their fathers' fathers,
Counted back ten thousand times,
Pick down from Fionnuala's nest
Or is the sweet song of the blackbird here
Learnt by his forebears
From the changeling children of Lir
Who lulled their friends to sleep at night
With sweet singing in human voice
From swan-forms
On Derravaragh?
PART III
FOR FUN
DEAR MANAGER……….
Just as I sat me down to dine
Each taste-bud screamed my mouth to feed.
On top of steak well cooked in wine
Perched there a foot-long centipede.
Avoiding sauce, I’d ordered roast,
Requiring beef simpliciter.
Directly in your morning post
You’ll hear from my solicitor.
GINGERBREAD HOUSE CAFÉ
At last I'd found the very place
It lifted up my mood.
For years I'd searched the city streets
To find my favourite food.
"I'm sure 'tis here, I know it is."
I argued with myself
My eyes were darting too and fro
Examining every shelf.
With timber tables, folding chairs
A Paris café air.
It looked the finest fare.
An engineer I vaguely know
With mobile phone to ear
Sat talking animatedly
About earth-moving gear.
Two lovers on the balcony,
Eyes locked, talked of the moon.
To share their love, arms intertwined
Licked cream from the other's spoon.
Some student girls were lounged about
And smoking too! How could they?
While pimply boys sipped bottled Coke
And gazed and wondered would they.
Two matrons for their weekly chat
Drank coffee quite demurely.
Their bags from B.T.’s fashion floor
Across their laps securely.
The waitresses - a varied lot -
The one with Sinéad head
Smiled at me saying "’Tis just a name
We don't serve gingerbread."
THE MIRROR OF DORIAN GRAY
When Beauty’s eye beholds reflected face
Of shining misty eyes and flawless hue,
Cascading hair my shoulders close embrace,
My tinted eyebrows plucked and shaped anew,
My supple joints from yoga’s stretch and bend
Help me walk tall though I’m but five foot three
And haute couture of finest silk will send
A pleasing message to a staring he.
But when I wake each morning and I gaze
Upon that face before ‘tis creamed and done
I see such wrinkles - like a private maze -
That from my eyes and nose and lips do run.
My heart takes fright with sudden shocked dismay
My mirror frames the face of Dorian Gray.
THE STORY OF CECIL
Cecil was a cat-about-town.
He went prowling each night at sundown.
With commitment to none,
His main object was fun.
Chased females to add to his crown.
But Cindy was more than his match.
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