Somebody I showed the poem to told me that it reminded him of himself and how he felt as he lay in bed at night when his parents were having a row.
The reader can take it as it suits.
The “scuttling feet” are, of course, the men arriving, usually running, at the fire station.
THE BOX
The Devil lived
on a high wall
outside my bedroom window
in a slatted box
made by
the town's coffin maker.
Waking at night
to his shrieks,
straightened arms and legs
clamped in fear;
locked in dreadful shackles;
down-pressed by the fiend-weight -
a vampire sucking reality
through barbed incisors
deep-sunk in reason.
Waiting, waiting, waiting
for the release of silence,
the scuttling feet,
receding engine.
Willed for tears
frozen in fear.
Unbreathing, unmoving, unliving.
The shriek fading at last.
Unbelieving dreadful anticipation.
Quick breaths
relieving thumping heartbeats
starved for air
and audible now.
Thud, thud, thud,
double-thud.
The pile-driver of dismay
starting a new rhythm.
New throaty growls.
Rising, strident,
Shrieking again.
The insatiable demon
fed on little boys' fears
still hungry.
Tight-shut eyes
seeing dark red only -
crimson washed in black -
infernal shades
of screaming frenzy
from the box.
Or from my head?
A little boy
in a bed
with bedlam all around.
TO DESPAIR
(My Unwelcome Companion)
I am
perched perilously
on your cliff face
while wild screaming breakers crash
on black limpet encrusted rocks
a long way down;
a very long way down.
Sea-salt
from shattered high-flung foam
stings my taut clinched lips
and I want to let go
to free-fall into the oblivion
of the dark raging seas
to lie at last
on it's craggy weed-tangled bosom
where I can rest forever,
washed for all times
by the tides ebb and flow,
but I can't.
I can't, I can't,
I can't let go.
I am tied to this turbulent life forever.
My eternity of torment
can never be terminated.
FIRST REACTION
(On hearing a diagnosis)
He had never smiled before
Or stood up when I came in
And I saw reflected in his eyes
What he was going to tell me.
For some reason
The traffic on the Merrion Road
Had an urgent hum
And grew very loud
And my first thought was
'Sure, life goes on anyway'
And while I sat on his plush chrome chair
Talking about
Surgery and
Drugs and
Radiotherapy and
Actuarial assessment of life expectancy
I was thinking about
The people on the Merrion Road
Just going about their business
On just another day,
And I missed the god
I once believed in
Because now, without him,
I had nothing to blame.
Later, driving home,
There was a man with a shovel
Clearing dykes in Kildare
And I saw him, reflected in my mirror,
Staring enviously at my BMW
Little realising
How much better off he was,
And I missed the god
I had tried to believe in
Because, without him,
I still had nothing to be angry with.
FRIENDS
(For Paddy)
Sitting on a wall
in the sun
near Tyrellspass
sharing the secrets
of childhood
or
sheltering under a tree,
raindrops, like dancing pennies
on the canal,
talking
about the future.
THE ISLANDER
(i.m. Donie The Island)
Was it the lonely cry of a curlew
Or the anguished caoin of Amergin
For his lost love
Raised the rooks
To mass and soar in raucous flight
On the day you left?
Was the singing of a blackbird
In a blackthorn hedge
The song of Scéine in sweet response?
Or were they the island sounds
Of your world
Making your requiem
When you set out for your
Final journey home?
Did the evening sun
Warm your back
When you set your face to the island,
Braced yourself,
And dipped your oars
With the ease and skill
Of a life-long boatman,
Leaving neither splash nor ripple
As they slid beneath the smooth waters
Of the fiord?
Did a stray sunbeam glinting
On a copper-clad steeple,
Peeping out
Between Reen Point and Dinish,
Give you your bearings
And a sense of place
As you made way
To the mystical sea
And the mystery beyond
For those whose time is spent?
Was there a blue brooding haze
Swirling out through Ballaghbeama
In the mountains on your left?
On the right did the yellow gorse
Of Inchaquin
Give a golden glow
To the early summer sky?
Did your heart lurch in your breast
When you heard the lark’s even’ song
Above the hills and fields
Of your beloved Killaha?
Did you hear the bell toll
From Dawros Church
To set you on your way?
With your boatman’s eye,
Did you keep your stern
Full on the island
That gave you and yours
Your distinguishing name.
From your wake
Did wavelets open out
In V formation
To caress the shore
And kiss for you the stones of Dinish, Your island,
The essential you?
Did it stand out
In the failing light
In summer silhouette?
Dinish. The Island.
A monument to you having been.
Your name.
Written for eternity
In the ebbing enchanting waters
Of Inbhear Scéine.
'Katie' is a very important poem for me because it marks a growth in maturity for me, a man in his early fifties at the time it was written. Katie is a real person and is the sister of a close friend at the time. I got to know her very well and to care very much for her as a person. She openly proclaimed her homosexuality and I, being very close to being homophobic at the time, was more than a little surprised. Through her I learned that homosexuality was not to be feared or mocked; that homosexuals were
real people of great sensitivity. Katie was, and I’m sure still is, though events in our lives took us in different directions, a very fine person of very great talent.
It was a wonderful opportunity to broaden my mind and through that change in myself I opened up to many more changes of attitude and opinion. As it happens it was most fortuitous that Katie became my friend as it prepared me for when, years later, somebody very close to me and much loved by me “came out”.
As you will see in the poem, Katie is originally from North Mayo.
KATIE
You fascinate me Katie.
You, who on falcon's wings
flew above the world
into which you were born.
You looked out beyond
the Ox Mountains and
the semi-circular Moy.
You flew in ever widening circles
until
hovering between the sun and
towering Nephin
you found freedom from that world
where parochial oracles may call you
out of balance with
their own narrow normality.
The world fascinates you Katie.
Your eyes light up
and sparkle with enthusiasm
for life,
yet proclaim a gentle femininity,
pierced with passion
for your Sapphic lover.
You recite with tender feeling
the word pictures of your poems.
To look through
the light in your eyes
is to see beyond the moon and
to glimpse the volcanic furnace
of your mind;
the kiln of your ideas.
But most of all, Katie,
your guileless openness
haunts my dreams.
MAROONED
(For Mairéad)
A lifetime
Marooned on an island
Formed by the silt
From my weeping soul.
Surrounded
By shark infested people.
Sometimes swimming
Against the tide
Of propriety;
Across conventional currents
Trying to get off
Getting nowhere.
Flirted
With romance -
The tide
Rising again.
Shelter
Found in the harbour
Of your friendship.
Refuge at last.
Finding in you
A haven and
The real meaning
Of love.
The next two poems were written in memory of a beautiful young girl who I knew very briefly in the mid nineties. She was a troubled soul but with a lovely adventurous spirit. She was invited to a wedding but through indisposition was unable to go so she went to a particularly favourite place she liked to go to in the countryside and got ill there and died, all alone. I was left with a terrible feeling of guilt as she had asked me to accompany her to the wedding but I, in my old-fashioned foolishness, declined. I felt it wouldn’t have been proper for this lovely young girl to be seen with an “auld fella” like me. I have regretted that decision ever since.
MAY DAY
(i.m. N. McD.)
The swallows returned to the canal
on the day I last saw you.
They soared upwards in tight turns,
spread-winged and spread-tailed,
reaching for the sun,
serving notice of summer. But you never saw the summer
did you?
Hidden in your special place,
alone,
you closed your eyes
to dream the long dream
of love fulfilled.
For you knew the pain
of unrequited love.
Your passion was for life
and life just passed you by.
Or so it seemed
to your callow soul. They buried you
on the first day of summer.
Oh! you had cried for help
and your cries were heard
but left unheeded by the innocent
and by the guilty.
I heard them too
and saw and understood the pain
but stepped aside. They buried you today,
the first day of summer,
leaving but a memory
of days you never had,
of laughing eyes
and guilt that never
dies.
NICE
(i.m. N Mc D.)
For God's sake!
Don't say she was nice.
It's a no word.
N N N N - the sound of negativity.
Followed by ice.
Cold and hard.
A thin sound of i and e. Sibilant. The natural sound
of a snake.
Say she was passionate.
Passionate for life -
about life -
the life that passed her by
and left her dead
alone
on a bare hillside.
Say she was sensitive.
Sensitive to life,
to the needs
of all she met.
So sensitive she had to die,
alone,
on a bare hillside.
Say she was beautiful.
Beautiful in form. Yes.
Beautiful in spirit, Oh yes!
Shared with all she met,
shared with the wild landscape
her last companion,
alone
on a bare hillside.
SHEILA
It snowed all night
And all the next day.
Traffic was hushed to a whisper
Building up black slush on the roadside.
Footprints in the feathery white
Betrayed the journeys of walkers
As I picked my path
To her front door.
Ninety, and looking all of seventy,
Wrapped in a tartan rug,
Gas fire hissing, warm and snug.
Black and white photos of Tom
On every surface; a young Tom
Just as she remembered him,
Though he was dead for twenty years.
She told me how much she still missed him
“Oh! I’m fine,” she said, “I have stuff in”.
Then she talked of old snows
And old times
And memory that grows
Dim with the passing of years.
“I’m ninety,” she declared, “But I don’t feel it.
I want to get up and dance
But the knees just won’t let me.”
THERE IS NO DEATH
(i.m. Tom Mulqueen)
The tide is gone out.
Rivers run in rills in wet sands.
Dunes change shape in a winter wind.
A tree, above high-water mark,
Trying to touch the low, scudding clouds,
Stretches its blue-black branches
Drawing attention to themselves
And the tree which they are
As if boasting it was once a seedling
In a skilled gardener’s hands.
Hands that are still now;
Frozen in permanent clasp
On well-worn wooden rosary beads
Like the myriad seeds he has sown
Over many years.
It seems like they could,
With his touch,
And a warm sun-beam
Reflected from his face,
Be coaxed into new growth.
Out on the head-land
Waves surge, break and shatter
On rocks ringed with white foam,
Reducing them, year on year,
To polished pebbles, to be washed ashore
To chatter in the back-wash,
Nudging one another to nothingness
Rubbing shoulders with stone.
For such is the cycle of life.
There is no death. It is
But the home-curve in life’s circle.
In eons to come what great power
Will boil the pebbles to fluidity
To rise up again in vast columns,
Afire at first and then cooling,
Into new shape as new mountains,
Bigger and even greater?
For the grave is but the nadir
To the rising arc of new life.
PART VI
LOVE AND ROMANCE
DIGGING WILD GARLIC
In a shaded nook
Of matted grasses
Whorled weeds and ferns,
Where stone walls of random rubble
Met and wed,
A minaret seed-head
Swayed in the breeze
On a long, white, stalk.
Touching, tracing, parting
Maidenhair, buttercups and harebells interwoven;
Following stem to root;
Probing fingers; parting soil
- Unyielding first
Then soft and moist and succulent -
Sinking deeper
In sand-soil and earth fluids;
Following the Judas shaft
To touch and caress
The smooth orb of its fount.
When you decide to help me
Our fingers touch
Deep in the carnal warmth
Of its earth womb;
Severing resistance;
Parting root tendrils
With swift finger strokes;
Hurrying now in hungry anticipation;
We touch again
And draw to the surface
With low yielding moans
The fruit of our quest
And hold it - hold it ‘till
It floods senses - and memories -
With shuddering sensual sensation.
EASTER TIDINGS
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