Self-Portrait 3 -- a digital artwork (2018) by Eoin Dunford
1847
The weeds surrounding
The child's cry are the only
Crops to grow outside.
1849
After miles of waves
He says his due to one world,
The sole world inside.
1916, PICARDY
Who can say if blue
These sockets held? Was it red,
For Albion bled?
A HEALTHY FOUR HOURS
A healthy four hours
Are spent in bed
Trying to get to sleep
And ruminating over a poem:
Sleep
The reward
And the poem
The produce
A LAMENT THAT WILL CLEANSE ME OF EARTH
I want to sleep the sleep of apples,
Far from the uproar of centuries.
I want to sleep the sleep of that child
Who every night cut out his heart
So that when he woke
It would once again be full.
I want to sleep just a moment,
A moment, a minute, a century.
But I will announce to the world that I have not died!
There will be a whinnying stable gilded on my lips,
I will be the wind, the stars and the ocean's little friend,
I will be the enormous patrimony of my sighs.
I want to sleep the sleep of apples,
And learn a lament that will cleanse me of earth.
I want to sleep the sleep of that child
Who every night cut out his heart
So that when he woke
It would once again be full.
A PIOUS TEXT
Four doves, the number of orthodoxy, take me up to the shadow-thronged loft
Of my imagination and my life disease and my teeming intellect.
These four doves fly off unnaturally and then later return.
I find in my mind's eye gigantic fables of desecration:
Unicorns and cyclops, while the resplendent doves lustre the quicksilver of the sea.
There is one Eye and one Potency quivering throughout the many-shadowed storeys.
A POEM CALLED MOE
My brother is a famous actor
And he's in Bulgaria at the moment filming his new film.
I'm looking at a picture of him
As I write this poem
(I'm on a hotel break with Mum and Dad
In Co. Kerry at the moment)
And it's lovely to be connected
With all of my family.
A POET'S LIFE
I wander metaphysically in a convulsive space
Between the gates of hell and the new dispensation;
O unimaginable promises of these unreal liberties:
I awake with a start from my carnal sleep.
Some are slaves of love as others are slaves of freedom.
My sleep, my life, blind to the point where anger rends the flesh,
Escapes me, pursues me. O terrorising voices of the unreal liberties!
I salute you, eternal voyage of discovery and surprises.
A POET'S LIFE
In the shelter
Waiting
Two fellow sufferers
Smoking
Separately
Light up
After me.
Coincidence.
What coincidence.
Shocking coincidence.
Eternal voyage
Of discovery and surprises.
A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A FAILURE
I will walk over
And burn my papers
At the fire
By the door of the pub.
I will walk over
And burn my papers
At the fire
With the flagstone hearth.
I will walk over
And burn my papers
Beneath the penny farthing
With hotly disagreeing wheels.
I will walk over
And burn my papers,
I will burn them
In front of my people.
I will walk over
And burn my papers
And at once
I will return to my drink.
They will burn and be gone
In a second,
But perhaps one of my people
Might turn and see them flash.
I will walk over
In front of my people,
And perhaps one of my people
Will turn and see me pass.
A WATER PRAYER
You are not in your burnt grave
Beneath dead leaves and fresh clay:
You are a water flower
Blooming and reblooming.
ABSENCE
for Paul Éluard (1895-1952)
The sky caresses me like her hands
The leaves affect me like her fingers
The river flows through me like her voice
The sun melts me like her gaze
The spires all pierce me like her beauty
The castle awes me like her presence
The windows haunt me like her absence
The sun melts me like her gaze
Is this Babylon or Zion
AFRAID
She's afraid
Before she moves back to the old house
And we can even dance around the fountain
And that's all I want (please).
AIR
My father
Muttering
In the room
Like rain
My thoughts
Like smoke
In the English
Air
ALCOHOLIC
He buys cans and stands
At the river's edge, drinking
A happy current.
One by one he drops
The finished cans to the flood,
Dead shells they float by.
From the wat'ry rage
He flees to a quiet place,
To watch clouds on high.
He soon falls asleep,
Dreaming other lives and loves:
A petit mort sighs.
He wakes and sick spews
A lake onto the pavement,
Shuffles off in shame.
He returns once more
To the darkly flooded flow,
Angry spits right in.
A silent tear peels
Down his badly shaven cheek,
He knows it is deep.
He bows his head broke
And hears the fuming stream, and
Threats in his body.
God lets rain fall fast,
The river drinks it madly,
Melts it, takes it in.
ALL THE SPLENDOUR OF TIME CANNOT PREVENT THE TICKING OF YOUR BEAUTY
Your beauty
Is a time bomb
Waiting to explode
In my face
Aggressively
And for what?
Much rather
I would steal it
But then you would have to kneel
Before me
In your splendour.
And so it ticks.
ALL THINGS MUST CHANGE
Let me take a leaf from another book
(I love the video to "Caribbean
Blue" by
Enya).
I don't know if this poem is any good
But the Muse is alive and active
Where I live and
In global days like these.
AMID THE SERIOUS CONFUSION
Bang! Bang! Bang! With a hammer and a mango.
The splat will pierce the scented heavens.
There is one God, one hammer and one mango.
God moves the hammer in the direction of the mango
And the result is an existential nihilistic love explosion.
I could go on forever about the hammer and the mango but I don't mean to philosophise...
ANNIE
Annie was a nice lady
And she was my aunt
(My mum's aunt really but I was close to her)
And she would hold me
In death's dark chapel
In a wise you need to know: she would take the holy beads
And gently and carefully whisper
And bid me to shadow.
AOIFE (WHERE DID I GO WRONG)
If I could turn back the hands of time
Because I really messed up on this occasion.
God please grant me a way to find my way
Out (so we can still be united) of this chaos.
Aoife, I feel like writing this poem about you
And, also, please come to me in a dream.
APARTMENT
Is there a landing
On the stairs
Between love
And devotion?
APOTHEOSIS
I will ascend to the top
Of the stone-and-steel tower
On the wings of a sacred bird:
I will build me a cave there
And have my food and drink
Brought up on a rope.
Near God on this mountaintop
I will stay for three years
With no light but a candle:
With a stone for a pillow
I shall compose poetry in the dark
Like the bards of long ago
And, whenever I light the candle, write it all down.
I will, after my apotheosis, emerge from the tower
Illuminated by my inspired texts
And inspire the world with their illumination.
ARTIST
I would put my head down
as my parents talked,
"Put up your head,"
my father would say.
"I am studying the patterns on the floor," I would say.
"Put up your head," he would say.
AS YELLOW AS IT EVER WAS
I had a dream about turning everything yellow
But I cannot say what.
I just wanted to paint
All the boulevards yellow.
Did someone say avenues?
Avenues and ye olden boulevards of broken dreams.
Why yellow? Blue is my favourite colour. Yellow is the inversion
Of blue and to be honest and frank I was asleep.
BABE
Your exploding smile
And scrunched-up face
Set off the beauty in you
And affection in me
BEAUTIFUL AND THE SAME
Translation from Paul Éluard
A face at journey's end
A bower among the day's dead leaves
A cluster of naked rain
Every sun now hid
Every source's source in the pit of unknowing
Every mirror of mirrors broken
A face above the weighing scales of silence
A pebble strewn in a streamlet
For the revolt of the day's last rays
A face similar to all forgotten faces.
BEAUTIFUL HARDNESS
Life is so precious
But so cruel.
Its various facets coalesce
Into a beautiful hardness.
BECAUSE I SPENT TOO LONG IN THE CITY
1
O loving but fearsome Lord God,
I may not have kept faith and fast,
But I gave alms to the poor.
And yet I went rejected from your door.
2
O ineffable but ever-loving Lord God,
You extracted my spirit from the mire
Of my forsaken experience,
Deporting forever the dark night of the soul.
BEFORE SLEEP
for Khalil Gibran (1883-1931)
I close my eyes out of tiredness and lack of a will to think. A million images emerge out of the shadows, cast themselves on my eyelids.
Re-forming they all coalesce into one big image of good, or evil, or both.
Whence come these but from the same cloudy fountain as come dreams, the shadowy depths of the unconscious.
BEHOLD THE LIGHT AS IT TUCKS INTO DARKNESS
Behold the light as it tucks into darkness
Because even his shoelaces of sulphur can shine.
Peering through a death mask is the blue aureate light,
A death mask fashioned of letters and of ivory --
An unrivalled death mask of impossible beauty!
I long for your lips.
The Bedouin fires burn by night;
The Tuareg camels, they are tethered.
BEYOND NORMALITY
Love was in the beginning
Gushing from the fountains of nothingness.
(This love is a strange love.)
I think I'm going to fall again and
Even when you held my hand
It didn't mean a thing.
Why? Because
Gushing from the fountains of abandon
Love had no end until the mankind making
And the blessed instigation.
BIG HAIKU
The white flag aloft
Belies the misadventure
Of bloody aeons.
BIG SKY
Big sky above me --
Power lines overhead.
I hope they don't come toppling down
On this indigo child.
Bang! Boom! Splat!
I don't want to end up
Like Bonnie and Clyde
Wherever the heck that one came from!
BORN IN THE FIERY CRUCIBLE
Born in the fiery
Crucible
I outlive
What I was.
BOTTOMLESS PULL
Each and every step down here
Bears us a pace closer to heaven. And
Each and every footstep is protected
Upon a floating bridge (of glass).
BREAKOUT
My disease
Of not having known quite what to say
When talk emerges bursting like a goddess
Or a ripened fruit
Before insignificant wood...
Smother me
Under ungovernable skies
Whose rain is so hard to predict
Like the coming precisely at noon
Of some firefox across the snow,
Cutting through it like a knife,
Eating its mist like a sunlight,
Its feet burning into its body,
Enmeshed with it like a confluence
Of orange fish in a bowl
That swirls round and round
Like a jogger on a racetrack
Chasing his shadow,
Striving after what's already here,
Here in his arms
In each other's arms we lay there;
Which of us was the other?
Afterwards I stand like some gallant chieftain
Being clothed in the rays of the sun
BREEZIN'
Blonde hair
Pink top
Me and my sweetie
Breezing down the street
BROKEN LINE
1
Money
Condones necessity
Rings the shillings
We've spent on essentials
2
Time
Burrows through the senses
Washing
But gouging
3
Full of hwyl
I turned to face her
But she
Had left
4
The power of words
To heal and hurt
Surpassed only
By a visitor at the window
BROKEN LOVE SONG
I had sat there watching
Greater stories (than ours)
Flicker on the enrapturing screen;
A screen it turned out was prophetic.
Scanning the headlines I never spied
The abuse which would soon rain
Down upon my feeble life. The prophet-
ic screen, it turns out, is the soothsayer
Of our (fallen) times. You and me will be together
Again, my love, in the later dispensation.
CALLED OUT
Called out
From the tumult of the cities
To be the zenith
Of civilisation.
CARCASSONNE
Riding through
Autumn flowers
The fortified city
Looming musically
Across the fruitful
Veld
Closing now
With every hoof-fall
Of the bright mare
The fortified city
No secret
Hideout
Impermeable
To bow and arrow.
CARRY YOU HOME
And I quoth because I won't be carrying anyone anywhere
But they can carry me home when the time is apt
Through riven glens
To the cottage of my sweetheart
Which is in reality a gilded palace
And there she sits in the midst of gilded hair
And with greenish eyes that shine forth splendrously
And dare to bequeath their light to a hundred million suns.
CASCADE
Each day brings me closer
To the bridge
And the raging flood below
Awaiting not knowing
CASTING
Projecting the line
In these tedious spaces
Between the day
And the morrow.
CHANCE MEETING
The voice.
You are not in your burnt grave
Beneath dead leaves and fresh clay:
You are a water flower
Blooming and reblooming.
The Metaphysical Wanderer.
Is it you who were there? Your breast so blazing
With light I forgot myself followed by you.
The sweetheart.
And my robe with its ribbons --
How often did it scrape thee?
The Metaphysical Wanderer.
In your mellifluous voice I can hear, wrapped like a godsend,
The gleeful laughter of the young ones.
The sweetheart.
The little ones afloat in my eyes
Are resplendent like glittering emeralds.
The Metaphysical Wanderer.
Is it you who were there? Where do you drag
Your ceaseless treasures, O precious?
The sweetheart.
Beyond the stars -- why are you laughing?
Then escaping the talons of the golden touch.
The Metaphysical Wanderer.
There is, in my breast, a snake that never sleeps
But comes with madness from out the wardrobe.
The sweetheart.
The moments dripped down and fastened
Their claws around my plentiful sighs.
The Metaphysical Wanderer.
Joined by a common gust
We face each other, but were strangers!
The sweetheart.
The branches are burgeoning; get thee hence!
Neither of us floated to the surface.
The voice.
You are not in your burnt grave
Beneath dead leaves and fresh clay:
You are a water flower
Blooming and reblooming.
CHILDHOOD VISION
I relax in my bubble bath
Next to my windowpane
And the howls of the savage ones from the exterior darkness
Daren't approach me in my childish safe haven.
CHRISTMAS 2024
I had another childhood vision.
It was the will of God to gift me a box ;) of advanced cubism.
I love playing with my building blox.
I am looking forward now I am decrepit and wizened to the New Year and to the years of our lives.
CHRONIC DISORDER
there's an inchoate dormant stagnant illness in my soul
and sometimes it goes OTT and spills over the parapet
like a grand ocean liner colliding with the wreck of an iceberg -- look:
the convergence of the twain; a disorder with a perfectly normal man
CILL CHAIS
Translated from the Irish
What shall we make without wood?
The last of the woods is laid low;
Cill Chais nor its household is mentioned
and its bell shall not resound again.
That place where lived the good lady
who found rank and blessing beyond women,
earls gathered from afar there
and the Holy Mass was sounded.
I hear neither duck nor geese there;
or the eagle crying from the bay,
or even the bees at work,
who would bring honey and wax to the mass.
The sweet sharp music of the birds is not there
as the sight of day goes ebbing,
nor the wee cuckoo amongst the branches there,
that did put the world to sleep.
There is a mist swooping on branch there
that the day nor the night can dispel;
there is a stain falling from the sky there
and all waters are receding away.
There is not hazel, nor holly, nor berry,
but stones and broken stone things,
the desolate field without bough is there
and the game has gone to the darkness.
Now a head on all of our misery:
the prince of the Gaels has gone,
east with the maiden of mildness
that saw honour in France and Spain.
Now her society is wailing her,
who'd give money golden and silver...
she would not dispossess the people,
but be friend to the truest wretch.
I beseech Jesus and Mary
that she may return to us safe and sound,
that there may be dance aplenty going around,
violin's music and fires of bone:
that this town this town of our fathers
come arising fresh from the havoc,
and till the day of doom, or till the day of deluge
we may see it no more set low.
CITY OF LIGHTS
I arrived in the city of lights
And I was off my [head].
Sorry about the French and sometimes I find myself
Still wishing for Paris. Oh, l'amour!
I was listening to "Parisienne walkways" earlier
By Gary Moore. I will write whatever comes into my head
Without being inane or offending anybody --
And such, gentle friend, is the way of the Muse.
COAL FROM OFF THE ALTAR
Your short black hair
Blowing free in the breeze
So wild and yet so perfect
Into your piercing eyes
Blue as the clearest sea
So cold and yet so knowing
CORSELESS SPHERE
corseless sphere
shivers
in the aeons
with arteries
swerving left and right
all night
in the chaos
of the ethereal
absence...
corseless sphere
CRICKET PITCH
There is a treelined cricket pitch in Shropshire
That I used to walk around,
And it reminded, and reminds, me of my beloved Middle Ages
(All that was missing was the babbling brook) --
And I used to walk around that cricket pitch,
Clockwise, anticlockwise, incantatory,
But I would never ever arrive
In the Middle Ages.
CRUEL WORLD
O cruel world,
When will you send me relief?
I see all in silhouette.
When will you send me relief?
She is but a shadow
Emerging through space
From a million suns
To the satellite where I live.
O cruel world,
When will the comet hit?
Or will your bottomless pull
Steal her from my face?
At times I see her tail
In the empty air
But then she turns away
And black is reborn.
O cruel world,
When will you cease to exist?
Will ever her shadow
Engulf all my dark side,
And from our brilliant collision
Explode a new universe?
CRYSTAL
1
Light and the flowing crystal;
Never gin in cut glass had such clarity:
Behold! the splendour and wreckage in that clarity,
Demons moving in crystal.
2
Our Lady of the Holy Protection is enveloped in crystal,
The great numinous cloud is all around Her,
She has entered the protection of crystal
And she bestows the clarity of same protection.
DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL
From the chasm
Of the dark night of the soul
Comes the flower
Of fortitude.
DE LA VRAIE SPIRITUALITÉ
It must be like being shut in a cellar
When one's lamp suddenly
Breaks,
The blackness
Of seeing all there is to see,
Being nowhere
And anywhere
At once.
The cloud of unknowing
Must descend in an instant,
Leaving one locked in dark silence
As if caught up in a whirlwind,
Not wanting to be let down,
Soaring free above the world.
DEPRESSIVE TENDENCIES
The good God is helping me with my depression
Which was all self-inflicted to begin with
As I sit quietly in the Loire
Surrounded by leafy trees and a river that gently flows.
DESERTS ENCROACH UPON OASES
The Bedouin fires burn by night, the Tuareg camels are tethered.
The future it is ours for luminaries have gathered at a desert outpost.
Deserts encroach upon oases but the truth cannot be hid and in any case
The Bedouin fires burn each night, and the Tuareg camels they are tethered.
DO YOU REMEMBER THAT NIGHT
Translated from the Irish
Do you remember that night
you were stood at the window,
without a hat nor a glove
to house you, nor a jacket?
Stretched I my hand to you
and you caught of it a clasp,
and I stayed in your company
till the skylark spake.
Do you remember that night
you and I were
beneath the rowan tree
and the night freezing over?
Your head on my breasts
and your bright pipe playing? --
'tis a tittle I thought that night
that our love would be parted.
O love of my heart within,
come some night close
when my people will sleep
and we'll talk together;
my hands will surround you
as I tell to you my story --
and it's your soft mild sweet talk
that'll steal the sight of Heaven from me.
The fire is without stoking
and the light needs quenching;
the key is beneath the door
and pull it softly,
the mother is asleep
and I am awake,
my fortune's in my hand
and I ready to walk with you.
DON'T LOOK BACK IN ANGER
Three short years ago
On the threshold of the cataclysm
To the day indeed
I wrote the words,
"I see my life
Fleeing...
With always no face,
Always escaping,
Escaping."
Three years weakened
And three years wiser
I will pen these words:
I see my life arriving,
With the face
Of a saint,
Always unfolding.
DOVE SOARING
I can see a
Dove soaring
Through winter's
Stratosphere and
Dying before night
Beckons to the
Extraordinary
Heavens.
DRIFTWOOD
Bobbed up by the surf,
Then pushed under once more.
Carried forward by the swash,
And moved sideways by the drift.
But caught up by the backwash,
And forced back to its starting position.
A blemish on the murky surface,
Unknowingly detracting from the calm facade;
Cast about by the turbulent maelstrom
Which lies beneath an inoffensive illusion.
Like a miniature caravel missing her crew
It careers about upon the waters,
On an uncertain voyage lacking compass and map
And crying out in vain to an indifferent tide;
It knows not its very destination, nor even course,
Like a fickle child that can't make up its mind.
In full control of this passing vagrant
The belligerent sea appears so conceited,
Flippantly steering its unwelcome guest
Through intermittent highs and uncertain lows
And watery interruptions by uncaring waves
(Who at least have some place to head for);
But the sea has not pity nor mercy nor charity
For the maritime menace, the pariah, the parasite,
Which clings desperately onto nothing but water
And searches complacently for nothing but shelter --
A fugitive forever, its existence in jeopardy
Whilst knowing full well it shall never be gratified;
For there shall be no mitigation
Of the castaway's sentence
Of relentless mistreatment by tide, wind and rain --
There shall be no respite, in these or any waters.
All resistance is futile, any attempt at it pointless,
And a meaningless outcast does not even dream
Of trying to subvert the entire order of nature;
For the ocean will be forever
Ten billion times greater, ten billion times stronger
And infinitely more powerful than it.
And so it shall rot, and fade into history,
The remnants devoured by a victorious tide,
But in its dying moments how it shall wish
With all it was before, is now and never shall be
That it could in some way have been made to exist
As something else, anything else --
Anything other than that which it is,
A damned, worthless piece of wretched driftwood.
DROWNING
Your soul did not sink to the deepest depths of the dark lake
But sailed soaring to the highest heavens;
Nor is it trapped by the ringing rocks,
But flies free in the azure skies.
DRUNKEN IN THE DARKNESS
Drunken
In the darkness
He wrote,
Alone,
Alone,
Alone
Against the world
And its games,
Alone
Against ignorance and fear and derision and ridicule
And laughter and gossip.
His pen travelled faster than sound.
DUST
The dust blows across the dream fields
Turning all to even more dust:
The dusty hurricane ravages
And leaves nothing behind it but dust.
How long must I wait? Here at the eye
Of the storm... the hurricane bloweth where it listeth...
I like to put words into people's heads.
Positive words. In the fashion of poetry.
ECHO
for L.
echoes
echoes
behind me
before me
around me
on and in me
around me
propped
propped
o'er the parapet
on a ledge of stone
my legs adrift
plodding
we live in total darkness
we are wolves of the night
and intelligence reveals itself
like a lamp in a cave
crying
crying
from the prison
from the open prison
the world has become
society
society
below me
a good deal
below me
recuperation
cigarettes and magazines
just like that
ECHO II
echoes
echoes
behind me
on and in me
around me
sink
feet spread
head full of memories
hands
in the sink
God
we walk in final darkness
we are lambs of the night
and God unveils Himself
like a flower afore the dawn
evenings
the evenings without you
are so leaden
they always start
dragging too soon
stumbling
stumbling
through the prison
through the open prison
the world has become
song
it's only a song
she's only a woman, you know
EMPTY GLENS
Looking out
On all that's been --
There's a glen down the road from where I grew up --
I used to wade through the shallow waters of this glen as a boy
Crawling through briars and the dense and
Soul-entrapping undergrowth.
It was the sin of smoking that got me here -- into this awful mess --
And now I stand (yearning for before) in an empty metaphysical glen (!).
However, when I didn't expect it, the Light came to save me
And I burst through the barrier at the edge of the glen
To be free at once, forever, and at last...
I now sit comfortably relaxing at a friend's house.
ESPERULO
Cxiam tiel estos,
mi estos cxiam sola
kun vortoj,
pensoj,
kun nenio krom la ideo
por difini min,
sen tusxo de-ekstere
por konsoli min,
sed kun brilaj radioj
de-interne.
EUGENE
In the nocturnal trans-
figuration of the senses
Came your spirit to mine
In brotherly embrace:
Salt water welled in my eyes,
For ours is the narrow path,
The way of honour,
Parallel to the moon.
FAITHFUL DUN COW
Translated from the Irish
My faithful dun cow and finest of the herd,
where goest thou at night and where by the day?
"I do be in the woods and my boys ranged about me,
and that has left me at the shedding of tears.
"Nor land, nor abode, nor wine nor music do I have,
no prince is there to guard me, druid nor youth;
but always drinking water every hour of the day
I be while the enemy has whiskey and wine at his table."
If I had the right to fight or a sight of the crown,
Saxons I'd wallop like I wallop an old shoe;
through boglands, through forests and through thorns in the havoc --
and that's how I'd cherish my noble dun cow!
FATAL HOLLOW
I wandered down
the poison glen
I stumbled up
the broken stair
I fell bleeding
in the floral hollow
I ran breathing
up the hollow hill
FATAL KISS
I loved thee
Thou betrayed me
I loved you too much
And now you have no other lover
FATHER PADDY
Father family hearing my mother's confession
In the L-shaped house
The lights beaming on their holy heads
Across the darkened yard
FINISHING TOUCHES
You wanted to put the final touches
To the square foot of wet cement
There and then,
Since the few hours had already passed:
You were going to come back later,
On your own, I suppose you thought,
But you trowelled it on the spot
And I watched you
Caress, lovingly,
Like an author,
Even
The rough cement.
You looked up,
That satisfaction in your eye, and said,
"That'll do us,
Save us comin' back again."
How those words will
Haunt me
When our time
Together is over,
When I
Am come back
And you are
All gone.
FLIGHT SIMULATOR
I threw two paper aeroplanes
From the fourth floor up,
One going slightly further than the other:
With wings they glided,
My eyes soaring, following
Their every curve;
And like angels
They crashed to earth.
FLOATING BRIDGES
O awesome mass of people
invisible reborn
making their way into the garden
for their eternal reward!
Every step we take on earth
brings us closer to the new world.
Every foot goes supported
upon a floating bridge.
There is not a single
straight road in this world --
it is a gigantic labyrinth
of intersecting thoroughfares.
But steadily our feet
keep walking and creating --
like tremendous machines --
these paths in embryo.
O garden of resplendent
theories! Garden
of all I am not, all
I could and should have been!
FOOTSTEPS
I follow your footsteps along the strand
Stepping over them so as not to disturb.
The yearning tide laps ever closer
And I choose my places in the soft sand.
I look up and you have disappeared from sight.
The tide has encroached on what was once your own,
Smothering the prints at the edges,
Filling them with the reflection of memory.
Soon your traces will be fully submerged
And all I'll have of you in this world
Will exist beneath the unfathomable surface,
That thinnest veil between this place and the next.
FOR A.
All the ways of Jesus converge
A stór in our meeting,
And the voices of the damned
Resound in your departing.
Not holding you a ghrá
Is my Calvary,
But I must suffer thus
To gain the justness of the world.
FOR MY MOTHER
I think of you now
As we're miles apart,
You who came first
And thirty years later,
Brought me into this place.
Sitting at the table,
Or combing your hair --
All things are alike to you,
All colours the same;
Never a word of a gale
Has blown from your breath.
I see you reading the Word,
As your Father knew He would find you,
When He sent you from His bosom
Into this heart of confusion.
I see you combing your way
From all confusing places,
His light above your head,
His smile upon your heart.
FOR MY PLATONIC FEMALE FRIEND
Translation from Paul Éluard
In your eyes clarities overly brutal become dulled.
Your forehead smoothens, like exploding vellum,
Which the scarlet and gold of the photo besmirches,
Burns in redhead reflections your transparent gaze.
Your countenance has for me the charm of dead flowers,
And the impoverished breath of the lilies which you bear to me
Raises towards languishing the sun in decline.
Let us flee, O serenity of my murdered hours,
To the bottom of the unsuccessful sunset and fed up.
In the enveloping of the tenderised condensations,
In the evening on edge, I will speak to you very lowly.
That which was the beauty of unique mastery...
Ah! this cruel perfume, this bitter music,
Of weighed-down happinesses which will not return!
Thus we will disrupt for ages the peace of the ashes.
I will speak to you words of passion, and you,
The dream of elsewhere for ages and ages, and thy vague tender eyes,
You'll pursue your past of suffering and terror.
Your voice will possess the chant of lengthy litanies
Where the echo of infinite complaints shall weep,
And thy soul, the sorrowful flight of faith.
FOR TONY
Teeming from the splendid subconscious
And forever out through time,
Passing through where boundaries would be,
Moving with opalescence, in each and every direction,
In all colours, in all musics,
With grace and infinity
Touching the heart of eternity.
Resplendent, opalescent,
Incandescent it burns the very page
On which it lies prone to those
Who suffer with courage.
Behold! there is a poem to be born.
FOREVER IN YOUR HEART
Did I walk out here with you today
Or did I come alone?
It seems that I am forever sunk
In the recesses of your heart.
FRANCE 2019
Meandering through the Oriental streets of Chinon,
Drinking in the balm of the French sunshine;
The God-given uplift and the dreaded downturn:
Praying, awaiting these twists of fate, for constancy.
FRESH AIR
Translation from Paul Éluard
I looked before me
In the crowd I saw you
Amid the wheat I saw you
Under a tree I saw you
At the end of all my travels
In the despondencies of all my torments
At the turning points of all the smiles
Emerging from out of the water and the fire
Summer winter I saw you
In my house I saw you
In my arms I saw you
In my dreams I saw you
I will not leave you anymore.
FRIENDS
Friends,
Music,
Take you into a new space
And stifle the drawl
Of the continuous
Moments.
FROM NORTH TO SOUTH
From north to south
From the nadir to the zenith
Ignoring the slights of the east
Towards the glorious western ocean
Calling amid wheels among wheels
To the tower
FRUIT OF SIN, EYES OF LOVE
I have swallowed the fruit of sin --
I have vomited up its insides:
I have entered the eyes of love --
I have skidded down their watery stream!
FUNNY
It was a funny joke
About going nowhere fast
And now I wonder
If barbarism begins at home.
GIRL (FRAGMENT)
two ships at night
nay
in the same course
she travels
on the grief of the seas
at more or less speed
nothing but the blue
between us
[...]
moving
and on mine
starboard
the row of lamps
lit
towards the lights of home
GIVE ME SOME LOVE
O give me some love O sweetie
Because I've written many poems for you
And I'm typing this for you
Out of my cloigeann
Because I want you to like me
And the poem itself is a lot of nonsense
But I'm not -- I am serious
In my affections towards thee.
GLOBAL HAIKU
Does this traffic jam
All the way (by land, sea, air)
To Michigan lead?
GOING FOR A SPIN WITH MY FATHER
I have a lot going for me (and I don't mean this to be a pun)
And, thank God, I am surrounded by beautiful things.
My father is just about to bring me to McDonalds
And then we're going to the new house.
God is good, I have always known this,
And I thank him for everything,
And when I look at the beautiful things of this world
It reminds me of my father.
GREEN PASTURES
1
In the nurturing of the balance there becomes a spark of life twisting from the subconscious found aeons ago in the memory of love
2
In togetherness there is apathy welling from the nearness of the love machine broken apart after orgasm steals away like a nightingale brought to one's windows by random winds
3
There must be a way to meet the hailing of the blood down upon the unexpectant and the weary when forces issue from primeval jungles beneath the skin and somewhere in the head deserts encroach upon oases
4
Taken as a whole the current must be seen to be electric for it flows from a spring somewhere in the earth's womb whence all currents, all energies, all forces of life begin
5
Her hair falls like a dew landing slowly on the green grass of my senses in the morning having awoken unexpectant and without shaving -- she loves me
GREEN PASTURES II
1
Spiralling into control I attain balance by averages and find out that the subconscious lights up through the centuries in the stillness out of love.
2
The cat ran out of the room as soon as I opened the door crossing your scarf where it lay before jumping out through the window.
3
There must be a way to meet the hailing of the blood down upon the unexpectant and the weary when forces issue from primeval jungles beneath the skin and somewhere in the head deserts encroach upon oases.
4
Water must be believed to be the opposite of electricity for it wells from deep in the earth's womb whence all energies, all currents, all forces of life begin.
5
The rain falls like a woman (her hair) upon my expectant head and down upon my weary breast appearing like a lover on my senses.
HANGOVER HAIKU
The washing machine
Rumbles and hums while I lie
With a hangover.
HARRY LOVEDBRO
I love you, Harry,
As I listen to '74-'75
On Spotify:
There's another act called the 1975.
I love you Harry Lovedbro
And you have been
Blithely
Catapulted into beauty.
HER WHOM MY SOUL LOVETH
I sought
Her whom my soul loveth
In the street:
I sought her,
But I found her not.
I sought her
In my heart:
There I found her.
HEYDAY
I'm writing whatever comes into my head
About me and you... yeah, your good self...
And I have already had my heyday
But in another way my heyday is yet to come:
I was leading the heydays when we first met,
My sound friend, in Reginas in Medjugorje
In 2006... leading the heydays
Or so I believed because I was a little bit unwell
To be honest and although we (really) hit it off
I could have been better in myself and
Better behaved (orientated towards Our Lady).
I'm behaving now and I'm off all drugs and alcohol inc. cigarettes
And I'm going praying for both of us now
And for the stability of our friendship
And hey! hey!
This temporal life is only a commencement of our heyday. Amen.
HIGH SURREALISM
The violence of sea-winds,
Ships, old faces,
A permanent abode,
Weapons to defend one,
A secluded shore,
A shot: one only,
Cataclysms of gold well-gotten
And of silver ill-gotten;
The birds perfume the woods,
The rocks; the great nocturnal lakes.
I dwell in this thorn --
Let a bird abide in its wings.
HIROSHIMA
Fire jumps from the ground
Turning all to stone; the boy's
War cry falls unheard.
HOPE
hope
burning
smouldering
in an ashtray
falling
down
to the netherworld
of sinful voices
cutting its way out
ablaze in glory
HOUSEHOLD SIMILES
The pan clangs like a bell
And the ring lights like a cigarette
The match striking like a missile
And bursting into flame like a dawn
The spaghetti hisses like a snake
And the kettle sings like a bird
The phone stays silent like a statue
The washing machine dormant as a volcano
The empty ring crackles like dynamite
The blue flame rising like a prayer
The kettle cascades like a waterfall
And the sink swallows like a sea serpent
The bowl empties like an ocean
The washing-up liquid shoots like a weapon
My pen swoops like a predator
And I devour like the earth
HOW I FEEL ABOUT MY BRO AND HIS SENSE OF HUMOUR
When me and Maurice were young
We used to hang around together
And laugh and joke together
About such things as
A rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle.
I have always loved you
And I shall never stop.
When I said that I loved you
I meant that I'll love you forever.
I stepped aboard a pirate ship
And when I slipped
I slipped into a pirate ship.
HOW I FEEL ABOUT MY FRIEND
We've been through thick and thin together
And we've shared and been the victim of some pranks
Like when we together drove up a one-way street
And my friend (let's call him Chris) refused to reverse --
Another time the teacher on the course we were doing
Chided us for disrupting the class and getting a cup of coffee.
And even when I descended into my own personal torment
My friend Chris stayed there for me through it all!
HOW I FEEL ABOUT THE SWEETIE MOTHER
Things were at their gravest
In the throes of my utter apostasy
And then she came to me
The Sweetie Mother
And she wrapped me in her mantle
And her embrace.
She totally saved me from the demonic apostasy
And I broke down when I met her in person
Because I was totally overwrought
And because she is who she is
A goddess full of love
And overflowing with every sentiment that is good.
I met her in the restaurant once more
This morning
And things are getting better now
And she was more beautiful than ever
And kindness and all kinds of smiles
At the very next table.
She will come to me in Germany
As a teacher and a friend
And actually no voice that is
Compares to the voice of the Sweetie Mother.
When God created her
He made no mistake. I respect her and we love each other.
I hope you like my poem, Sweetie Mother,
And now I will come out to your beautiful statue to find out.
HOW SOON
How soon will it be ready
(I'm not really a handsome fella after all)
Because she's got me hand in glove
And I'm not really still ill.
HWYL
Full of hwyl
I turned to face her
But she had gathered
Up her cigarettes
And adorned herself in clothes
And fled through my door!
The power of words
And moments spent in stillness
And the immense sea of emblems
To hurt as well as heal...
Surpassed only by a person knocking
Out of the blue upon one's window!
I BROUGHT THEE TO A PLACE
I brought thee to a place,
A labyrinth, where your fine toothcomb
Could not find a solution. Into God's tender arms
I entrust the dysfunction of my times.
I CAN'T HEAR THE MUSIC
And I quoth for a prophet once spake the words that
The lights must never go out and as for the music it must always play
And I must take a break now
And now I'm back and
It is my holy delight that I am able to hear the music
And I'd like to thank God
For the big music
Which is in my ears.
I HANG
I hang from my lampshade
By my feet and my hands
Or perhaps by a string
Attached at the navel
Bringing bed and earth and bodies.
I LIVE TO FALL ASLEEP
I live to fall asleep
To see in the colours of my dreams
The lights before the storm
And your open smiling lips.
I MET A GIRL
Mental arena
On a plateau
Of the thinnest ice
In danger of descending
To the depths of the cur-thoughts.
Middle watch
I fell asleep
For the first hour of middle watch:
But now I am vigilant
And alert.
Midnight tobacco
Burning the midnight tobacco --
Analysing the day;
Prognosticating the morrow:
Smoking to pass the time.
Massed
In the rarefied atmosphere
Of the massed mountains
I hold on my heart
For fear it should fall.
I REALLY WANT YOU
I really want you
Baby
To love me thar n-ais
The same way I love thee
And there is now
Another
Poem in the offing and! behold!
My Eoin adoration maketh me clear.
I SEE THE LAND
I see the land where I grew up when I was a little boy
And that is a far country now (The Faraway Tree etc.)
And sometimes I yearn for that land
Just like Dylan Thomas did in "Fern Hill."
Patrick Kavanagh wrote that poetry is honesty.
So I am writing the same.
Lo! I have a lofty announcement to make.
I am alive with the zeal of getting through the night.
I SEE YOU
I see you
In the evening robe
Paying lip service
To foreign gods.
I see you
In your morning dress
Reaching
To caress me.
Her love
Knows no boundaries.
All the ways of Jesus
Converge
In the smile
Of your kindness.
I WANT THERE TO BE NO CHANNEL THROUGH THE SAND
I want there to be no channel through the sand.
I want there to be no valleys for the fresh sea breeze.
I want there to be no eyes for the night,
No flower of gold for my heart;
And I want the oxen to talk to the big leaves,
And the earthworm to flail with the shadow,
And I want the teeth in the skull to gleam,
And the resplendent colours washing in the silk.
I can perceive the struggle of wounded night
Wrestling in snake-coils with the sun of midday.
I am able to suffer a sunset green with venom
And the broken arches where Time languisheth.
But do not show me your immaculate nude
More nude and resplendent than a time-hallowed fresco.
Do not show me the coolness of your breasts!
Leave me here yearning for shadowy planets.
I WILL SEARCH
Let me walk with you along the riverside
Until we come to the flower bank and there
I will fall on my knees and dig in the earth
And cut stalks and caress colours and open
Petals, getting my hands dirty and needing
The river's dark power to clean them, and one
By one passing you colours, and fragrances,
As you stand above me on the bank, watching
The river and listening to the wind. But
All the time I am searching for one thing, as
You wait -- it is not the flower itself, but
Rather the force that drives the flower. And when
I find that force it will be my finest hour,
But until then I will search, despite its own
Elusiveness, my lack of understanding
And its mere rejection by the powerful.
And when you are absent and gone, I will search,
When I am cold and alone, I will search, when
From all around I am shouted down then
I will search, I will search for the force, feeling
Like a thief beaten into submission.
IF WEST I WENT
Translated from the Irish
If west I went I'd never come back,
on the highest hill I'd make my stand.
I'd earliest pick the fragrant branch,
and I'd first follow my own sweet love.
My heart is as black as a berry
or as black coal burned in a forge,
or as footstep on white halls,
and there's a great curse above my laughter.
My heart is broken bruised
like icy sheets above water,
like a heap of nuts after their breaking
or a young woman after her cheating.
My heart here is as black as berries,
and as black as sloes on a bright sunny day,
black as the bilberry most black on the mountain,
and 'tis often that a black head was on a tender white body.
It's time for me to leave this town,
sharp is the stone and cold is the slop there,
'tis there I found senseless blame
and a heavy word from the contrary part.
Damn I this love, 'tis a wretch that gave it
to the son of that mother who would never appreciate it,
my heart in my centre he left it black,
and I don't see him in the street or in any other place.
IF WEST I WENT (ALTERNATIVE TRANSLATION)
Translated from the Irish
If west I went I would never come back,
On the highest hill I would make my stand.
It's the sweet branch I would earliest pick,
And it's my own love I would soonest follow.
My heart is as black as a sloe
Or as black coal you would burn in a fire;
Or as black footstep in a white hallway,
There's a great black mood over and above my laughter.
My heart inside is bruised and broken
Like icy sheets at the top of water,
Like a heap of nuts would be after their breaking
Or a young maiden might find herself after her cheating.
My own true love is the colour of berries,
The colour of sloes on a bright summer's day,
He's the colour of the darkest hurtleberry on the mountain,
And it's often a dark head was on a tender white body.
It's time for me to leave this town!
The stone is sharp and the slop is cold there.
I received there futile blame
And a heavy word from the contrary part.
I denounce love! God help whosoever gave it
To the son of that woman who could never appreciate it,
My heart in my breast he left black -- blackened! --
And I never see him on the street or in any other place.
I'LL TAKE EVERYTHING
I'll be blunt now.
Now, I won't take everything.
But I'll take everything
That's on offer
And then I'll humbly proceed to say thanks
To the Lord God Almighty
For giving me the gift of my life
And all His other bountiful gifts.
I'M NOT A PRACTICAL PERSON
Meditating upon a poem
I put my coffee in the microwave
For four times longer than is meet:
It exploded as I thought.
The brilliance of my songs
Will explode throughout the container of this world,
And their scent
Will pierce the heavens.
IMMEASURABLE ACHE
inexpressible since
first unutterable
devastation from
the sky falling
wholesale
angel of death
calling
tuesday morning
skeleton framework
sinking titanics
death walling
inconsolable
pity
comes down
outrage
blasphemy
words
are not enough now
barbarise
bastardise
standardise
inferno of hades
forming
shards
silence
empty dream
no sonnet
screaming
under the weight of
pain engulfed
surrounded by
drowning sky
IN HEAVEN
The poems I deleted
Are vanished forever:
Until one of the greats
Or I in my immortal state
Point and polish them,
Or the Great I Am
Sees fit to accept them;
And then they will repose
(On plaques) on walls of crystal light
In the ethereal palace.
IN THE CLUTTERED CORNER
In the cluttered corner of a psychedelic attic in the midst of the neon wilderness
The poet, revolutionary, and latter-day prophet squats alone with pen and parchment.
World! behold his crucifixion. You think that same will be his ensnarement, his entanglement, and his enstranglement:
But -- I tell you! it will not, it will be his glorification and his apotheosis (!).
IN THE COLOURS OF MY DREAMS
In the colours of my dreams
I see your open smiling lips
Reaching to greet me
As I humbly appear.
IN THE CORNER OF MY EYE
In the corner of my eye
A saint marching:
An effulgent headlamp
Closing on a window.
INCANTATION
Let
People's smiles
Surround
The Christ.
INSTIGATION
A reworking
The pages are turning and so are the years.
So I now give myself wholly to ye: the Lady and Her Son.
Any advert "blowing" this momentous event ought to be
(Because the truth cannot be hid) together grandly opalescent.
Should heathens for a space cast Thy truth to the ground and tread it underfoot
The dream which is held securely within Thy tiny fragile little statue will continue
To call me strongly to its gorgeous and opalescent shores.
Then rising like a martyr from the blazing Goidelic glow will come
The brilliance of the Collective Triumphant. O wrap me in Thy sheets together
Where my earth-heart lies forever. Right then my erstwhile spiritual malaise
Explodes in 42 splendid directions and from its ashes there emerges
The precious core of the orange: toiling like a flower.
The apogee which is coming my way will be even more splendorous than the glorious Middle Ages.
And after this the present interstice
Containing and spewing forth manifold and hideous convulsions
The LORD will cause me to shine! with the beauty of ten thousands suns.
INSTIGATORY TENDENCIES
Come to my arms or Knott
Because I have an instigatory tendency
And I will
To convolve about you.
INVERSE HAIKU
Gull circles over river
Nearly orbiting
The reflection of a light.
INVERSE HAIKU
On a hill far and away
Pourèd the being
Into the bland universe.
IRELAND VERSUS ENGLAND, SIX NATIONS RUGBY, 16 FEBRUARY 2002
In a single bundle of sunlight
In the middle of muddy Twickenham
A confusion of bodies collided
And in that calamitous shaft
I saw the clash of centuries
ISN'T IT WELL FOR THE BIRDS
Translated from the Irish
Isn't it well for the birds who rise up high
And do be celebrating with each other on the one single branch,
It's not like that for me and for my superb love,
Far away from each other do we rise every day.
She's whiter than the lily, she's nicer than beauty,
She's sweeter than the violin, she's brighter than the sun;
Better than all this put together is her nobility and her attitude,
And (God who is in heaven!) release me from this pain.
Here down the low valley where lives my love,
Her shape is softer than silk and she's brighter than a flower;
My heart inside is three thousand sighs in my breast,
But! if I don't leave the imposing lady, I'm a comrade of death.
JE TE VOIS
je te vois
chaque soir
marchant lentement
sur le sable
je te vois
tournant
merveilleusement
sous les vagues
je te vois
traçant
un objet d'art
convoité
je t'écoute
chantant
comme un oiseau
seule pour moi
tes cheveux
longes blondes
un éclat d'or
du soleil
ton peignoir
blanc ample
ouvrant vite
devant moi
je nous vois
nous embrassant
après ce temps
agitément
je vois ta naissance
marchant de la mer
sèche parfaitement
miraculeusement
je te vois
chaque soir
marchant vers moi
sans tourner point
je te vois
toujours et maintenant
sur le chemin
de ma justification
JENNY
Only the one who walks alone
Treading lightly on the snow
Looking down at the ground so cold
Sees the shining crystals below.
JOURNEY THROUGH COLLIGAN WOODS
Colligan Woods is a scenic area just outside home (Dungarvan Town)
And my father Michael Dunford brought me and Oskar for a spin there.
The River Colligan was flowing fast (the whole place bedecked in leaves).
The leaves were lovely -- green rivers of windfall light! A stone's throw from our house...
K.
Nobody understands your perfume...
The overshadowing of countenance by intellect.
Nobody knows or notices that your teeth of silk
Have martyred the bird that beats the quickest wings.
Every time I see you I search my own feeble intellect
To be able to present you with the letters, I care.
Ever, ever, this flower garden of my torture stake,
Your ineffable soul and smile forever.
KATE
Blonde
Dress
Sunshine
Life
KEEP ON LOVING YOU
I'll keep loving you
Till the tide stops coming in and out
On the uaschladach which means
The noble shore
And till each and every grain of sand is swept away
And till the stars above collide
And till there are two suns in the sky
(That's how strong my love is).
KILNAFREHAN IN THE SUMMER
It is the summer of 2016
And the greenery is burgeoning:
How I love the dense thicket of greenery
That encompasses Kilnafrehan.
We daily wend our way up and down the hill
Under blue and azure skies.
My life, just begun, is as colourful
And cheerful as it ever was.
KRIZEVAC
The cross afar
Began shining:
Radiant it shone,
Shimmering in the night.
Radiating in the darkness,
Pulsating through the blackness,
I am nigh,
Said that gleaming sign.
You are Mine,
Said that cross of light.
LEABHARLANN
Stuck in the leabharlann,* the bullseye of civilisation,
Where tairbh mhóra (great bulls) of yesteryear trample shadows.
The books, the faces, the time-nourished decor of ornament
Unite with the cold sea breeze from without to sow their salt seed
In this synagogue in order to mourn the storms that gouged millennia.
Let each face wear war paint. And let there be a great bell resounding
In the centre of the floor, or an honest hearth of Gaelic fire.
The books must never be burnt, but the ornaments of decor can be replenished,
And the human faces a numinous reflection thrown upon them, by the phoenix
Arising like a resurrected martyr from the blazing Goidelic glow.
*leabharlann (Irish): library.
LEAF-LIGHT
Can you enter the great acorn of light
or walk with the oak's root?
The dead walk in clouded thoroughfares
and the living are all made of cardboard.
A fanned flame in their moving
and the wind cools towards autumn.
A little light, like some leaf-light
to lead back to splendour.
LETTER TO MARTIN
Martin Luther, you have made my life very difficult.
The heresy that leadeth to the apostasy
Of our current times has caught me in a deathlock
Even though the tribulation was before. Now
The man of sin walks our earth once green that was
So perfect in the medieval ages of my life.
I pray that I may sit by a babbling brook
And watch your visage slowly flow upstream.
LETTER TO VINCENT
"Christ was the greatest of all artists."
--Vincent van Gogh
We knew you not
For the same reason
That we decorated a tree
With our Lord:
We couldn't face beauty,
Truth neither;
And some years later
We went on to create
Our schizophrenic paradise,
Our finishing touch,
Our closing circle
Of hell on earth.
How many crucified we then,
And left not even a relic?
Their names liveth no more!
Faust-like, we strove
To extinguish the immortal!
I speak of neither Greek nor Jew,
Circumcision nor uncircumcision,
Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free
(For by one man, all have sinned) --
Their blood be on us all!
LIBERATE THE WORD INSPIRED
Liberate the Word inspired!
Let me see your string of words un-
poemed, ritualised from everlasting
Bounding (even) onto everlasting.
This stuff is written in English. The poem here
Which I hold between my hands of clay and dust
Was flung onto paper eight years ago (aught has a nice figure).
It is called -- it has no better name -- "Chance Meeting." Humbly... to introduce...
LIFE
Life is like a beach of sand
(Among other things).
From a distance it looks quite golden
But upon closer inspection
Appears rather brown.
A river runs through,
Gorging out channels,
Escaping into the sea.
This is pain.
It forms in trickles
From small causes,
Builds up into hewing rivulets,
Which join into overwhelming floods,
Before tearing into the great trash basket,
The boundless sea of love.
LIFE
Existence
the play of light
on the branches
over my head
temporary canopy
the play of light
the play of light
Being
magpie
watched
it is always
the watcher and the watched
Evolution
a rabbit
there
the first thing I thought was
this was the first rabbit
I had seen in a wood
a snail
I thought
a shell
the first snail
and the last
and while you are thinking
on your back
from behind
the hog will take you
LIFE-AFFIRMING ART
Take a matchbox -- empty, naturally -- and draw two opposing faces in the bed of the box. Opposing in that they lie at contrary ends but also that the one is joyful and the other despondent. Close the box. There is thus a happy face asleep in the bed of the box and a mournful face there in the bed of the box. Rotate the box several times and then draw open the box. What face one beholds depends (naturally) on the drawer.
LIFE IS LIKE A BALLOON
Life is like a balloon
It took so long to fill --
Sizzling through the air --
Past the windowsill.
LIFT THE VEIL
Beyond the curtain
You'll see the light: lift the veil
And see the bright stars.
LIGHT-WEAVER
A son of the light,
Across this darkened world,
Across these infinite spaces,
I chase the shadows:
Weaving light.
LORRAINE ALMOST
My subconscious eyes
Mystic
A web of lines
Lies
Sophie Ellis-Bextor's eyes
Mystic
Knickers
And the patterns on the floor
LOVE UNFORESEEN
No one comprehended the perfume.
The dark foreshadowing of your countenance.
No one ever knew you martyred
Love's hummingbird 'twixt teeth of silk.
A thousand Persian ponies fell asleep
In the towering penumbra of your brow,
While four nights through I wrapped this body
Round your waist, the enemy of snow.
Between plaster and ornament
Your glance came, the mustard seed.
I searched my intellect to present you
With the ivory letters, Forever.
Ever, ever, this Gethsemane of my dying,
Your elusive soul forever:
Blood of your veins in the fires of my heart,
As your mouth cools towards autumn.
LOVEDBRO
I'll turn me hand to the mendicant endeavour
Because there's a sacred text to be lent
And it'll be written in Irish
And now please will
Someone let me know
Where did I go wrong:
Sam's Town where
The streets have no name
LOVER
The light that streamed on your face was not from a window, it was from heaven --
As you ask me to do my best and undress beneath what are dark turbulent skies.
You light up my life, you are a shining light that shineth in the darkness
Of Mammon here and Mammon there and Mammon far away.
I pray that our course together may take us to the medieval ages
Where blacksmiths pottered and forged swords like your beauty.
LOVE'S ALCHEMY
I humbly transfuse
The immutable malaise of my life
Into solid perfection
In my precious art.
LUKE
His loneliness
Was for the want
Of a better
World.
LUTHER
I want to watch his visage
Slowly float upstream.
For a river flows in one direction only
And the same applies to a babbling brook
Sought out and stumbled upon
In the most hideous concrete backwater.
Navigating through the urban sprawl
And finding the beloved babbling brook
I catch a leaf and fling it into water:
A leaf representing Luther's historic visage.
But the brook will flow in one direction only!
The heresy leads to the apostasy etc. etc. etc.
The resplendent Parousia flows backwards
Throughout time (for all things are possible to God):
He destroys the man of sin, protects his little ones
Through the Tribulation, and brings good
Out of the Swinging Sixties and all the way back
To Luther's Deformation. With grace
He justifies the excesses of the former monk.
And spares us all through seven years.
MARY
Tonight I have consecrated myself to You. The woman who showed me the notice was not present at the consecration. Perhaps she is already consecrated... But that is not important now for the truth cannot be hid, nor goodness obscured by colourful provincial ridiculousness. The dream, which is everlasting in the bosom of Your tiny and fragile statuette calls me strongly to its grandiose shores. I have consecrated myself to You and I walk protected by Our Lady Who was and is and will be the Mother of the Church Triumphant. But first Thou must needs be the Mother of the Church as a Caterpillar. I am Yours and You are mine, in a way. I send you my adoration and homage this night and taking a leaf from the (holy) priest's sermon I entrust myself body and soul -- flailing, reeling, flying like a fish -- in the nameless direction of Thy tender arms.
ME WHEN I WAS YOUNGER
He thought there was something wrong with him
He always thought there was something wrong with him
And there was never anything wrong with him
Nothing but love
MEMORIES SOARING
Scattered memories
Drifting back
From my stereo:
Thank God for the stereo
And all the songs
Of my life,
The good days,
The bad days,
The memories searing in the midday sun
From the past until completion.
MINDSCAPE
1
The song I'll never speak, on the tip of my tongue it fell asleep
As I make my way through the metaphysical wilderness to where a luminary
Has gathered with the Bedouin and the Tuareg at a desert outpost. The song
I'll never speak; the sun has been taunting the lakeshore with a sunbeam.
2
Song burst out on my lips, the cries of millennia and of intellectual aeons
Pouring through the ages. Song filled up the hours
Whiled away in the shade. Songs of the stars alive!
Stars in perpetual blinding skies.
MISERABLE
I'm miserable now
After an eye-opening night
And I thought I had everything
And now I need to accept myself.
MODERNITY
In the underground
Zooming
Two fellow creatures
Are buffeted
Side by side
By neon lights.
Carnal dream;
Unreal liberties.
Will we ever reach our destination?
We are speeding like there is no tomorrow.
Eternal voyage
Of discovery and surprises.
MOONBEAM
Sun beams through the windows
As I perch above you on the floor
In the intoxication of dream
(This could only happen in dream) --
Then you ask me to undress:
Thank God we're on the first floor.
And the light that streamed on your face
Was not from a window --
It was from heaven...
MOUNTAINEERING
The rugged rocks
On the green sea...
Immeasurable! Invisible!
The moment before me!
MOUNTAINEERING TOGETHER
We start our ascent
Where brambles loosen; grass and
Heather start to loom.
Crawling the mountain
On the bellies of our feet
We breathe together.
The mist enshrouds us,
A well worn gauze to hide us
And clothe two as one.
Birds become thinner,
Only their cries alert us
That wings can exist.
The top comes sharply;
The fog had kept it, wrapped it
A well kept present.
Blinded by ground we
Faceless to each other forge
Forgotten footprints.
Tripping down the wire,
Stones glad to serve our stumble
Check us like parents.
Swirling round the fence
Fog descends the hillside and
We come down faster.
Heather blooms hotchpotch
As the snow clears with the peace
Of coming lowlands.
Sheep run affrighted
By love tumbling near them
In a wet cascade.
Mystery beckons
From fields afar; the bellows
Of newly sprung life.
We lie with shadows
In our star-fed hut, in warmth
A rusty palace.
MURDER
I wouldn't murder my worst enemy
But I'd gently and blithely reel around the fountain
Because I have everything now but after all
That's simply the most miserable of lies!
MURDER
Select a morning to murder.
I shall murder the morning
With words from Baile Átha Cliath
And Sligeach
And Moscow afar.
MUSIC
I find listening to music
Whiles away the drawl
Of the continuous
And all-embracing
And suffocating
Moments.
Listening to it speeds up the hours
And brings a smile to the eyes.
MUSIC IS THE FLARE
Music is the flare
of the visceral notion
of becoming of the absence
of passing through
MY GRIEF AT SEA
Translated from the Irish
My grief at sea
the big sea
keeping me
from my sweetie.
I was left at home
with my sadness,
with no eye for the road
now or forever.
My God that I'm not
and my fair precious
in Leinster
or in Clare.
My grief that I'm not
and my only love
on a ship
for America.
A bed of rushes
was beneath me last night,
and I cast it out
in the heat of day.
My love he came
to my side,
shoulder to shoulder
and mouth to mouth.
MY OWN DARK HEAD
Translated from the Irish
My very very own dark head,
Place your soft bright hand here around me;
Honey-mouth, that hath the scent of thyme,
It's a heartless individual who wouldn't love you.
Girls in this town are going mental and mad,
Pulling their hair and letting it to the wind,
On account of me, the best rogue in the countryside,
And yet I would leave all of that for the love of my heart.
And put your very own dark head
(Place it) right next to me here.
Honey-mouth, that hath the scent of thyme,
It's a heartless individual who wouldn't love you.
MY WAY IS IN THE SAND FLOWING
My way is in the sand flowing
And these stirrings are genuine movements!
Those who came before me did their best to get by
And they lived through each and every one of their vocations.
I'd like to focus on Harry Lovedbro: that he might be just
And the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.
Harry was called one blithe morning all of a sudden
And he was ecstatic when he discovered. I love you, bro.
MYSTIC
She called me a mystic. Jerusalem! With a shout! Trumpets!
She was talking, of course, of the light of my poetry.
I should have told that lady when we went to the bar for a drink
That I do not need substances: I don't need alcohol,
Nor cigarettes -- which I do consume -- nor cannabis;
For great, if you understand, is the mercy of seeing reality as I am.
The weeds surrounding
The child's cry are the only
Crops to grow outside.
1849
After miles of waves
He says his due to one world,
The sole world inside.
1916, PICARDY
Who can say if blue
These sockets held? Was it red,
For Albion bled?
A HEALTHY FOUR HOURS
A healthy four hours
Are spent in bed
Trying to get to sleep
And ruminating over a poem:
Sleep
The reward
And the poem
The produce
A LAMENT THAT WILL CLEANSE ME OF EARTH
I want to sleep the sleep of apples,
Far from the uproar of centuries.
I want to sleep the sleep of that child
Who every night cut out his heart
So that when he woke
It would once again be full.
I want to sleep just a moment,
A moment, a minute, a century.
But I will announce to the world that I have not died!
There will be a whinnying stable gilded on my lips,
I will be the wind, the stars and the ocean's little friend,
I will be the enormous patrimony of my sighs.
I want to sleep the sleep of apples,
And learn a lament that will cleanse me of earth.
I want to sleep the sleep of that child
Who every night cut out his heart
So that when he woke
It would once again be full.
A PIOUS TEXT
Four doves, the number of orthodoxy, take me up to the shadow-thronged loft
Of my imagination and my life disease and my teeming intellect.
These four doves fly off unnaturally and then later return.
I find in my mind's eye gigantic fables of desecration:
Unicorns and cyclops, while the resplendent doves lustre the quicksilver of the sea.
There is one Eye and one Potency quivering throughout the many-shadowed storeys.
A POEM CALLED MOE
My brother is a famous actor
And he's in Bulgaria at the moment filming his new film.
I'm looking at a picture of him
As I write this poem
(I'm on a hotel break with Mum and Dad
In Co. Kerry at the moment)
And it's lovely to be connected
With all of my family.
A POET'S LIFE
I wander metaphysically in a convulsive space
Between the gates of hell and the new dispensation;
O unimaginable promises of these unreal liberties:
I awake with a start from my carnal sleep.
Some are slaves of love as others are slaves of freedom.
My sleep, my life, blind to the point where anger rends the flesh,
Escapes me, pursues me. O terrorising voices of the unreal liberties!
I salute you, eternal voyage of discovery and surprises.
A POET'S LIFE
In the shelter
Waiting
Two fellow sufferers
Smoking
Separately
Light up
After me.
Coincidence.
What coincidence.
Shocking coincidence.
Eternal voyage
Of discovery and surprises.
A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A FAILURE
I will walk over
And burn my papers
At the fire
By the door of the pub.
I will walk over
And burn my papers
At the fire
With the flagstone hearth.
I will walk over
And burn my papers
Beneath the penny farthing
With hotly disagreeing wheels.
I will walk over
And burn my papers,
I will burn them
In front of my people.
I will walk over
And burn my papers
And at once
I will return to my drink.
They will burn and be gone
In a second,
But perhaps one of my people
Might turn and see them flash.
I will walk over
In front of my people,
And perhaps one of my people
Will turn and see me pass.
A WATER PRAYER
You are not in your burnt grave
Beneath dead leaves and fresh clay:
You are a water flower
Blooming and reblooming.
ABSENCE
for Paul Éluard (1895-1952)
The sky caresses me like her hands
The leaves affect me like her fingers
The river flows through me like her voice
The sun melts me like her gaze
The spires all pierce me like her beauty
The castle awes me like her presence
The windows haunt me like her absence
The sun melts me like her gaze
Is this Babylon or Zion
AFRAID
She's afraid
Before she moves back to the old house
And we can even dance around the fountain
And that's all I want (please).
AIR
My father
Muttering
In the room
Like rain
My thoughts
Like smoke
In the English
Air
ALCOHOLIC
He buys cans and stands
At the river's edge, drinking
A happy current.
One by one he drops
The finished cans to the flood,
Dead shells they float by.
From the wat'ry rage
He flees to a quiet place,
To watch clouds on high.
He soon falls asleep,
Dreaming other lives and loves:
A petit mort sighs.
He wakes and sick spews
A lake onto the pavement,
Shuffles off in shame.
He returns once more
To the darkly flooded flow,
Angry spits right in.
A silent tear peels
Down his badly shaven cheek,
He knows it is deep.
He bows his head broke
And hears the fuming stream, and
Threats in his body.
God lets rain fall fast,
The river drinks it madly,
Melts it, takes it in.
ALL THE SPLENDOUR OF TIME CANNOT PREVENT THE TICKING OF YOUR BEAUTY
Your beauty
Is a time bomb
Waiting to explode
In my face
Aggressively
And for what?
Much rather
I would steal it
But then you would have to kneel
Before me
In your splendour.
And so it ticks.
ALL THINGS MUST CHANGE
Let me take a leaf from another book
(I love the video to "Caribbean
Blue" by
Enya).
I don't know if this poem is any good
But the Muse is alive and active
Where I live and
In global days like these.
AMID THE SERIOUS CONFUSION
Bang! Bang! Bang! With a hammer and a mango.
The splat will pierce the scented heavens.
There is one God, one hammer and one mango.
God moves the hammer in the direction of the mango
And the result is an existential nihilistic love explosion.
I could go on forever about the hammer and the mango but I don't mean to philosophise...
ANNIE
Annie was a nice lady
And she was my aunt
(My mum's aunt really but I was close to her)
And she would hold me
In death's dark chapel
In a wise you need to know: she would take the holy beads
And gently and carefully whisper
And bid me to shadow.
AOIFE (WHERE DID I GO WRONG)
If I could turn back the hands of time
Because I really messed up on this occasion.
God please grant me a way to find my way
Out (so we can still be united) of this chaos.
Aoife, I feel like writing this poem about you
And, also, please come to me in a dream.
APARTMENT
Is there a landing
On the stairs
Between love
And devotion?
APOTHEOSIS
I will ascend to the top
Of the stone-and-steel tower
On the wings of a sacred bird:
I will build me a cave there
And have my food and drink
Brought up on a rope.
Near God on this mountaintop
I will stay for three years
With no light but a candle:
With a stone for a pillow
I shall compose poetry in the dark
Like the bards of long ago
And, whenever I light the candle, write it all down.
I will, after my apotheosis, emerge from the tower
Illuminated by my inspired texts
And inspire the world with their illumination.
ARTIST
I would put my head down
as my parents talked,
"Put up your head,"
my father would say.
"I am studying the patterns on the floor," I would say.
"Put up your head," he would say.
AS YELLOW AS IT EVER WAS
I had a dream about turning everything yellow
But I cannot say what.
I just wanted to paint
All the boulevards yellow.
Did someone say avenues?
Avenues and ye olden boulevards of broken dreams.
Why yellow? Blue is my favourite colour. Yellow is the inversion
Of blue and to be honest and frank I was asleep.
BABE
Your exploding smile
And scrunched-up face
Set off the beauty in you
And affection in me
BEAUTIFUL AND THE SAME
Translation from Paul Éluard
A face at journey's end
A bower among the day's dead leaves
A cluster of naked rain
Every sun now hid
Every source's source in the pit of unknowing
Every mirror of mirrors broken
A face above the weighing scales of silence
A pebble strewn in a streamlet
For the revolt of the day's last rays
A face similar to all forgotten faces.
BEAUTIFUL HARDNESS
Life is so precious
But so cruel.
Its various facets coalesce
Into a beautiful hardness.
BECAUSE I SPENT TOO LONG IN THE CITY
1
O loving but fearsome Lord God,
I may not have kept faith and fast,
But I gave alms to the poor.
And yet I went rejected from your door.
2
O ineffable but ever-loving Lord God,
You extracted my spirit from the mire
Of my forsaken experience,
Deporting forever the dark night of the soul.
BEFORE SLEEP
for Khalil Gibran (1883-1931)
I close my eyes out of tiredness and lack of a will to think. A million images emerge out of the shadows, cast themselves on my eyelids.
Re-forming they all coalesce into one big image of good, or evil, or both.
Whence come these but from the same cloudy fountain as come dreams, the shadowy depths of the unconscious.
BEHOLD THE LIGHT AS IT TUCKS INTO DARKNESS
Behold the light as it tucks into darkness
Because even his shoelaces of sulphur can shine.
Peering through a death mask is the blue aureate light,
A death mask fashioned of letters and of ivory --
An unrivalled death mask of impossible beauty!
I long for your lips.
The Bedouin fires burn by night;
The Tuareg camels, they are tethered.
BEYOND NORMALITY
Love was in the beginning
Gushing from the fountains of nothingness.
(This love is a strange love.)
I think I'm going to fall again and
Even when you held my hand
It didn't mean a thing.
Why? Because
Gushing from the fountains of abandon
Love had no end until the mankind making
And the blessed instigation.
BIG HAIKU
The white flag aloft
Belies the misadventure
Of bloody aeons.
BIG SKY
Big sky above me --
Power lines overhead.
I hope they don't come toppling down
On this indigo child.
Bang! Boom! Splat!
I don't want to end up
Like Bonnie and Clyde
Wherever the heck that one came from!
BORN IN THE FIERY CRUCIBLE
Born in the fiery
Crucible
I outlive
What I was.
BOTTOMLESS PULL
Each and every step down here
Bears us a pace closer to heaven. And
Each and every footstep is protected
Upon a floating bridge (of glass).
BREAKOUT
My disease
Of not having known quite what to say
When talk emerges bursting like a goddess
Or a ripened fruit
Before insignificant wood...
Smother me
Under ungovernable skies
Whose rain is so hard to predict
Like the coming precisely at noon
Of some firefox across the snow,
Cutting through it like a knife,
Eating its mist like a sunlight,
Its feet burning into its body,
Enmeshed with it like a confluence
Of orange fish in a bowl
That swirls round and round
Like a jogger on a racetrack
Chasing his shadow,
Striving after what's already here,
Here in his arms
In each other's arms we lay there;
Which of us was the other?
Afterwards I stand like some gallant chieftain
Being clothed in the rays of the sun
BREEZIN'
Blonde hair
Pink top
Me and my sweetie
Breezing down the street
BROKEN LINE
1
Money
Condones necessity
Rings the shillings
We've spent on essentials
2
Time
Burrows through the senses
Washing
But gouging
3
Full of hwyl
I turned to face her
But she
Had left
4
The power of words
To heal and hurt
Surpassed only
By a visitor at the window
BROKEN LOVE SONG
I had sat there watching
Greater stories (than ours)
Flicker on the enrapturing screen;
A screen it turned out was prophetic.
Scanning the headlines I never spied
The abuse which would soon rain
Down upon my feeble life. The prophet-
ic screen, it turns out, is the soothsayer
Of our (fallen) times. You and me will be together
Again, my love, in the later dispensation.
CALLED OUT
Called out
From the tumult of the cities
To be the zenith
Of civilisation.
CARCASSONNE
Riding through
Autumn flowers
The fortified city
Looming musically
Across the fruitful
Veld
Closing now
With every hoof-fall
Of the bright mare
The fortified city
No secret
Hideout
Impermeable
To bow and arrow.
CARRY YOU HOME
And I quoth because I won't be carrying anyone anywhere
But they can carry me home when the time is apt
Through riven glens
To the cottage of my sweetheart
Which is in reality a gilded palace
And there she sits in the midst of gilded hair
And with greenish eyes that shine forth splendrously
And dare to bequeath their light to a hundred million suns.
CASCADE
Each day brings me closer
To the bridge
And the raging flood below
Awaiting not knowing
CASTING
Projecting the line
In these tedious spaces
Between the day
And the morrow.
CHANCE MEETING
The voice.
You are not in your burnt grave
Beneath dead leaves and fresh clay:
You are a water flower
Blooming and reblooming.
The Metaphysical Wanderer.
Is it you who were there? Your breast so blazing
With light I forgot myself followed by you.
The sweetheart.
And my robe with its ribbons --
How often did it scrape thee?
The Metaphysical Wanderer.
In your mellifluous voice I can hear, wrapped like a godsend,
The gleeful laughter of the young ones.
The sweetheart.
The little ones afloat in my eyes
Are resplendent like glittering emeralds.
The Metaphysical Wanderer.
Is it you who were there? Where do you drag
Your ceaseless treasures, O precious?
The sweetheart.
Beyond the stars -- why are you laughing?
Then escaping the talons of the golden touch.
The Metaphysical Wanderer.
There is, in my breast, a snake that never sleeps
But comes with madness from out the wardrobe.
The sweetheart.
The moments dripped down and fastened
Their claws around my plentiful sighs.
The Metaphysical Wanderer.
Joined by a common gust
We face each other, but were strangers!
The sweetheart.
The branches are burgeoning; get thee hence!
Neither of us floated to the surface.
The voice.
You are not in your burnt grave
Beneath dead leaves and fresh clay:
You are a water flower
Blooming and reblooming.
CHILDHOOD VISION
I relax in my bubble bath
Next to my windowpane
And the howls of the savage ones from the exterior darkness
Daren't approach me in my childish safe haven.
CHRISTMAS 2024
I had another childhood vision.
It was the will of God to gift me a box ;) of advanced cubism.
I love playing with my building blox.
I am looking forward now I am decrepit and wizened to the New Year and to the years of our lives.
CHRONIC DISORDER
there's an inchoate dormant stagnant illness in my soul
and sometimes it goes OTT and spills over the parapet
like a grand ocean liner colliding with the wreck of an iceberg -- look:
the convergence of the twain; a disorder with a perfectly normal man
CILL CHAIS
Translated from the Irish
What shall we make without wood?
The last of the woods is laid low;
Cill Chais nor its household is mentioned
and its bell shall not resound again.
That place where lived the good lady
who found rank and blessing beyond women,
earls gathered from afar there
and the Holy Mass was sounded.
I hear neither duck nor geese there;
or the eagle crying from the bay,
or even the bees at work,
who would bring honey and wax to the mass.
The sweet sharp music of the birds is not there
as the sight of day goes ebbing,
nor the wee cuckoo amongst the branches there,
that did put the world to sleep.
There is a mist swooping on branch there
that the day nor the night can dispel;
there is a stain falling from the sky there
and all waters are receding away.
There is not hazel, nor holly, nor berry,
but stones and broken stone things,
the desolate field without bough is there
and the game has gone to the darkness.
Now a head on all of our misery:
the prince of the Gaels has gone,
east with the maiden of mildness
that saw honour in France and Spain.
Now her society is wailing her,
who'd give money golden and silver...
she would not dispossess the people,
but be friend to the truest wretch.
I beseech Jesus and Mary
that she may return to us safe and sound,
that there may be dance aplenty going around,
violin's music and fires of bone:
that this town this town of our fathers
come arising fresh from the havoc,
and till the day of doom, or till the day of deluge
we may see it no more set low.
CITY OF LIGHTS
I arrived in the city of lights
And I was off my [head].
Sorry about the French and sometimes I find myself
Still wishing for Paris. Oh, l'amour!
I was listening to "Parisienne walkways" earlier
By Gary Moore. I will write whatever comes into my head
Without being inane or offending anybody --
And such, gentle friend, is the way of the Muse.
COAL FROM OFF THE ALTAR
Your short black hair
Blowing free in the breeze
So wild and yet so perfect
Into your piercing eyes
Blue as the clearest sea
So cold and yet so knowing
CORSELESS SPHERE
corseless sphere
shivers
in the aeons
with arteries
swerving left and right
all night
in the chaos
of the ethereal
absence...
corseless sphere
CRICKET PITCH
There is a treelined cricket pitch in Shropshire
That I used to walk around,
And it reminded, and reminds, me of my beloved Middle Ages
(All that was missing was the babbling brook) --
And I used to walk around that cricket pitch,
Clockwise, anticlockwise, incantatory,
But I would never ever arrive
In the Middle Ages.
CRUEL WORLD
O cruel world,
When will you send me relief?
I see all in silhouette.
When will you send me relief?
She is but a shadow
Emerging through space
From a million suns
To the satellite where I live.
O cruel world,
When will the comet hit?
Or will your bottomless pull
Steal her from my face?
At times I see her tail
In the empty air
But then she turns away
And black is reborn.
O cruel world,
When will you cease to exist?
Will ever her shadow
Engulf all my dark side,
And from our brilliant collision
Explode a new universe?
CRYSTAL
1
Light and the flowing crystal;
Never gin in cut glass had such clarity:
Behold! the splendour and wreckage in that clarity,
Demons moving in crystal.
2
Our Lady of the Holy Protection is enveloped in crystal,
The great numinous cloud is all around Her,
She has entered the protection of crystal
And she bestows the clarity of same protection.
DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL
From the chasm
Of the dark night of the soul
Comes the flower
Of fortitude.
DE LA VRAIE SPIRITUALITÉ
It must be like being shut in a cellar
When one's lamp suddenly
Breaks,
The blackness
Of seeing all there is to see,
Being nowhere
And anywhere
At once.
The cloud of unknowing
Must descend in an instant,
Leaving one locked in dark silence
As if caught up in a whirlwind,
Not wanting to be let down,
Soaring free above the world.
DEPRESSIVE TENDENCIES
The good God is helping me with my depression
Which was all self-inflicted to begin with
As I sit quietly in the Loire
Surrounded by leafy trees and a river that gently flows.
DESERTS ENCROACH UPON OASES
The Bedouin fires burn by night, the Tuareg camels are tethered.
The future it is ours for luminaries have gathered at a desert outpost.
Deserts encroach upon oases but the truth cannot be hid and in any case
The Bedouin fires burn each night, and the Tuareg camels they are tethered.
DO YOU REMEMBER THAT NIGHT
Translated from the Irish
Do you remember that night
you were stood at the window,
without a hat nor a glove
to house you, nor a jacket?
Stretched I my hand to you
and you caught of it a clasp,
and I stayed in your company
till the skylark spake.
Do you remember that night
you and I were
beneath the rowan tree
and the night freezing over?
Your head on my breasts
and your bright pipe playing? --
'tis a tittle I thought that night
that our love would be parted.
O love of my heart within,
come some night close
when my people will sleep
and we'll talk together;
my hands will surround you
as I tell to you my story --
and it's your soft mild sweet talk
that'll steal the sight of Heaven from me.
The fire is without stoking
and the light needs quenching;
the key is beneath the door
and pull it softly,
the mother is asleep
and I am awake,
my fortune's in my hand
and I ready to walk with you.
DON'T LOOK BACK IN ANGER
Three short years ago
On the threshold of the cataclysm
To the day indeed
I wrote the words,
"I see my life
Fleeing...
With always no face,
Always escaping,
Escaping."
Three years weakened
And three years wiser
I will pen these words:
I see my life arriving,
With the face
Of a saint,
Always unfolding.
DOVE SOARING
I can see a
Dove soaring
Through winter's
Stratosphere and
Dying before night
Beckons to the
Extraordinary
Heavens.
DRIFTWOOD
Bobbed up by the surf,
Then pushed under once more.
Carried forward by the swash,
And moved sideways by the drift.
But caught up by the backwash,
And forced back to its starting position.
A blemish on the murky surface,
Unknowingly detracting from the calm facade;
Cast about by the turbulent maelstrom
Which lies beneath an inoffensive illusion.
Like a miniature caravel missing her crew
It careers about upon the waters,
On an uncertain voyage lacking compass and map
And crying out in vain to an indifferent tide;
It knows not its very destination, nor even course,
Like a fickle child that can't make up its mind.
In full control of this passing vagrant
The belligerent sea appears so conceited,
Flippantly steering its unwelcome guest
Through intermittent highs and uncertain lows
And watery interruptions by uncaring waves
(Who at least have some place to head for);
But the sea has not pity nor mercy nor charity
For the maritime menace, the pariah, the parasite,
Which clings desperately onto nothing but water
And searches complacently for nothing but shelter --
A fugitive forever, its existence in jeopardy
Whilst knowing full well it shall never be gratified;
For there shall be no mitigation
Of the castaway's sentence
Of relentless mistreatment by tide, wind and rain --
There shall be no respite, in these or any waters.
All resistance is futile, any attempt at it pointless,
And a meaningless outcast does not even dream
Of trying to subvert the entire order of nature;
For the ocean will be forever
Ten billion times greater, ten billion times stronger
And infinitely more powerful than it.
And so it shall rot, and fade into history,
The remnants devoured by a victorious tide,
But in its dying moments how it shall wish
With all it was before, is now and never shall be
That it could in some way have been made to exist
As something else, anything else --
Anything other than that which it is,
A damned, worthless piece of wretched driftwood.
DROWNING
Your soul did not sink to the deepest depths of the dark lake
But sailed soaring to the highest heavens;
Nor is it trapped by the ringing rocks,
But flies free in the azure skies.
DRUNKEN IN THE DARKNESS
Drunken
In the darkness
He wrote,
Alone,
Alone,
Alone
Against the world
And its games,
Alone
Against ignorance and fear and derision and ridicule
And laughter and gossip.
His pen travelled faster than sound.
DUST
The dust blows across the dream fields
Turning all to even more dust:
The dusty hurricane ravages
And leaves nothing behind it but dust.
How long must I wait? Here at the eye
Of the storm... the hurricane bloweth where it listeth...
I like to put words into people's heads.
Positive words. In the fashion of poetry.
ECHO
for L.
echoes
echoes
behind me
before me
around me
on and in me
around me
propped
propped
o'er the parapet
on a ledge of stone
my legs adrift
plodding
we live in total darkness
we are wolves of the night
and intelligence reveals itself
like a lamp in a cave
crying
crying
from the prison
from the open prison
the world has become
society
society
below me
a good deal
below me
recuperation
cigarettes and magazines
just like that
ECHO II
echoes
echoes
behind me
on and in me
around me
sink
feet spread
head full of memories
hands
in the sink
God
we walk in final darkness
we are lambs of the night
and God unveils Himself
like a flower afore the dawn
evenings
the evenings without you
are so leaden
they always start
dragging too soon
stumbling
stumbling
through the prison
through the open prison
the world has become
song
it's only a song
she's only a woman, you know
EMPTY GLENS
Looking out
On all that's been --
There's a glen down the road from where I grew up --
I used to wade through the shallow waters of this glen as a boy
Crawling through briars and the dense and
Soul-entrapping undergrowth.
It was the sin of smoking that got me here -- into this awful mess --
And now I stand (yearning for before) in an empty metaphysical glen (!).
However, when I didn't expect it, the Light came to save me
And I burst through the barrier at the edge of the glen
To be free at once, forever, and at last...
I now sit comfortably relaxing at a friend's house.
ESPERULO
Cxiam tiel estos,
mi estos cxiam sola
kun vortoj,
pensoj,
kun nenio krom la ideo
por difini min,
sen tusxo de-ekstere
por konsoli min,
sed kun brilaj radioj
de-interne.
EUGENE
In the nocturnal trans-
figuration of the senses
Came your spirit to mine
In brotherly embrace:
Salt water welled in my eyes,
For ours is the narrow path,
The way of honour,
Parallel to the moon.
FAITHFUL DUN COW
Translated from the Irish
My faithful dun cow and finest of the herd,
where goest thou at night and where by the day?
"I do be in the woods and my boys ranged about me,
and that has left me at the shedding of tears.
"Nor land, nor abode, nor wine nor music do I have,
no prince is there to guard me, druid nor youth;
but always drinking water every hour of the day
I be while the enemy has whiskey and wine at his table."
If I had the right to fight or a sight of the crown,
Saxons I'd wallop like I wallop an old shoe;
through boglands, through forests and through thorns in the havoc --
and that's how I'd cherish my noble dun cow!
FATAL HOLLOW
I wandered down
the poison glen
I stumbled up
the broken stair
I fell bleeding
in the floral hollow
I ran breathing
up the hollow hill
FATAL KISS
I loved thee
Thou betrayed me
I loved you too much
And now you have no other lover
FATHER PADDY
Father family hearing my mother's confession
In the L-shaped house
The lights beaming on their holy heads
Across the darkened yard
FINISHING TOUCHES
You wanted to put the final touches
To the square foot of wet cement
There and then,
Since the few hours had already passed:
You were going to come back later,
On your own, I suppose you thought,
But you trowelled it on the spot
And I watched you
Caress, lovingly,
Like an author,
Even
The rough cement.
You looked up,
That satisfaction in your eye, and said,
"That'll do us,
Save us comin' back again."
How those words will
Haunt me
When our time
Together is over,
When I
Am come back
And you are
All gone.
FLIGHT SIMULATOR
I threw two paper aeroplanes
From the fourth floor up,
One going slightly further than the other:
With wings they glided,
My eyes soaring, following
Their every curve;
And like angels
They crashed to earth.
FLOATING BRIDGES
O awesome mass of people
invisible reborn
making their way into the garden
for their eternal reward!
Every step we take on earth
brings us closer to the new world.
Every foot goes supported
upon a floating bridge.
There is not a single
straight road in this world --
it is a gigantic labyrinth
of intersecting thoroughfares.
But steadily our feet
keep walking and creating --
like tremendous machines --
these paths in embryo.
O garden of resplendent
theories! Garden
of all I am not, all
I could and should have been!
FOOTSTEPS
I follow your footsteps along the strand
Stepping over them so as not to disturb.
The yearning tide laps ever closer
And I choose my places in the soft sand.
I look up and you have disappeared from sight.
The tide has encroached on what was once your own,
Smothering the prints at the edges,
Filling them with the reflection of memory.
Soon your traces will be fully submerged
And all I'll have of you in this world
Will exist beneath the unfathomable surface,
That thinnest veil between this place and the next.
FOR A.
All the ways of Jesus converge
A stór in our meeting,
And the voices of the damned
Resound in your departing.
Not holding you a ghrá
Is my Calvary,
But I must suffer thus
To gain the justness of the world.
FOR MY MOTHER
I think of you now
As we're miles apart,
You who came first
And thirty years later,
Brought me into this place.
Sitting at the table,
Or combing your hair --
All things are alike to you,
All colours the same;
Never a word of a gale
Has blown from your breath.
I see you reading the Word,
As your Father knew He would find you,
When He sent you from His bosom
Into this heart of confusion.
I see you combing your way
From all confusing places,
His light above your head,
His smile upon your heart.
FOR MY PLATONIC FEMALE FRIEND
Translation from Paul Éluard
In your eyes clarities overly brutal become dulled.
Your forehead smoothens, like exploding vellum,
Which the scarlet and gold of the photo besmirches,
Burns in redhead reflections your transparent gaze.
Your countenance has for me the charm of dead flowers,
And the impoverished breath of the lilies which you bear to me
Raises towards languishing the sun in decline.
Let us flee, O serenity of my murdered hours,
To the bottom of the unsuccessful sunset and fed up.
In the enveloping of the tenderised condensations,
In the evening on edge, I will speak to you very lowly.
That which was the beauty of unique mastery...
Ah! this cruel perfume, this bitter music,
Of weighed-down happinesses which will not return!
Thus we will disrupt for ages the peace of the ashes.
I will speak to you words of passion, and you,
The dream of elsewhere for ages and ages, and thy vague tender eyes,
You'll pursue your past of suffering and terror.
Your voice will possess the chant of lengthy litanies
Where the echo of infinite complaints shall weep,
And thy soul, the sorrowful flight of faith.
FOR TONY
Teeming from the splendid subconscious
And forever out through time,
Passing through where boundaries would be,
Moving with opalescence, in each and every direction,
In all colours, in all musics,
With grace and infinity
Touching the heart of eternity.
Resplendent, opalescent,
Incandescent it burns the very page
On which it lies prone to those
Who suffer with courage.
Behold! there is a poem to be born.
FOREVER IN YOUR HEART
Did I walk out here with you today
Or did I come alone?
It seems that I am forever sunk
In the recesses of your heart.
FRANCE 2019
Meandering through the Oriental streets of Chinon,
Drinking in the balm of the French sunshine;
The God-given uplift and the dreaded downturn:
Praying, awaiting these twists of fate, for constancy.
FRESH AIR
Translation from Paul Éluard
I looked before me
In the crowd I saw you
Amid the wheat I saw you
Under a tree I saw you
At the end of all my travels
In the despondencies of all my torments
At the turning points of all the smiles
Emerging from out of the water and the fire
Summer winter I saw you
In my house I saw you
In my arms I saw you
In my dreams I saw you
I will not leave you anymore.
FRIENDS
Friends,
Music,
Take you into a new space
And stifle the drawl
Of the continuous
Moments.
FROM NORTH TO SOUTH
From north to south
From the nadir to the zenith
Ignoring the slights of the east
Towards the glorious western ocean
Calling amid wheels among wheels
To the tower
FRUIT OF SIN, EYES OF LOVE
I have swallowed the fruit of sin --
I have vomited up its insides:
I have entered the eyes of love --
I have skidded down their watery stream!
FUNNY
It was a funny joke
About going nowhere fast
And now I wonder
If barbarism begins at home.
GIRL (FRAGMENT)
two ships at night
nay
in the same course
she travels
on the grief of the seas
at more or less speed
nothing but the blue
between us
[...]
moving
and on mine
starboard
the row of lamps
lit
towards the lights of home
GIVE ME SOME LOVE
O give me some love O sweetie
Because I've written many poems for you
And I'm typing this for you
Out of my cloigeann
Because I want you to like me
And the poem itself is a lot of nonsense
But I'm not -- I am serious
In my affections towards thee.
GLOBAL HAIKU
Does this traffic jam
All the way (by land, sea, air)
To Michigan lead?
GOING FOR A SPIN WITH MY FATHER
I have a lot going for me (and I don't mean this to be a pun)
And, thank God, I am surrounded by beautiful things.
My father is just about to bring me to McDonalds
And then we're going to the new house.
God is good, I have always known this,
And I thank him for everything,
And when I look at the beautiful things of this world
It reminds me of my father.
GREEN PASTURES
1
In the nurturing of the balance there becomes a spark of life twisting from the subconscious found aeons ago in the memory of love
2
In togetherness there is apathy welling from the nearness of the love machine broken apart after orgasm steals away like a nightingale brought to one's windows by random winds
3
There must be a way to meet the hailing of the blood down upon the unexpectant and the weary when forces issue from primeval jungles beneath the skin and somewhere in the head deserts encroach upon oases
4
Taken as a whole the current must be seen to be electric for it flows from a spring somewhere in the earth's womb whence all currents, all energies, all forces of life begin
5
Her hair falls like a dew landing slowly on the green grass of my senses in the morning having awoken unexpectant and without shaving -- she loves me
GREEN PASTURES II
1
Spiralling into control I attain balance by averages and find out that the subconscious lights up through the centuries in the stillness out of love.
2
The cat ran out of the room as soon as I opened the door crossing your scarf where it lay before jumping out through the window.
3
There must be a way to meet the hailing of the blood down upon the unexpectant and the weary when forces issue from primeval jungles beneath the skin and somewhere in the head deserts encroach upon oases.
4
Water must be believed to be the opposite of electricity for it wells from deep in the earth's womb whence all energies, all currents, all forces of life begin.
5
The rain falls like a woman (her hair) upon my expectant head and down upon my weary breast appearing like a lover on my senses.
HANGOVER HAIKU
The washing machine
Rumbles and hums while I lie
With a hangover.
HARRY LOVEDBRO
I love you, Harry,
As I listen to '74-'75
On Spotify:
There's another act called the 1975.
I love you Harry Lovedbro
And you have been
Blithely
Catapulted into beauty.
HER WHOM MY SOUL LOVETH
I sought
Her whom my soul loveth
In the street:
I sought her,
But I found her not.
I sought her
In my heart:
There I found her.
HEYDAY
I'm writing whatever comes into my head
About me and you... yeah, your good self...
And I have already had my heyday
But in another way my heyday is yet to come:
I was leading the heydays when we first met,
My sound friend, in Reginas in Medjugorje
In 2006... leading the heydays
Or so I believed because I was a little bit unwell
To be honest and although we (really) hit it off
I could have been better in myself and
Better behaved (orientated towards Our Lady).
I'm behaving now and I'm off all drugs and alcohol inc. cigarettes
And I'm going praying for both of us now
And for the stability of our friendship
And hey! hey!
This temporal life is only a commencement of our heyday. Amen.
HIGH SURREALISM
The violence of sea-winds,
Ships, old faces,
A permanent abode,
Weapons to defend one,
A secluded shore,
A shot: one only,
Cataclysms of gold well-gotten
And of silver ill-gotten;
The birds perfume the woods,
The rocks; the great nocturnal lakes.
I dwell in this thorn --
Let a bird abide in its wings.
HIROSHIMA
Fire jumps from the ground
Turning all to stone; the boy's
War cry falls unheard.
HOPE
hope
burning
smouldering
in an ashtray
falling
down
to the netherworld
of sinful voices
cutting its way out
ablaze in glory
HOUSEHOLD SIMILES
The pan clangs like a bell
And the ring lights like a cigarette
The match striking like a missile
And bursting into flame like a dawn
The spaghetti hisses like a snake
And the kettle sings like a bird
The phone stays silent like a statue
The washing machine dormant as a volcano
The empty ring crackles like dynamite
The blue flame rising like a prayer
The kettle cascades like a waterfall
And the sink swallows like a sea serpent
The bowl empties like an ocean
The washing-up liquid shoots like a weapon
My pen swoops like a predator
And I devour like the earth
HOW I FEEL ABOUT MY BRO AND HIS SENSE OF HUMOUR
When me and Maurice were young
We used to hang around together
And laugh and joke together
About such things as
A rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle.
I have always loved you
And I shall never stop.
When I said that I loved you
I meant that I'll love you forever.
I stepped aboard a pirate ship
And when I slipped
I slipped into a pirate ship.
HOW I FEEL ABOUT MY FRIEND
We've been through thick and thin together
And we've shared and been the victim of some pranks
Like when we together drove up a one-way street
And my friend (let's call him Chris) refused to reverse --
Another time the teacher on the course we were doing
Chided us for disrupting the class and getting a cup of coffee.
And even when I descended into my own personal torment
My friend Chris stayed there for me through it all!
HOW I FEEL ABOUT THE SWEETIE MOTHER
Things were at their gravest
In the throes of my utter apostasy
And then she came to me
The Sweetie Mother
And she wrapped me in her mantle
And her embrace.
She totally saved me from the demonic apostasy
And I broke down when I met her in person
Because I was totally overwrought
And because she is who she is
A goddess full of love
And overflowing with every sentiment that is good.
I met her in the restaurant once more
This morning
And things are getting better now
And she was more beautiful than ever
And kindness and all kinds of smiles
At the very next table.
She will come to me in Germany
As a teacher and a friend
And actually no voice that is
Compares to the voice of the Sweetie Mother.
When God created her
He made no mistake. I respect her and we love each other.
I hope you like my poem, Sweetie Mother,
And now I will come out to your beautiful statue to find out.
HOW SOON
How soon will it be ready
(I'm not really a handsome fella after all)
Because she's got me hand in glove
And I'm not really still ill.
HWYL
Full of hwyl
I turned to face her
But she had gathered
Up her cigarettes
And adorned herself in clothes
And fled through my door!
The power of words
And moments spent in stillness
And the immense sea of emblems
To hurt as well as heal...
Surpassed only by a person knocking
Out of the blue upon one's window!
I BROUGHT THEE TO A PLACE
I brought thee to a place,
A labyrinth, where your fine toothcomb
Could not find a solution. Into God's tender arms
I entrust the dysfunction of my times.
I CAN'T HEAR THE MUSIC
And I quoth for a prophet once spake the words that
The lights must never go out and as for the music it must always play
And I must take a break now
And now I'm back and
It is my holy delight that I am able to hear the music
And I'd like to thank God
For the big music
Which is in my ears.
I HANG
I hang from my lampshade
By my feet and my hands
Or perhaps by a string
Attached at the navel
Bringing bed and earth and bodies.
I LIVE TO FALL ASLEEP
I live to fall asleep
To see in the colours of my dreams
The lights before the storm
And your open smiling lips.
I MET A GIRL
Mental arena
On a plateau
Of the thinnest ice
In danger of descending
To the depths of the cur-thoughts.
Middle watch
I fell asleep
For the first hour of middle watch:
But now I am vigilant
And alert.
Midnight tobacco
Burning the midnight tobacco --
Analysing the day;
Prognosticating the morrow:
Smoking to pass the time.
Massed
In the rarefied atmosphere
Of the massed mountains
I hold on my heart
For fear it should fall.
I REALLY WANT YOU
I really want you
Baby
To love me thar n-ais
The same way I love thee
And there is now
Another
Poem in the offing and! behold!
My Eoin adoration maketh me clear.
I SEE THE LAND
I see the land where I grew up when I was a little boy
And that is a far country now (The Faraway Tree etc.)
And sometimes I yearn for that land
Just like Dylan Thomas did in "Fern Hill."
Patrick Kavanagh wrote that poetry is honesty.
So I am writing the same.
Lo! I have a lofty announcement to make.
I am alive with the zeal of getting through the night.
I SEE YOU
I see you
In the evening robe
Paying lip service
To foreign gods.
I see you
In your morning dress
Reaching
To caress me.
Her love
Knows no boundaries.
All the ways of Jesus
Converge
In the smile
Of your kindness.
I WANT THERE TO BE NO CHANNEL THROUGH THE SAND
I want there to be no channel through the sand.
I want there to be no valleys for the fresh sea breeze.
I want there to be no eyes for the night,
No flower of gold for my heart;
And I want the oxen to talk to the big leaves,
And the earthworm to flail with the shadow,
And I want the teeth in the skull to gleam,
And the resplendent colours washing in the silk.
I can perceive the struggle of wounded night
Wrestling in snake-coils with the sun of midday.
I am able to suffer a sunset green with venom
And the broken arches where Time languisheth.
But do not show me your immaculate nude
More nude and resplendent than a time-hallowed fresco.
Do not show me the coolness of your breasts!
Leave me here yearning for shadowy planets.
I WILL SEARCH
Let me walk with you along the riverside
Until we come to the flower bank and there
I will fall on my knees and dig in the earth
And cut stalks and caress colours and open
Petals, getting my hands dirty and needing
The river's dark power to clean them, and one
By one passing you colours, and fragrances,
As you stand above me on the bank, watching
The river and listening to the wind. But
All the time I am searching for one thing, as
You wait -- it is not the flower itself, but
Rather the force that drives the flower. And when
I find that force it will be my finest hour,
But until then I will search, despite its own
Elusiveness, my lack of understanding
And its mere rejection by the powerful.
And when you are absent and gone, I will search,
When I am cold and alone, I will search, when
From all around I am shouted down then
I will search, I will search for the force, feeling
Like a thief beaten into submission.
IF WEST I WENT
Translated from the Irish
If west I went I'd never come back,
on the highest hill I'd make my stand.
I'd earliest pick the fragrant branch,
and I'd first follow my own sweet love.
My heart is as black as a berry
or as black coal burned in a forge,
or as footstep on white halls,
and there's a great curse above my laughter.
My heart is broken bruised
like icy sheets above water,
like a heap of nuts after their breaking
or a young woman after her cheating.
My heart here is as black as berries,
and as black as sloes on a bright sunny day,
black as the bilberry most black on the mountain,
and 'tis often that a black head was on a tender white body.
It's time for me to leave this town,
sharp is the stone and cold is the slop there,
'tis there I found senseless blame
and a heavy word from the contrary part.
Damn I this love, 'tis a wretch that gave it
to the son of that mother who would never appreciate it,
my heart in my centre he left it black,
and I don't see him in the street or in any other place.
IF WEST I WENT (ALTERNATIVE TRANSLATION)
Translated from the Irish
If west I went I would never come back,
On the highest hill I would make my stand.
It's the sweet branch I would earliest pick,
And it's my own love I would soonest follow.
My heart is as black as a sloe
Or as black coal you would burn in a fire;
Or as black footstep in a white hallway,
There's a great black mood over and above my laughter.
My heart inside is bruised and broken
Like icy sheets at the top of water,
Like a heap of nuts would be after their breaking
Or a young maiden might find herself after her cheating.
My own true love is the colour of berries,
The colour of sloes on a bright summer's day,
He's the colour of the darkest hurtleberry on the mountain,
And it's often a dark head was on a tender white body.
It's time for me to leave this town!
The stone is sharp and the slop is cold there.
I received there futile blame
And a heavy word from the contrary part.
I denounce love! God help whosoever gave it
To the son of that woman who could never appreciate it,
My heart in my breast he left black -- blackened! --
And I never see him on the street or in any other place.
I'LL TAKE EVERYTHING
I'll be blunt now.
Now, I won't take everything.
But I'll take everything
That's on offer
And then I'll humbly proceed to say thanks
To the Lord God Almighty
For giving me the gift of my life
And all His other bountiful gifts.
I'M NOT A PRACTICAL PERSON
Meditating upon a poem
I put my coffee in the microwave
For four times longer than is meet:
It exploded as I thought.
The brilliance of my songs
Will explode throughout the container of this world,
And their scent
Will pierce the heavens.
IMMEASURABLE ACHE
inexpressible since
first unutterable
devastation from
the sky falling
wholesale
angel of death
calling
tuesday morning
skeleton framework
sinking titanics
death walling
inconsolable
pity
comes down
outrage
blasphemy
words
are not enough now
barbarise
bastardise
standardise
inferno of hades
forming
shards
silence
empty dream
no sonnet
screaming
under the weight of
pain engulfed
surrounded by
drowning sky
IN HEAVEN
The poems I deleted
Are vanished forever:
Until one of the greats
Or I in my immortal state
Point and polish them,
Or the Great I Am
Sees fit to accept them;
And then they will repose
(On plaques) on walls of crystal light
In the ethereal palace.
IN THE CLUTTERED CORNER
In the cluttered corner of a psychedelic attic in the midst of the neon wilderness
The poet, revolutionary, and latter-day prophet squats alone with pen and parchment.
World! behold his crucifixion. You think that same will be his ensnarement, his entanglement, and his enstranglement:
But -- I tell you! it will not, it will be his glorification and his apotheosis (!).
IN THE COLOURS OF MY DREAMS
In the colours of my dreams
I see your open smiling lips
Reaching to greet me
As I humbly appear.
IN THE CORNER OF MY EYE
In the corner of my eye
A saint marching:
An effulgent headlamp
Closing on a window.
INCANTATION
Let
People's smiles
Surround
The Christ.
INSTIGATION
A reworking
The pages are turning and so are the years.
So I now give myself wholly to ye: the Lady and Her Son.
Any advert "blowing" this momentous event ought to be
(Because the truth cannot be hid) together grandly opalescent.
Should heathens for a space cast Thy truth to the ground and tread it underfoot
The dream which is held securely within Thy tiny fragile little statue will continue
To call me strongly to its gorgeous and opalescent shores.
Then rising like a martyr from the blazing Goidelic glow will come
The brilliance of the Collective Triumphant. O wrap me in Thy sheets together
Where my earth-heart lies forever. Right then my erstwhile spiritual malaise
Explodes in 42 splendid directions and from its ashes there emerges
The precious core of the orange: toiling like a flower.
The apogee which is coming my way will be even more splendorous than the glorious Middle Ages.
And after this the present interstice
Containing and spewing forth manifold and hideous convulsions
The LORD will cause me to shine! with the beauty of ten thousands suns.
INSTIGATORY TENDENCIES
Come to my arms or Knott
Because I have an instigatory tendency
And I will
To convolve about you.
INVERSE HAIKU
Gull circles over river
Nearly orbiting
The reflection of a light.
INVERSE HAIKU
On a hill far and away
Pourèd the being
Into the bland universe.
IRELAND VERSUS ENGLAND, SIX NATIONS RUGBY, 16 FEBRUARY 2002
In a single bundle of sunlight
In the middle of muddy Twickenham
A confusion of bodies collided
And in that calamitous shaft
I saw the clash of centuries
ISN'T IT WELL FOR THE BIRDS
Translated from the Irish
Isn't it well for the birds who rise up high
And do be celebrating with each other on the one single branch,
It's not like that for me and for my superb love,
Far away from each other do we rise every day.
She's whiter than the lily, she's nicer than beauty,
She's sweeter than the violin, she's brighter than the sun;
Better than all this put together is her nobility and her attitude,
And (God who is in heaven!) release me from this pain.
Here down the low valley where lives my love,
Her shape is softer than silk and she's brighter than a flower;
My heart inside is three thousand sighs in my breast,
But! if I don't leave the imposing lady, I'm a comrade of death.
JE TE VOIS
je te vois
chaque soir
marchant lentement
sur le sable
je te vois
tournant
merveilleusement
sous les vagues
je te vois
traçant
un objet d'art
convoité
je t'écoute
chantant
comme un oiseau
seule pour moi
tes cheveux
longes blondes
un éclat d'or
du soleil
ton peignoir
blanc ample
ouvrant vite
devant moi
je nous vois
nous embrassant
après ce temps
agitément
je vois ta naissance
marchant de la mer
sèche parfaitement
miraculeusement
je te vois
chaque soir
marchant vers moi
sans tourner point
je te vois
toujours et maintenant
sur le chemin
de ma justification
JENNY
Only the one who walks alone
Treading lightly on the snow
Looking down at the ground so cold
Sees the shining crystals below.
JOURNEY THROUGH COLLIGAN WOODS
Colligan Woods is a scenic area just outside home (Dungarvan Town)
And my father Michael Dunford brought me and Oskar for a spin there.
The River Colligan was flowing fast (the whole place bedecked in leaves).
The leaves were lovely -- green rivers of windfall light! A stone's throw from our house...
K.
Nobody understands your perfume...
The overshadowing of countenance by intellect.
Nobody knows or notices that your teeth of silk
Have martyred the bird that beats the quickest wings.
Every time I see you I search my own feeble intellect
To be able to present you with the letters, I care.
Ever, ever, this flower garden of my torture stake,
Your ineffable soul and smile forever.
KATE
Blonde
Dress
Sunshine
Life
KEEP ON LOVING YOU
I'll keep loving you
Till the tide stops coming in and out
On the uaschladach which means
The noble shore
And till each and every grain of sand is swept away
And till the stars above collide
And till there are two suns in the sky
(That's how strong my love is).
KILNAFREHAN IN THE SUMMER
It is the summer of 2016
And the greenery is burgeoning:
How I love the dense thicket of greenery
That encompasses Kilnafrehan.
We daily wend our way up and down the hill
Under blue and azure skies.
My life, just begun, is as colourful
And cheerful as it ever was.
KRIZEVAC
The cross afar
Began shining:
Radiant it shone,
Shimmering in the night.
Radiating in the darkness,
Pulsating through the blackness,
I am nigh,
Said that gleaming sign.
You are Mine,
Said that cross of light.
LEABHARLANN
Stuck in the leabharlann,* the bullseye of civilisation,
Where tairbh mhóra (great bulls) of yesteryear trample shadows.
The books, the faces, the time-nourished decor of ornament
Unite with the cold sea breeze from without to sow their salt seed
In this synagogue in order to mourn the storms that gouged millennia.
Let each face wear war paint. And let there be a great bell resounding
In the centre of the floor, or an honest hearth of Gaelic fire.
The books must never be burnt, but the ornaments of decor can be replenished,
And the human faces a numinous reflection thrown upon them, by the phoenix
Arising like a resurrected martyr from the blazing Goidelic glow.
*leabharlann (Irish): library.
LEAF-LIGHT
Can you enter the great acorn of light
or walk with the oak's root?
The dead walk in clouded thoroughfares
and the living are all made of cardboard.
A fanned flame in their moving
and the wind cools towards autumn.
A little light, like some leaf-light
to lead back to splendour.
LETTER TO MARTIN
Martin Luther, you have made my life very difficult.
The heresy that leadeth to the apostasy
Of our current times has caught me in a deathlock
Even though the tribulation was before. Now
The man of sin walks our earth once green that was
So perfect in the medieval ages of my life.
I pray that I may sit by a babbling brook
And watch your visage slowly flow upstream.
LETTER TO VINCENT
"Christ was the greatest of all artists."
--Vincent van Gogh
We knew you not
For the same reason
That we decorated a tree
With our Lord:
We couldn't face beauty,
Truth neither;
And some years later
We went on to create
Our schizophrenic paradise,
Our finishing touch,
Our closing circle
Of hell on earth.
How many crucified we then,
And left not even a relic?
Their names liveth no more!
Faust-like, we strove
To extinguish the immortal!
I speak of neither Greek nor Jew,
Circumcision nor uncircumcision,
Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free
(For by one man, all have sinned) --
Their blood be on us all!
LIBERATE THE WORD INSPIRED
Liberate the Word inspired!
Let me see your string of words un-
poemed, ritualised from everlasting
Bounding (even) onto everlasting.
This stuff is written in English. The poem here
Which I hold between my hands of clay and dust
Was flung onto paper eight years ago (aught has a nice figure).
It is called -- it has no better name -- "Chance Meeting." Humbly... to introduce...
LIFE
Life is like a beach of sand
(Among other things).
From a distance it looks quite golden
But upon closer inspection
Appears rather brown.
A river runs through,
Gorging out channels,
Escaping into the sea.
This is pain.
It forms in trickles
From small causes,
Builds up into hewing rivulets,
Which join into overwhelming floods,
Before tearing into the great trash basket,
The boundless sea of love.
LIFE
Existence
the play of light
on the branches
over my head
temporary canopy
the play of light
the play of light
Being
magpie
watched
it is always
the watcher and the watched
Evolution
a rabbit
there
the first thing I thought was
this was the first rabbit
I had seen in a wood
a snail
I thought
a shell
the first snail
and the last
and while you are thinking
on your back
from behind
the hog will take you
LIFE-AFFIRMING ART
Take a matchbox -- empty, naturally -- and draw two opposing faces in the bed of the box. Opposing in that they lie at contrary ends but also that the one is joyful and the other despondent. Close the box. There is thus a happy face asleep in the bed of the box and a mournful face there in the bed of the box. Rotate the box several times and then draw open the box. What face one beholds depends (naturally) on the drawer.
LIFE IS LIKE A BALLOON
Life is like a balloon
It took so long to fill --
Sizzling through the air --
Past the windowsill.
LIFT THE VEIL
Beyond the curtain
You'll see the light: lift the veil
And see the bright stars.
LIGHT-WEAVER
A son of the light,
Across this darkened world,
Across these infinite spaces,
I chase the shadows:
Weaving light.
LORRAINE ALMOST
My subconscious eyes
Mystic
A web of lines
Lies
Sophie Ellis-Bextor's eyes
Mystic
Knickers
And the patterns on the floor
LOVE UNFORESEEN
No one comprehended the perfume.
The dark foreshadowing of your countenance.
No one ever knew you martyred
Love's hummingbird 'twixt teeth of silk.
A thousand Persian ponies fell asleep
In the towering penumbra of your brow,
While four nights through I wrapped this body
Round your waist, the enemy of snow.
Between plaster and ornament
Your glance came, the mustard seed.
I searched my intellect to present you
With the ivory letters, Forever.
Ever, ever, this Gethsemane of my dying,
Your elusive soul forever:
Blood of your veins in the fires of my heart,
As your mouth cools towards autumn.
LOVEDBRO
I'll turn me hand to the mendicant endeavour
Because there's a sacred text to be lent
And it'll be written in Irish
And now please will
Someone let me know
Where did I go wrong:
Sam's Town where
The streets have no name
LOVER
The light that streamed on your face was not from a window, it was from heaven --
As you ask me to do my best and undress beneath what are dark turbulent skies.
You light up my life, you are a shining light that shineth in the darkness
Of Mammon here and Mammon there and Mammon far away.
I pray that our course together may take us to the medieval ages
Where blacksmiths pottered and forged swords like your beauty.
LOVE'S ALCHEMY
I humbly transfuse
The immutable malaise of my life
Into solid perfection
In my precious art.
LUKE
His loneliness
Was for the want
Of a better
World.
LUTHER
I want to watch his visage
Slowly float upstream.
For a river flows in one direction only
And the same applies to a babbling brook
Sought out and stumbled upon
In the most hideous concrete backwater.
Navigating through the urban sprawl
And finding the beloved babbling brook
I catch a leaf and fling it into water:
A leaf representing Luther's historic visage.
But the brook will flow in one direction only!
The heresy leads to the apostasy etc. etc. etc.
The resplendent Parousia flows backwards
Throughout time (for all things are possible to God):
He destroys the man of sin, protects his little ones
Through the Tribulation, and brings good
Out of the Swinging Sixties and all the way back
To Luther's Deformation. With grace
He justifies the excesses of the former monk.
And spares us all through seven years.
MARY
Tonight I have consecrated myself to You. The woman who showed me the notice was not present at the consecration. Perhaps she is already consecrated... But that is not important now for the truth cannot be hid, nor goodness obscured by colourful provincial ridiculousness. The dream, which is everlasting in the bosom of Your tiny and fragile statuette calls me strongly to its grandiose shores. I have consecrated myself to You and I walk protected by Our Lady Who was and is and will be the Mother of the Church Triumphant. But first Thou must needs be the Mother of the Church as a Caterpillar. I am Yours and You are mine, in a way. I send you my adoration and homage this night and taking a leaf from the (holy) priest's sermon I entrust myself body and soul -- flailing, reeling, flying like a fish -- in the nameless direction of Thy tender arms.
ME WHEN I WAS YOUNGER
He thought there was something wrong with him
He always thought there was something wrong with him
And there was never anything wrong with him
Nothing but love
MEMORIES SOARING
Scattered memories
Drifting back
From my stereo:
Thank God for the stereo
And all the songs
Of my life,
The good days,
The bad days,
The memories searing in the midday sun
From the past until completion.
MINDSCAPE
1
The song I'll never speak, on the tip of my tongue it fell asleep
As I make my way through the metaphysical wilderness to where a luminary
Has gathered with the Bedouin and the Tuareg at a desert outpost. The song
I'll never speak; the sun has been taunting the lakeshore with a sunbeam.
2
Song burst out on my lips, the cries of millennia and of intellectual aeons
Pouring through the ages. Song filled up the hours
Whiled away in the shade. Songs of the stars alive!
Stars in perpetual blinding skies.
MISERABLE
I'm miserable now
After an eye-opening night
And I thought I had everything
And now I need to accept myself.
MODERNITY
In the underground
Zooming
Two fellow creatures
Are buffeted
Side by side
By neon lights.
Carnal dream;
Unreal liberties.
Will we ever reach our destination?
We are speeding like there is no tomorrow.
Eternal voyage
Of discovery and surprises.
MOONBEAM
Sun beams through the windows
As I perch above you on the floor
In the intoxication of dream
(This could only happen in dream) --
Then you ask me to undress:
Thank God we're on the first floor.
And the light that streamed on your face
Was not from a window --
It was from heaven...
MOUNTAINEERING
The rugged rocks
On the green sea...
Immeasurable! Invisible!
The moment before me!
MOUNTAINEERING TOGETHER
We start our ascent
Where brambles loosen; grass and
Heather start to loom.
Crawling the mountain
On the bellies of our feet
We breathe together.
The mist enshrouds us,
A well worn gauze to hide us
And clothe two as one.
Birds become thinner,
Only their cries alert us
That wings can exist.
The top comes sharply;
The fog had kept it, wrapped it
A well kept present.
Blinded by ground we
Faceless to each other forge
Forgotten footprints.
Tripping down the wire,
Stones glad to serve our stumble
Check us like parents.
Swirling round the fence
Fog descends the hillside and
We come down faster.
Heather blooms hotchpotch
As the snow clears with the peace
Of coming lowlands.
Sheep run affrighted
By love tumbling near them
In a wet cascade.
Mystery beckons
From fields afar; the bellows
Of newly sprung life.
We lie with shadows
In our star-fed hut, in warmth
A rusty palace.
MURDER
I wouldn't murder my worst enemy
But I'd gently and blithely reel around the fountain
Because I have everything now but after all
That's simply the most miserable of lies!
MURDER
Select a morning to murder.
I shall murder the morning
With words from Baile Átha Cliath
And Sligeach
And Moscow afar.
MUSIC
I find listening to music
Whiles away the drawl
Of the continuous
And all-embracing
And suffocating
Moments.
Listening to it speeds up the hours
And brings a smile to the eyes.
MUSIC IS THE FLARE
Music is the flare
of the visceral notion
of becoming of the absence
of passing through
MY GRIEF AT SEA
Translated from the Irish
My grief at sea
the big sea
keeping me
from my sweetie.
I was left at home
with my sadness,
with no eye for the road
now or forever.
My God that I'm not
and my fair precious
in Leinster
or in Clare.
My grief that I'm not
and my only love
on a ship
for America.
A bed of rushes
was beneath me last night,
and I cast it out
in the heat of day.
My love he came
to my side,
shoulder to shoulder
and mouth to mouth.
MY OWN DARK HEAD
Translated from the Irish
My very very own dark head,
Place your soft bright hand here around me;
Honey-mouth, that hath the scent of thyme,
It's a heartless individual who wouldn't love you.
Girls in this town are going mental and mad,
Pulling their hair and letting it to the wind,
On account of me, the best rogue in the countryside,
And yet I would leave all of that for the love of my heart.
And put your very own dark head
(Place it) right next to me here.
Honey-mouth, that hath the scent of thyme,
It's a heartless individual who wouldn't love you.
MY WAY IS IN THE SAND FLOWING
My way is in the sand flowing
And these stirrings are genuine movements!
Those who came before me did their best to get by
And they lived through each and every one of their vocations.
I'd like to focus on Harry Lovedbro: that he might be just
And the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.
Harry was called one blithe morning all of a sudden
And he was ecstatic when he discovered. I love you, bro.
MYSTIC
She called me a mystic. Jerusalem! With a shout! Trumpets!
She was talking, of course, of the light of my poetry.
I should have told that lady when we went to the bar for a drink
That I do not need substances: I don't need alcohol,
Nor cigarettes -- which I do consume -- nor cannabis;
For great, if you understand, is the mercy of seeing reality as I am.
This is one of the most startling creatures I've ever seen. It's a red panda, also known as a firefox. I've named him Wally.
