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The Spire

(10 years on)

The spire in the quagmire, The dagger in the corpse, The skewer in the sewer, The single finger up.

The stiffey by the Liffey, The ace in the hole, The chopstick stuck in traffic, The North(side) Pole.

The pin that burst the buuble, The last tooth in the comb, The first sign of trouble, The barbed welcome home.

The spike in the crime rate, The spine without a back, The hypo from the Corpo, The stake through the heart.

The needle in the noodle, The point of no return, The stick in the muddle, The javelin, the harpoon.

The rod, the birch, the bata, The Christian Brother's cane, The crozier of St Patrick Weaponized again.

The flagpole flying nothing, The blade-like glint of steel, The arrow pointing nowhere, The raver's broken heel.

Stiletto in the ghetto, Monument of blight, The nail in the coffin, The 'we' reduced to 'I'.

Pat Boran

#the spire #pat boran #irish poetry #poetry

Fingal Driving Range

From the dark car park where you used to sit To check all your texts and voice messages, Fantasias of white balls trace solitary orbits Across a floodlit arc of sky above the rooftop, Like silent souls failing to ascend into heaven.

Dermot Bolger

#fingal driving range #dermot bolger #poetry #irish poetry

Vicar Street Flats

On winter evenings They stand, silent as mountains, against the sky

Until an unheard summoning Brings the children From door after door

Like the Hopi of legend, Brought forth into light Out of the belly of the world;

Or the people Signorelli saw, With slow joy, tear themselves, Limb after limb, from the earth.

They tie ropes around lamp-posts And swing till nothing is solid Or distant or fearful anymore.

Pádraig J. Daly

#vicar street flats #irish poetry #poetry #pádraig j daly

Quarantine

In the worst hour of the worst season of the worst year of a whole people a man set out from the workhouse with his wife. He was walking - they were both walking-north. She was sick with famine fever and could not keep up. He lifted her and put her on his back. He walked like that west and north. Until at nightfall under freezing stars they arrived. In the morning they were both found dead. Of cold. Of hunger. Of the toxins of a whole history. But her feet were held against his breastbone. The last heat of his flesh was his last gift to her. Let no love poem ever come to this threshold. There is no place here for the inexact praise of the easy graces and sensuality of the body. There is only time for this merciless inventory: Their death together in the winter of 1847. Also what they suffered. How they lived. And what there is between a man and a woman. And in which darkness it can best be proved.

Eavan Boland

#eavan boland #quarantine #poetry #irish poetry

An Elegy For My Mother in Which She Scarcely Appears

I knew we had to grieve for the animals a long time ago: weep for them, pity them. I knew it was our strange human duty to write their elegies after we arranged their demise. I was young then and able for the paradox. I am older now and ready with the question: What happened to them all? I mean to those old dumb implements which have no eyes to plead with us like theirs, no claim to make on us like theirs? I mean - there was a singing kettle. I want to know why no one tagged its neck or ringed the tin base of its extinct design or crouched to hear its rising shriek in winter or wrote it down with the birds in their blue sleeves of air torn away with the trees that sheltered them. And there were brass fire dogs which lay out all evening on the grate and in the heat thrown at them by the last of the peat fire but no one noted down their history or put them in the old packs under slate-blue moonlight. There was a wooden clothes horse, absolutely steady without sinews, with no mane and no meadows to canter in; carrying, instead of landlords or Irish monks, rinsed tea cloths but still, I would have thought, worth adding to the catalogue of what we need, what we always need as is my mother, on this Dublin evening of fog crystals and frost as she reaches out to test one corner of a cloth for dryness as the prewar Irish twilight closes in and down on the room and the curtains are drawn and here am I, not even born and already a conservationist, with nothing to assist me but the last and most fabulous of beasts – language, language – which knows, as I do, that it’s too late to record the loss of these things but does so anyway, and anxiously, in case it shares their fate.

Eavan Boland

#an elegy for my mother in which she scarcely appears #eavan boland #poetry #irish poetry

Fern Hill

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green, The night above the dingle starry, Time let me hail and climb Golden in the heydays of his eyes, And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves Trail with daisies and barley Down the rivers of the windfall light. And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home, In the sun that is young once only, Time let me play and be Golden in the mercy of his means, And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold, And the sabbath rang slowly In the pebbles of the holy streams. All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air And playing, lovely and watery And fire green as grass. And nightly under the simple stars As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away, All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars Flying with the ricks, and the horses Flashing into the dark. And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all Shining, it was Adam and maiden, The sky gathered again And the sun grew round that very day. So it must have been after the birth of the simple light In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm Out of the whinnying green stable On to the fields of praise. And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long, In the sun born over and over, I ran my heedless ways, My wishes raced through the house high hay And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs Before the children green and golden Follow him out of grace. Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand, In the moon that is always rising, Nor that riding to sleep I should hear him fly with the high fields And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land. Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means, Time held me green and dying Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Dylan Thomas

#fern hill #dylan thomas #poetry

The Waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I feel my fate in what I cannot fear. I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know? I hear my being dance from ear to ear. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you? God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there, And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how? The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair; I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do To you and me, so take the lively air, And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know. What falls away is always. And is near. I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I learn by going where I have to go.

Theodore Roethke

#theodore roethke #the waking #poetry

How the Earth and All the Planets were Created

I went to find the grave of my grandmother who died before my time. And hers. I searched among marsh grass and granite and single headstones and smashed lettering and archangel wings and found none. For once I said I will face this landscape and look at it as she was looked upon: Unloved because unknown. Unknown because un-named. Glass Pistol Castle disappeared, Baltray and then Clogher Head. To the west the estuary of the Boyne - stripped of its battles and history - became only willow-trees and distances. I drove back in the half-light of late summer on anonymous roads on my journey home as the constellations rose overhead, some of them twisted into women: pinioned and winged and single-handedly holding high the dome and curve and horizons of today and tomorrow, All the ships looking up to them. All the compasses made true by them. All the night skies named for their sorrow.

Eavan Boland

#how the earth and all the planets were created #eavan boland #poetry #irish poetry

River Incident

A shell arched under my toes, Stirred up a whirl of silt That riffled around my knees. Whatever I owed to time Slowed in my human form; Sea water stood in my veins, The elements I kept warm Crumbled and flowed away, And I knew I had been there before, In that cold, granite slime, In the dark, in the rolling water.

Theodore Roethke

#river incident #theodore roethke #poetry

Abscence

I have scarcely left you When you go in me, crystalline, Or trembling, Or uneasy, wounded by me Or overwhelmed with love, as when your eyes Close upon the gift of life That without cease I give you.

My love, We have found each other Thirsty and we have Drunk up all the water and the Blood, We found each other Hungry And we bit each other As fire bites, Leaving wounds in us.

But wait for me, Keep for me your sweetness. I will give you too A rose.

Pablo Neruda

#poetry #abscence #pablo neruda

I Knew A Woman

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones, When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them; Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one: The shapes a bright container can contain! Of her choice virtues only gods should speak, Or English poets who grew up on Greek (I’d have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek).

How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin, She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand; She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin; I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand; She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake, Coming behind her for her pretty sake (But what prodigious mowing we did make).

Love likes a gander, and adores a goose: Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize; She played it quick, she played it light and loose; My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees; Her several parts could keep a pure repose, Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose (She moved in circles, and those circles moved).

Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay: I’m martyr to a motion not my own; What’s freedom for? To know eternity. I swear she cast a shadow white as stone. But who would count eternity in days? These old bones live to learn her wanton ways: (I measure time by how a body sways).

Theodore Roethke

#i knew a woman #theodore roethke #poetry

Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale

Measure the walls. Count the ribs. Notch the long days. Look up for blue sky through the spout. Make small fires with the broken hulls of fishing boats. Practice smoke signals. Call old friends, and listen for echoes of distant voices. Organize your calendar. Dream of the beach. Look each way for the dim glow of light. Work on your reports. Review each of your life’s ten million choices. Endure moments of self-loathing. Find the evidence of those before you. Destroy it. Try to be very quiet, and listen for the sound of gears and moving water. Listen for the sound of your heart. Be thankful that you are here, swallowed with all hope, where you can rest and wait. Be nostalgic. Think of all the things you did and could have done. Remember treading water in the center of the still night sea, your toes pointing again and again down, down into the black depths.

Dan Albergotti

#things to do in the belly of the whale #dan albergotti #poetry

38.

I would be buried beside my parents to be told, Yes, our darling son, it could have been better, but we loved you. Lie down beside us, face up to the sky.

David Ignatow

#david ignatow #poetry

As one listens to the rain

Listen to me as one listens to the rain, not attentive, not distracted, light footsteps, thin drizzle, water that is air, air that is time, the day is still leaving, the night has yet to arrive, figurations of mist at the turn of the corner, figurations of time at the bend in this pause, listen to me as one listens to the rain, without listening, hear what I say with eyes open inward, asleep with all five senses awake, it’s raining, light footsteps, a murmur of syllables, air and water, words with no weight: what we are and are, the days and years, this moment, weightless time and heavy sorrow, listen to me as one listens to the rain, wet asphalt is shining, steam rises and walks away, night unfolds and looks at me, you are you and your body of steam, you and your face of night, you and your hair, unhurried lightning, you cross the street and enter my forehead, footsteps of water across my eyes, listen to me as one listens to the rain, the asphalt’s shining, you cross the street, it is the mist, wandering in the night, it is the night, asleep in your bed, it is the surge of waves in your breath, your fingers of water dampen my forehead, your fingers of flame burn my eyes, your fingers of air open eyelids of time, a spring of visions and resurrections, listen to me as one listens to the rain, the years go by, the moments return, do you hear the footsteps in the next room? not here, not there: you hear them in another time that is now, listen to the footsteps of time, inventor of places with no weight, nowhere, listen to the rain running over the terrace, the night is now more night in the grove, lightning has nestled among the leaves, a restless garden adrift—go in, your shadow covers this page.

Octavio Paz

#as one listens to the rain #octavio paz #poetry

The Raspberry Room

It was solid hedge, loops of bramble and thorny as it had to be with its berries thick as bumblebees. It drew blood just to get there, but I was queen of that place, at ten, though the berries shook like fists in the wind, daring anyone to come in. I was trying so hard to love this world—real rooms too big and full of worry to comfortably inhabit—but believing I was born to live in that cloistered green bower: the raspberry patch in the back acre of my grandparents’ orchard. I was cross- stitched and beaded by its fat, dollmaker’s needles. The effort of sliding under the heavy, spiked tangles that tore my clothes and smeared me with juice was rewarded with space, wholly mine, a kind of room out of the crush of the bushes with a canopy of raspberry dagger-leaves and a syrup of sun and birdsong. Hours would pass in the loud buzz of it, blood made it mine—the adventure of that red sting singing down my calves, the place the scratches brought me to: just space enough for a girl to lie down.

Karin Gottshall

#the raspberry room #karin gottshall #poetry

The History of Poetry

Our masters are gone and if they returned Who among us would hear them, who would know The bodily sound of heaven of the heavenly sound Of the body, endless and vanishing, that tuned Our days before the wheeling stars Were stripped of power? The answer is None of us here. And what does it mean if we see The moon-glazed mountains and the town with its silent doors And water towers, and feel like raising our voices Just a little, or sometimes during late autumn When the evening flowers a moment over the western range And we imagine angels rushing down the air’s cold steps To wish us well, if we have lost our will, And do nothing but doze, half hearing the sighs Of this or that breeze drift aimlessly over the failed farms And wasted gardens? These days when we waken. Everything shines with the same blue light That filled our sleep moments before, So we do nothing but count the trees, the clouds, The few birds left; then we decide that we shouldn’t Be hard on ourselves, that the past was no better Than now, for hasn’t the enemy always existed, And wasn’t the church of the world always in ruins?

Mark Strand

#the history of poetry #mark strand #poetry

The Evil Key

In woods and lakes, car boots, freezers, huts, in ministers’ apartment where their flailing last

went on too long, garrotted, poisoned, hanged or sliced in half and lain like Solomon’s child

on the bridge of a border between two countries- the myriad murdered dead of Scandinavia

are seeping their slow corrosion into the air, into the tap water, and must be found. So many crimes

unsolved you’d think those dressed-down cops in their open-plan offices balanced books

on their heads all day or practised on the sly for the Eurovision Song Contest. But wait -

Denmark and Sweden’s cleverest women are on their way: obsessed, lonely, semi-autistic

and wired as no man with them ever is to sense, without exactly evidence, where corpses

have been left: plastered into a crevice in a flat in an affluent suburb or strung amongst the cables

of a lift-shaft in a disused meat-packing plant F#, writes Johann Mattheson in 1713,

is abandoned, singular, misanthropic, and leads to great distress, We cannot well accompany

the Devil in any other key. It will invert anything - Jingle Bells, Home on the Range, Dick Van Dyke’s

Chim Chim Cheree - turning them hopeless and ironic, just as glass-walled houses

in the forest, immaculate kitchens, flat-pack rooms sprung wide and nifty public transport systems

translate to mist in the brightly lit underground hall of the coroner’s workspace where three

blonde girls from the badminton squad have hit their brutal terminus. We are given

less than a second with their lacerated legs and hands.

Then cut to the churning sea with the moon on it - the music making it worse - then nothing.

Sinead Morrissey

#the evil key #sinead morrissey #poetry #irish poetry

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