A Poem a day keeps the melancholy away

Swiper the fox

Poem for Lara, 10

An ashtree on fire
the hair of your head
coaxing larks
with your sweet voice
in the green grass,
a crowd of daisies
playing with you,
a crowd of rabbits
dancing with you,
the blackbird
with its gold bill
is a jewel for you,
the goldfinch
with its sweetness
is your music.
You are perfume,
you are honey,
a wild strawberry:
even the bees think you
a flower in the field.
Little queen of the land of books,
may you always be thus,
may you ever be free
from sorrow-chains.

Here’s my blessing for you, girl,
and it is no petty grace —
may you have the beauty of your mother’s soul
and the beauty of her face.

–Michael Hartnett,

marienbad

The Seven Sorrows

The first sorrow of autumn
Is the slow goodbye
Of the garden who stands so long in the evening-
A brown poppy head,
The stalk of a lily,
And still cannot go.

The second sorrow
Is the empty feet
Of a pheasant who hangs from a hook with his brothers.
The woodland of gold
Is folded in feathers
With its head in a bag.

And the third sorrow
Is the slow goodbye
Of the sun who has gathered the birds and who gathers
The minutes of evening,
The golden and holy
Ground of the picture.

The fourth sorrow
Is the pond gone black
Ruined and sunken the city of water-
The beetle’s palace,
The catacombs
Of the dragonfly.

And the fifth sorrow
Is the slow goodbye
Of the woodland that quietly breaks up its camp.
One day it’s gone.
It has only left litter-
Firewood, tentpoles.

And the sixth sorrow
Is the fox’s sorrow
The joy of the huntsman, the joy of the hounds,
The hooves that pound
Till earth closes her ear
To the fox’s prayer.

And the seventh sorrow
Is the slow goodbye
Of the face with its wrinkles that looks through the window
As the year packs up
Like a tatty fairground
That came for the children.

Ted Hughes

kerry4sam

One of My All-Time Favourite, Thought-Provoking, Wake-You-Up Poems

I Chose To Look The Other Way
Don Merrill

I could have saved a life that day,
But I chose to look the other way.
It wasn’t that I didn’t care,
I had the time, and I was there.

But I didn’t want to seem a fool,
Or argue over a safety rule.
I knew he’d done the job before,
If I spoke up, he might get sore.

The chances didn’t seem that bad,
I’d done the same, He knew I had.
So I shook my head and walked on by,
He knew the risks as well as I.

He took the chance, I closed an eye,
And with that act, I let him die.
I could have saved a life that day,
But I chose to look the other way.

Now every time I see his wife,
I’ll know, I should have saved his life.
That guilt is something I must bear,
But it isn’t something you need share.

If you see a risk that others take,
That puts their health or life at stake.
The question asked, or thing you say,
Could help them live another day.

If you see a risk and walk away,
Then hope you never have to say,
I could have saved a life that day,
But I chose, to look the other way

Hope you take something Positive,
kerry4sam

Dave!

Gonna slip in one of my own... #cheeky

Wishing Well

I swear I saw my childhood in a wishing well.
Tumbling from the sky, it made ripples in the water
and then set sail.

With a plop I joined it and, gathering pace
as the stream trickled playfully over the
smooth stones, I trailed my fingers and
dipped my toes.

With the sun breaking through the canopy,
we passed purple and white wildflowers, daffodils;
felt furry moss and caressed the rough bark
of bankside trees; we made chains of daisies
and then set free the Jinny-Joes.

As the swell slowed, it shoved and strained
against the broadening banks.
The meandering brook deepened and
darkened, and as the valley
widened, it opened its menacing jaws.

The other day I swear I saw my childhood
in a wishing well, and with a plop I watched it sink,
and then settle among the sediment.

Dave McGinn

marienbad

Consolation

Darwin.
They say he read novels to relax,
But only certain kinds:
nothing that ended unhappily.
If anything like that turned up,
enraged, he flung the book into the fire.

True or not,
I’m ready to believe it.

Scanning in his mind so many times and places,
he’d had enough of dying species,
the triumphs of the strong over the weak,
the endless struggles to survive,
all doomed sooner or later.
He’d earned the right to happy endings,
at least in fiction
with its diminutions.

Hence the indispensable
silver lining,
the lovers reunited, the families reconciled,
the doubts dispelled, fidelity rewarded,
fortunes regained, treasures uncovered,
stiff-necked neighbors mending their ways,
good names restored, greed daunted,
old maids married off to worthy parsons,
troublemakers banished to other hemispheres,
forgers of documents tossed down the stairs,
seducers scurrying to the altar,
orphans sheltered, widows comforted,
pride humbled, wounds healed over,
prodigal sons summoned home,
cups of sorrow thrown into the ocean,
hankies drenched with tears of reconciliation,
general merriment and celebration,
and the dog Fido,
gone astray in the first chapter,
turns up barking gladly
in the last.

Wislawa Szymborska

Dave!

ON AN APPLE-RIPE SEPTEMBER MORNING

On an apple-ripe September morning
Through the mist-chill fields I went
With a pitch-fork on my shoulder
Less for use than for devilment.

The threshing mill was set-up, I knew,
In Cassidy's haggard last night,
And we owed them a day at the threshing
Since last year. O it was delight

To be paying bills of laughter
And chaffy gossip in kind
With work thrown in to ballast
The fantasy-soaring mind.

As I crossed the wooden bridge I wondered
As I looked into the drain
If ever a summer morning should find me
Shovelling up eels again.

And I thought of the wasps' nest in the bank
And how I got chased one day
Leaving the drag and the scraw-knife behind,
How I covered my face with hay.

The wet leaves of the cocksfoot
Polished my boots as I
Went round by the glistening bog-holes
Lost in unthinking joy.

I'll be carrying bags to-day, I mused,
The best job at the mill
With plenty of time to talk of our loves
As we wait for the bags to fill.

Maybe Mary might call round...
And then I came to the haggard gate,
And I knew as I entered that I had come
Through fields that were part of no earthly estate.

-- Patrick Kavanagh

Insect Overlord

If Dave can post one... :pac:

To James, After Your Birthday

The much maligned
and fabled morning after
such a fine evening and night
Of celebration hit us hard.

We rose for tea and coffee,
And sat around your kitchen table
With buttered toast and
Clouded memories and bashful smiles.

The freshness of that Sunday
In September, after rain,
And the gleaming green horizon
Soothed our tired eyes and heads.

We spoke of songs and drinking,
Of games and broken glasses,
Of comforts and cures that
Conjured images of childhood,

Then toasted you and yours with
Empty vessels, croaking, hoarse,
Yet happy notes in voices
Of those glad to be your friends.

-T.Collins

marienbad

A bit long but worth it for the laugh

The Book of My Enemy has been Remaindered

Clive James


The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I am pleased.
In vast quantities it has been remaindered
Like a van-load of counterfeit that has been seized
And sits in piles in a police warehouse,
My enemy’s much-prized effort sits in piles
In the kind of bookshop where remaindering occurs.
Great, square stacks of rejected books and, between them, aisles
One passes down reflecting on life’s vanities,
Pausing to remember all those thoughtful reviews
Lavished to no avail upon one’s enemy’s book -
For behold, here is that book
Among these ranks and banks of duds,
These ponderous and seeminly irreducible cairns
Of complete stiffs.
The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I rejoice.
It has gone with bowed head like a defeated legion
Beneath the yoke.
What avail him now his awards and prizes,
The praise expended upon his meticulous technique,
His individual new voice?
Knocked into the middle of next week
His brainchild now consorts with the bad buys
The sinker, clinkers, dogs and dregs,
The Edsels of the world of moveable type,
The bummers that no amount of hype could shift,
The unbudgeable turkeys.
Yea, his slim volume with its understated wrapper
Bathes in the blare of the brightly jacketed Hitler’s War Machine,
His unmistakably individual new voice
Shares the same scrapyart with a forlorn skyscraper
Of The Kung-Fu Cookbook,
His honesty, proclaimed by himself and believed by others,
His renowned abhorrence of all posturing and pretense,
Is there with Pertwee’s Promenades and Pierrots –
One Hundred Years of Seaside Entertainment,
And (oh, this above all) his sensibility,
His sensibility and its hair-like filaments,
His delicate, quivering sensibility is now as one
With Barbara Windsor’s Book of Boobs,
A volume graced by the descriptive rubric
“My boobs will give everyone hours of fun.”
Soon now a book of mine could be remaindered also,
Though not to the monumental extent
In which the chastisement of remaindering has been meted out
To the book of my enemy,
Since in the case of my own book it will be due
To a miscalculated print run, a marketing error –
Nothing to do with merit.
But just supposing that such an event should hold
Some slight element of sadness, it will be offset
By the memory of this sweet moment.
Chill the champagne and polish the crystal goblets!
The book of my enemy has been remaindered
And I am glad.

Dave!

At Roane Head

Robin Robertson

for John Burnside

You’d know her house by the drawn blinds –
by the cormorants pitched on the boundary wall,
the black crosses of their wings hung out to dry.
You’d tell it by the quicken and the pine that hid it
from the sea and from the brief light of the sun,
and by Aonghas the collie, lying at the door
where he died: a rack of bones like a sprung trap.

A fork of barnacle geese came over, with that slow
squeak of rusty saws. The bitter sea’s complaining pull
and roll; a whicker of pigeons, lifting in the wood.

She’d had four sons, I knew that well enough,
and each one wrong. All born blind, they say,
slack-jawed and simple, web-footed,
rickety as sticks. Beautiful faces, I’m told,
though blank as air.
Someone saw them once, outside, hirpling
down to the shore, chittering like rats,
and said they were fine swimmers,
but I would have guessed at that.

Her husband left her: said
they couldn’t be his, they were more
fish than human;
he said they were beglamoured,
and searched their skin for the showing marks.

For years she tended each difficult flame:
their tight, flickering bodies.
Each night she closed
the scales of their eyes to smoor the fire.

Until he came again,
that last time,
thick with drink, saying
he’d had enough of this,
all this witchery,
and made them stand
in a row by their beds,
twitching. Their hands
flapped; herring-eyes
rolled in their heads.
He went along the line
relaxing them
one after another
with a small knife.

They say she goes out every night to lay
blankets on the graves to keep them warm.
It would put the heart across you, all that grief.

There was an otter worrying in the leaves, a heron
loping slow over the water when I came
at scraich of day, back to her door.

She’d hung four stones in a necklace, wore
four rings on the hand that led me past the room
with four small candles burning
which she called ‘the room of rain’.
Milky smoke poured up from the grate
like a waterfall in reverse
and she said my name,
and it was the only thing
and the last thing that she said.

She gave me a skylark’s egg in a bed of frost;
gave me twists of my four sons’ hair; gave me
her husband’s head in a wooden box.
Then she gave me the sealskin, and I put it on.

chasmcb

Wow! What a poem and what a tale, thanks for sharing.

Day Lewin

Oh dear! So, as a corollary to that on a much more cheerful note --

THE EDDYSTONE LIGHT SONG

My father was the keeper of the Eddystone light
And he slept with a mermaid one fine night
Out of this union there came three
A porpoise and a porgy and the other was me!
Yo ho ho, the wind blows free,
Oh for the life on the rolling sea!

One night, as I was a-trimming the glim
Singing a verse from the evening hymn
I head a voice cry out an "Ahoy!"
And there was my mother, sitting on a buoy.
Yo ho ho, the wind blows free,
Oh for the life on the rolling sea!

"Oh, what has become of my children three?"
My mother then inquired of me.
One's on exhibit as a talking fish
The other was served in a chafing dish.
Yo ho ho, the wind blows free,
Oh for the life on the rolling sea!

Then the phosphorus flashed in her seaweed hair.
I looked again, and my mother wasn't there
But her voice came angrily out of the night
"To Hell with the keeper of the Eddystone Light!"
Yo ho ho, the wind blows free,
Oh for the life on the rolling sea!




(Don't know who wrote it, but it was sung by Burl Ives)

cadesin

My Dear and Only Love

My dear and only Love, I pray
This noble world of thee
Be govern'd by no other sway
But purest monarchy;
For if confusion have a part,
Which virtuous souls abhor,
And hold a synod in thy heart,
I'll never love thee more.
Like Alexander I will reign,
And I will reign alone,
My thoughts shall evermore disdain
A rival on my throne.
He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
That puts it not unto the touch
To win or lose it all.

But I must rule and govern still,
And always give the law,
And have each subject at my will,
And all to stand in awe.
But 'gainst my battery, if I find
Thou shunn'st the prize so sore
As that thou sett'st me up a blind,
I'll never love thee more.

Or in the empire of thy heart,
Where I should solely be,
Another do pretend a part
And dares to vie with me;
Or if committees thou erect,
And go on such a score,
I'll sing and laugh at thy neglect,
And never love thee more.

But if thou wilt be constant then,
And faithful of thy word,
I'll make thee glorious by my pen
And famous by my sword:
I'll serve thee in such noble ways
Was never heard before;
I'll crown and deck thee all with bays,
And love thee evermore.

Mr.Nice Guy

I heard this one recently and it really struck a chord with me, particularly since it's nearly a year since my own dog died.


A Dog Has Died

Pablo Neruda

My dog has died.
I buried him in the garden
next to a rusted old machine.

Some day I'll join him right there,
but now he's gone with his shaggy coat,
his bad manners and his cold nose,
and I, the materialist, who never believed
in any promised heaven in the sky
for any human being,
I believe in a heaven I'll never enter.
Yes, I believe in a heaven for all dogdom
where my dog waits for my arrival
waving his fan-like tail in friendship.

Ai, I'll not speak of sadness here on earth,
of having lost a companion
who was never servile.
His friendship for me, like that of a porcupine
withholding its authority,
was the friendship of a star, aloof,
with no more intimacy than was called for,
with no exaggerations:
he never climbed all over my clothes
filling me full of his hair or his mange,
he never rubbed up against my knee
like other dogs obsessed with sex.

No, my dog used to gaze at me,
paying me the attention I need,
the attention required
to make a vain person like me understand
that, being a dog, he was wasting time,
but, with those eyes so much purer than mine,
he'd keep on gazing at me
with a look that reserved for me alone
all his sweet and shaggy life,
always near me, never troubling me,
and asking nothing.

Ai, how many times have I envied his tail
as we walked together on the shores of the sea
in the lonely winter of Isla Negra
where the wintering birds filled the sky
and my hairy dog was jumping about
full of the voltage of the sea's movement:
my wandering dog, sniffing away
with his golden tail held high,
face to face with the ocean's spray.

Joyful, joyful, joyful,
as only dogs know how to be happy
with only the autonomy
of their shameless spirit.

There are no goodbyes for my dog who has died,
and we don't now and never did lie to each other.

So now he's gone and I buried him,
and that's all there is to it.

marienbad

How to kill a living thing

Neglect it
Criticise it to its face
Say how it kills the light
Traps all the Rubbish
Bores you with its green

Continually
Harden your heart
Then
Cut it down close
To the root as possible

Forget it
For a week or a month
Return with an axe
Split it with one blow
Insert a stone

To keep the wound wide open


Eibhlin Nic Eochaidh

marienbad

Seven dog-days we let pass
Naming Queens in Glenmacnass,
All the rare and royal names
Wormy sheepskin yet retains,
Etain, Helen, Maeve, and Fand,
Golden Deirdre's tender hand,
Bert, the big-foot, sung by Villon,
Cassandra, Ronsard found in Lyon.
Queens of Sheba, Meath and Connaught,
Coifed with crown, or gaudy bonnet,
Queens whose finger once did stir men,
Queens were eaten of fleas and vermin,
Queens men drew like Monna Lisa,
Or slew with drugs in Rome and Pisa,
We named Lucrezia Crivelli,
And Titian's lady with amber belly,
Queens acquainted in learned sin,
Jane of Jewry's slender shin:
Queens who cut the bogs of Glanna,
Judith of Scripture, and Gloriana,
Queens who wasted the East by proxy,
Or drove the ass-cart, a tinker's doxy,
Yet these are rotten — I ask their pardon —
And we've the sun on rock and garden,
These are rotten, so you're the Queen
Of all the living, or have been.

Queens By J.M.Synge

donegal_man

Christmas


I've been getting ready for Christmas
I'm revving up for the great day
my credit card's cracked and my freezer is packed
'cause I started my shopping in May


The mistletoe's hanging in bunches
'cause the odd Christmas kiss isn't wrong
and the Vicar I've found - quite likes calling round
and exploring my crowns with his tongue


The bin men have gotten quite friendly
they're after a present I fear
they won't feel so chuffed when I tell them - get stuffed
'cause they don't speak the rest of the year


The family is coming for dinner
last year it was quite a good laugh
we ate fairly late - dished the veg on the plate
found the turkey was still in the bath


the Kids are all pink with excitement
'cause Santa will come so they say
their lists are extensive - extremely expensive
and they'll break it all by Boxing day


But it's worth all that fuss Christmas morning
when their little eyes are all aglow
when we're all feeling merry full of goodwill and sherry
and suffering from wind Ho Ho Ho


But please don't forget why we do it
why each year we must go to this fuss
for that guy up above who brought peace and brought love
and who probably owns Toys R Us

Liz Garrad

tomasocarthaigh

It was the greatest love for earth that God has ever shown
It was the greatest love unknowing that mankind has ever known

The awaited Christ child was born in Bethlehem to a girl of fifteen years
In a humble manger, within a stable, over which a star appears

No room found among Josephs people, we are told in the story as “the inn”
As cruel pride closed and hardened their hearts, a single mother not welcome within

Two thousand years had passed nearly, still all knowing mankind still has not learned
The message of love and humility, this was a lesson God so yearned

Mankind to learn that no birth is sinful, in no birth at all is there shame
Even borne to another than the mothers man, for that’s how Jesus came

Once upon a time in an Irish town, a girl walked her own Calvary
Through a village of Josephs people where all with eyes looking yet none could see

A mere child was with child, we know not as she walked that hill if she shed tears
Or held them back from all with a quiet dignity, this child of Mary’s years

To seek solace in the grotto neath the church on the Moate she went alone
Lay down to give birth to her son, no manger to lay him in, on cold stone,

He died not on a cross between two thieves, but in her arms, there he died
In the space of a few hours a modern day Christ was born there, and crucified

No cattle’s breath to warm him, no wise men arrived with gifts for him to bear
His mother sought solace from the Virgin Mary, why by grace led her there

We know not did she pray, or did she curse God and the world and all
If she did, God understood, as good as any prayer this He would call

The consequences of mankinds closed minds and pride and gossiping tongues
Its as if the Pharissees again upon the cross Christ again was hung

Josephs people live among us, they run to church and pray
Look down on single mothers, being ignorant to this very day.

Glossary:

Joseph’s people: The story of the inn in the bible is a version of the story, the original being that Joseph and Mary went to family who on seeing she was with child and knowing they were not married politley said there was no room. To this day people look down on single mothers, and a lot who choose abortion do it to hide family shame, a shame caused by an element who call themselves pro life, but are in fact the cause of more abortions than they realise.

Apologists take this analysis and turn it to ensure this aspect is hidden, pointing out hospitality tradition would never be broken – one example is here but careful reading and understanding that Jewish taboos and modern day Christian taboos are much the same thing, and the story of how Jospeh was not the father but was standing by Mary would not have got a good reception from his relatives, no more than it would have in small town Ireland in the last few decades.

Jewish taboos and traditions on sex within and without of marraige can be read here >>>



For all that is wrong with the world, that thinking at last is changing, and while some despair at free love and promiscuity, there is more Christian thinking now among the youth then there ever was in the lat 2000 years.

==============================

On a lighter note, for the season thats in it...

Bad Santa

Santa XXX

Christmas Eve at the Hospital

donegal_man

Couldn't let the day that's in it pass without posting this


A Visit from St. Nicholas

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;
And mamma in her ’kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap,
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.
The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below,
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer,
With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;
“Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!”
As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With the sleigh full of Toys, and St. Nicholas too.
And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.
He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;
A bundle of Toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a pedler just opening his pack.
His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly.
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle,
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night.”


Clement Clark Moore

Bongalongherb

Now you'll see the midnight sun for all your days from hell they'll come
tearing back from all dead spaces only left for other places
You can sight the change of face just fixed inside an open space
One ole needle same old story left for dead in all hells glory.

Bong..Chapter 6/34 verse 4.

I would like to watch you sleeping,
which may not happen.
I would like to watch you,
Sleeping. I would like to sleep
with you, to enter
your sleep as its smooth dark wave
slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent
wavering forest of bluegreen leaves
with its watery sun and three moons
towards the cave where you must descend,
towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver
branch, the small white flower, the one
word that will protect you
from the grief at the center
of your dream, from the grief
at the center I would like to follow
you up the long stairway
again and become
the boat that would row you back
carefully, a flame
in two cupped hands
to where your body lies
beside me, and as you enter
it as easily as breathing in

I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
and that necessary.



Variation On The Word Sleep. Margaret Atwood.

tomasocarthaigh

Truth Told in All Tongues

All faiths contain a little truth. No faith knows all. If we learn from each other, we then piece all the parts of the truth together. Each knows what they need to know, told to them through their belief system in a language that they will understand.

The truth is told in all tongues
To all folk in each and every land
Spoken in the way and outlook of the listener
So that each may understand.
None is told the full story
Though each thinks that they are
Prove their ignorance in fighting over their knowledge
As if they knew the weight of a distant star.
Life is a journey to be completed
Trials are the obstacles on the route
We must learn what each other believe
From each other piece together the jigsaw of the truth!
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Read more

• I Believe
• Sky is our Ceiling, the Land our Garden
• Cupid the Hitman
• I Said I’d Make a Voodoo Doll
• Jesus in the Synagogue
• Tenalach

johnthemull

This blew me away. A shout for the silenced

Thanking My Mother for Piano Lessons
BY DIANE WAKOSKI

The relief of putting your fingers on the keyboard,
as if you were walking on the beach
and found a diamond
as big as a shoe;

as if
you had just built a wooden table
and the smell of sawdust was in the air,
your hands dry and woody;

as if
you had eluded
the man in the dark hat who had been following you
all week;

the relief
of putting your fingers on the keyboard,
playing the chords of
Beethoven,
Bach,
Chopin
in an afternoon when I had no one to talk to,
when the magazine advertisement forms of soft sweaters
and clean shining Republican middle-class hair
walked into carpeted houses
and left me alone
with bare floors and a few books

I want to thank my mother
for working every day
in a drab office
in garages and water companies
cutting the cream out of her coffee at 40
to lose weight, her heavy body
writing its delicate bookkeeper’s ledgers
alone, with no man to look at her face,
her body, her prematurely white hair
in love
I want to thank
my mother for working and always paying for
my piano lessons
before she paid the Bank of America loan
or bought the groceries
or had our old rattling Ford repaired.

I was a quiet child,
afraid of walking into a store alone,
afraid of the water,
the sun,
the dirty weeds in back yards,
afraid of my mother’s bad breath,
and afraid of my father’s occasional visits home,
knowing he would leave again;
afraid of not having any money,
afraid of my clumsy body,
that I knew
no one would ever love

But I played my way
on the old upright piano
obtained for $10,
played my way through fear,
through ugliness,
through growing up in a world of dime-store purchases,
and a desire to love
a loveless world.

I played my way through an ugly face
and lonely afternoons, days, evenings, nights,
mornings even, empty
as a rusty coffee can,
played my way through the rustles of spring
and wanted everything around me to shimmer like the narrow tide
on a flat beach at sunset in Southern California,
I played my way through
an empty father’s hat in my mother’s closet
and a bed she slept on only one side of,
never wrinkling an inch of
the other side,
waiting,
waiting,

I played my way through honors in school,
the only place I could
talk
the classroom,
or at my piano lessons, Mrs. Hillhouse’s canary always
singing the most for my talents,
as if I had thrown some part of my body away upon entering
her house
and was now searching every ivory case
of the keyboard, slipping my fingers over black
ridges and around smooth rocks,
wondering where I had lost my bloody organs,
or my mouth which sometimes opened
like a California poppy,
wide and with contrasts
beautiful in sweeping fields,
entirely closed morning and night,

I played my way from age to age,
but they all seemed ageless
or perhaps always
old and lonely,
wanting only one thing, surrounded by the dusty bitter-smelling
leaves of orange trees,
wanting only to be touched by a man who loved me,
who would be there every night
to put his large strong hand over my shoulder,
whose hips I would wake up against in the morning,
whose mustaches might brush a face asleep,
dreaming of pianos that made the sound of Mozart
and Schubert without demanding
that life suck everything
out of you each day,
without demanding the emptiness
of a timid little life.

I want to thank my mother
for letting me wake her up sometimes at 6 in the morning
when I practiced my lessons
and for making sure I had a piano
to lay my school books down on, every afternoon.
I haven’t touched the piano in 10 years,
perhaps in fear that what little love I’ve been able to
pick, like lint, out of the corners of pockets,
will get lost,
slide away,
into the terribly empty cavern of me
if I ever open it all the way up again.
Love is a man
with a mustache
gently holding me every night,
always being there when I need to touch him;
he could not know the painfully loud
music from the past that
his loving stops from pounding, banging,
battering through my brain,
which does its best to destroy the precarious gray matter when I
am alone;
he does not hear Mrs. Hillhouse’s canary singing for me,
liking the sound of my lesson this week,
telling me,
confirming what my teacher says,
that I have a gift for the piano
few of her other pupils had.
When I touch the man
I love,
I want to thank my mother for giving me
piano lessons
all those years,
keeping the memory of Beethoven,
a deaf tortured man,
in mind;
of the beauty that can come
from even an ugly
past.
Diane Wakoski

tomasocarthaigh

Mary Ann Duignan was the daughter of Francis Duignan of Edenmore in Ballinamuck where she grew up, and Ann Grey of Mohill in Leirtim. From a poor background she would rise – or fall as we may see it! – to being one of the biggest conwomen of her time, who would call herself the “Queen of Crooks”, in time though, the law caought up with her and she died in poverty and obscurity. She was the Ronnie Biggs of her day…

As your man on the Savage Eye says "And they tell you there is no talent in Longford!"

Not for her the toil of the cold hard soil
The neighbours angry word, the calling agent of the landlord
The cries of hungry children and roars of drunken men
The cattle bearing the ribbonmens sword: a mother of many with more on board

Her? She saught freedom.

She asked her father for her share of the money she new was there
Angrily he replied, she was rebuked, denied
Prodigal daughter with greed did look, one night flight with the lot she took
With exhaustion her mother sighed as the first breaths of life her sister cried.

She took freedom.

To Liverpool she set sail and did not fail
Fabrics fair she bought the latest garments to wear
Only herself to please she took again to the seas
She did not care: no one would know here over there

She relished freedom.

But there with temptation of drink, money runs out quicker than you think
The crisis present is real, she learns quick to steal
On the wind a girl wont thrive: must do what she must to survive
This is the streets deal, hard hearts don’t feel

How high the price of freedom!

But better times and more high profile crimes
With lovers she took to her bed and not clients instead
The life of romance, the Telegraph raid in France
What a life she led from the one for which she was bred:

Drunk on the excitement of freedom!

But time in time saw the long hand of the law
Cut her down in the prime of her crime
One lover another shot, in the foot the bullet him it got
Fate strikes sudden and sublime: seventeen years was her time…

The pays the cost of freedom!

Her time done, her freedom again won
Markeiwitz she did meet who was happy her to greet
Long lost fer fame, once again on the game
Age and time did defeat the Queen of the Street.

What use now for empty freedom?

More from Tomás:

* Not Fit to Fly the Red Flag

* Birds Sing

* Lovers of Bazdara

B00!

First Night at Sea by Carl Phillips

Like any other kingdom built of wickedness and
joy - cracked, anchorless, bit of ghost in the making,
only here for now. Blue for once not just as in
forgive, but blue as blue . . . As affection was never

twilight, but a light of its own, blindness not at all
a gift to be held close to the chest, stubborn horse
meanwhile beating wild beneath it, stubborn heart
a dark, where was a brightness, a bright where dark.

B00!

Love Song
~Rainer Maria Rilke

How can I keep my soul in me, so that
it doesn't touch your soul? How can I raise
it high enough, past you, to other things?
I would like to shelter it, among remote
lost objects, in some dark and silent place
that doesn't resonate when your depths resound.
Yet everything that touches us, me and you,
takes us together like a violin's bow,
which draws *one* voice out of two separate strings.
Upon what instrument are we two spanned?
And what musician holds us in his hand?
Oh sweetest song.

B00!

From "How to Survive the Loss of a Love" by Peter McWilliams

the sun will rise
in a few minutes.

it's been doing it
--regularly--
for as long as I
can remember.

maybe I should
pin my hopes
on important,
but often
unnoticed,
certainties
like that,

not on such relatively
trivial matters as
whether you will ever
love me
or not

I must conquer my loneliness

alone.

I must be happy with myself
or I have
nothing
to offer.

Two halves have
little choice
but to
join,
and yes,
they do
make a
whole.

but two
wholes,
when they coincide. . .

that is
beauty.

that is
love.

B00!

an excerpt (because I can't recall the entire poem) from
The Outernationale by Peter Gizzi

You are inside my projector turning overhead and me
Coming in and out of focus when you’re light won’t reach me.
I know you’re there even when I need to stand in the dark
To find out why I’m standing in the dark.
If everything were different then this might be the same
In a rusty town when the sun strokes the windows…
…Delivered even for an instant to the right place and time.

Of tomorrow, how satisfied you are with your choices?
Not the one you can choose among, but the one’s you’re made of…

I was going to say remembering you once you are gone
But that isn’t it. How I loved so much more than that.
The whole dizzying horizon blooming around you...
...and the long gaps of wanting and actual being here
With you - like this… …As if it were enough,
just this once to rescue doubt into loving.

… What is dictating my hand me, dear face?
On its way to contact?
Can one ever expose the charge beneath a surface?
Are you still with me?

implausible

For the commemorative time that's in it. It has echoes of Tom Kettle's "To my daughter, Betty" and is beautifully poignant, especially in light of what was to happen a few years later. And who wouldn't wish their child "Simpler joys: the natural growth/Of your childhood and your youth,
/Courage, innocence, and truth"?

Wishes For My Son, Born On Saint Cecilia’s Day, 1912

Now, my son, is life for you,
And I wish you joy of it,—
Joy of power in all you do,
Deeper passion, better wit
Than I had who had enough,
Quicker life and length thereof,
More of every gift but love.

Love I have beyond all men,
Love that now you share with me—
What have I to wish you then
But that you be good and free,
And that God to you may give
Grace in stronger days to live?

For I wish you more than I
Ever knew of glorious deed,
Though no rapture passed me by
That an eager heart could heed,
Though I followed heights and sought
Things the sequel never brought.

Wild and perilous holy things
Flaming with a martyr’s blood,
And the joy that laughs and sings
Where a foe must be withstood,
Joy of headlong happy chance
Leading on the battle dance.

But I found no enemy,
No man in a world of wrong,
That Christ’s word of charity
Did not render clean and strong—
Who was I to judge my kind,
Blindest groper of the blind?

God to you may give the sight
And the clear, undoubting strength
Wars to knit for single right,
Freedom’s war to knit at length,
And to win through wrath and strife,
To the sequel of my life.

But for you, so small and young,
Born on Saint Cecilia’s Day,
I in more harmonious song
Now for nearer joys should pray—
Simpler joys: the natural growth
Of your childhood and your youth,
Courage, innocence, and truth:

These for you, so small and young,
In your hand and heart and tongue.
Thomas MacDonagh

B00!

Fibber by Jim Harrison

My birdwatching friends tell me, “You’re always seeing birds that don’t exist.”
And I answer that my eye seems to change nearly everything it sees
and is also drawn to making something out of nothing, a habit since childhood.

I’m so unreliable no one asks me “what’s that?”
knowing that a Sandhill crane in a remote field can become a yellow Volkswagen.
The girl’s blue dress is easily the green I prefer in moments.
Words themselves can adopt confusing colors which can become a burden while reading.

You don’t have to become what you already are which is a relief.
Today in Sierra Vista while carrying six plastic bags of groceries I fell down.
Can that be a curb? What else? The ground rushed up and I looked at gravel inches away,
a knee and hands leaking blood.

Time and pain are abstractions you can’t see
but you know when they’re with you like a cold hard wind.
It’s time to peel my heart off my sleeve. It sits there red and glistening
like a pig’s heart on Grandpa’s farm in 1947 and I have to somehow get it back into my body.

B00!

I like the last stanza the best

Bed of Roses by David Yezzi

Life's no bed of roses is what they say.
Okay, well, fair enough.
We all know life is tough
(no one I can think of would deny it),
a senseless mayhem banked by mindless quiet.
Brutish, short. And yet we stay

and want to even when our time is up
especially then, in fact,
our lives a muddy cataract
of taste and touch and sentimental feeling
draining away like shadows from a ceiling,
as we fish pills from a paper cup,

in a semi-private room - our last, we're told.
So no, no bed of roses.
But before the door closes
for good, it's worth remembering you do
know more or less the phrase's sense. Me, too.
I can easily pinpoint the odd

moments when my own sldn brushed against
the softer side of life:
diving like a whetted knife
into the sapphire waters of the Med,
or lying naked, hip-to-hip, on a bed
of eelgrass discreetly dense.

Wasn't that a bed of roses, then?
The exact thing,
or just about. And doesn't a string
of such occurrences make up our past,
gathered like beams of late sunshine casting
a glow on billowed curtains?

In a very real sense, they're all we've got,
these scatterings of love.
How strange that life should prove
a very bed of roses in the end
and nothing more, strewings of blessings, the kind
we mostly lived for and forgot.