This is one of my favorite schoolbook poems, 'An Dall Sa Studio', or 'The Blind Man in the Studio', by Seán Ó Ríordáin (1916 - 1977), one of Ireland's finest Irish language poets.
Thursday, March 28, 2024
Saturday, March 9, 2024
THE DRUNK-FOX
at a gate of gold where furze, scrubs
and willows grow, and poised on the heath
in the midday marsh by fern and emerald gray,
his redness flexes its crystal lens
and stares through beads of cobalt
down the dew-decked lane.
What den flushed him out, strained
russet out of auburn, and put him down
amid the speckled shadows where broom
and heather fleck sedge and brush
till they sneeze seeds and polyps of musk —
thistles colonize the sweet vernal grass
with spots of pignut and meadow eyebright?
He sees all, the marshy rush and cuckoo flower,
the bilberries bursting at their seams,
and bluebells tolling softly on the mossy margins,
and he can sniff the scent off sage and ragwort,
hear the dog violets bark, and feel the urge to ramble
in the brambles before he insinuates himself
paw by snout into the tight-fitting foxglove.
Sunday, January 14, 2024
SHIP OF FOOLS
to run aground, but not
on cliffs of ice, or stone, or land,
but on the rocks of ourselves—
We have renamed our ship
the RMS Titanic, but a maiden
voyage this is certainly not—
We have navigated these seas
since time immemorial, setting
our terminal course to nowhere,
captained by lunacy and hate,
and mutinous from the start—
We’ve carried our cargoes too of war,
famine, scurvy, slavery, and greed
from port to port without end,
and every time we recklessly sink,
we are found again and salvaged again
from the unfathomable deeps of ourselves—
Our liner will endure unsinkable,
only the passengers and crew can drown.
Sunday, December 24, 2023
BEDE’S BIRD
and found myself lost and alone
at the edge of a dark forest—
I know there is a light in there
that is not some residual glow
of my synapses or senses dying—
I know it is you my love, my savior,
my last stay against the darkness,
and I know that light is your love
and your faith that will never cede—
Hold on a bit longer, dearest one,
for I will find my way back to you.
I will enter the dark forest of myself,
and altering Bede’s parable will arrive
from the storms within to you without.
Sunday, December 3, 2023
HOMELESS
fixing us to earth and tribe,
but now those ropes are cut,
and our tent is a rag in wind.
A storm has taken our rag
as it were a sail and whipped it
out to sea, where it rides the rain
and wind like a broken wing.
Thursday, November 30, 2023
SILENT NIGHT
We are facing into Christmas without her, and are reminded by the stacks of gifts she purchased and stored before she died, that the Yuletide was one of her favorite times of year, precisely because it was the family occasion. But what will Christmas be without mother? Another ‘Silent Night’, of sorts:
Silent Night
Silent Night
~For Mother~
This year without you will end
in snow and shadows,
prayers like icicles will fall across
our grief and cut it raw.
We will seek you in the carols,
We will seek you in the carols,
but will find only silence,
our tears thawing and flowing,
and absence like a dead end,
like a dark empty road
like a dark empty road
between fields under trees,
where a lone cry can die
into the dead of night.
This year without you will end
This year without you will end
with homecomings, headlights
cleaving sylvan shadows,
and your laughter lost between.
Sunday, November 26, 2023
HOGMANAY
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