Blarney and Tales of Fancy!

Dec 2013

Seán Mac Falls

One day gone in the long great forest
Of the ancient world, wolves alone
And mighty hungered with true kin
Stalking the tundras of the snow drifts
And all their prey, with cautionary eyes
Moved in heards and flocks swaying
With the sounds of the forest floor
And the spearing grasses. The wolf
Was his own master, free, unbounded.
A great spirit, brother to the moon.

One dying day, when the bushes burned
They came upon the garbage dumps
Of early man. Their smoke was laden
With the smell of fresh ****, small skins,
Animals, ended trail, and salted death.
Many wolves circled in fear, their pits,
Only one or a few tasted the left overs
The easy scraps and bones, tailings,
The elder pack would not stoop for.
These few unguarded wolves morphed
And mated with each other, their mane
And fur, soon was tamed, soon became
Mottled and brown no silver remaining.
This was the fall of the wolf, not man
And the moon turned white, when wolf
Became dog.

Dec 2013

Seán Mac Falls

Galicia

Beyond the massif peaks of Europa,
Above the ancient pillars of Heracles
Where rain and ocean are weaving,
Lays a fabled kingdom born of waves
And noble strands, my beaten hearts
Haunting, the lost, lush sylvan lands
Of Galicia.
Where Incomparable, dark
Haired women, mythic, of Amazonian
Fairness, side the valleys and moors
Of soon forgotten dreams and secretive
Wolves slide amongst warmed runnings
Of the ram and moans of ewe, where
Way bountiful seas are over spilling,
In octopus and pearly gemmed shells,
The scalloped pilgrimages unfolding,
Where incense burns with under stars
Encased, the lost Atlantean temples
Of Egyptian sands and storied Gaels,
The clad forests of wandering Titans,

Where snow white beaches end forever
Unmapped in told footsteps, castaway,
As was the magi gift of treasured yards,
Enlightenments, of old and golden isles
Pearling the coasts, sailing the sweet airs
Crossing Iberian gates, to Elysian, eternal,
Galicia.

Dec 2013

Victor Marques

Memória branca da tua imagem

Memória branca da tua imagem Rio Tua

Por entre vales e frescas fontes,
Socalcos e belos horizontes.
No comboio sempre do Tua,
Um beijo na doce lua.

Rio tão belo que engoles as colinas,
Memória branca da tua imagem,
Comboio sem carruagem,
Carrocel sem suas meninas.

S. Lourenço que te olha divinal,
Rio Tua do bom Deus e de Portugal.
Pedras inertes tuas sempre serão,
És rio e bom vilão…

Tantas histórias os vindouros contarão,
Dum rio com memória e solidão,
Rio dum comboio que nunca vai passar,
Excelso amor vai perdurar.

Victor Marques

rio, amor, memória,comboio

Nov 2013

Seán Mac Falls

Face of Ireland

Your face,
Tender, round and dimpled,
Framed with gilded, carved, tawny curled
Whirlpools of hair, long, lighted, and sparkling,
Your face is the face—
Of Ireland.

Your lips,
Full, moist and deathly deep,
Are wells, not well for me, not safe, taboo,
Tantric, tall told tales of brave Odysseus
Under Circe's alchemies
Of forgetfulness.

Your *****,
The zenith of blossom in fabled
Elysium, gateway to the forbidden gardens
Of sage and sinners, warrior-poets, Aphrodite's
Envy, Poseidon's drowning
And smoldering Zeus.

Nov 2013

Seán Mac Falls

Haiku ( non cents )

Tortoise and the hare—
Home investors, speculators,
. . . Both fell into holes.

Nov 2013

Seán Mac Falls

Boatman Under Mountains

My hands are raw and cracked like wind and wood,
My arms, they sway and dance all day in my boat,
My neck is sore from watching you, above me play,
You, great mountains of tree and stone, give me hope.

Nov 2013

Seán Mac Falls

Cipher Song

Founded in one fatal mission,
Where joy is merest rumour
And the two toned colours
Of dun flower are drowning
In sepia, where separation
Is touch, folded and kept
Like a lock of shocking red
Hair, fine grains in my eyes
Are stoning pebbles of grey.
Soft is the day and wandering,
Birds always sing, beaming
As they fly, rushing away,
I am stilted sound, hushed
In a vale shadow of whisper,
Flood lights of leaving ways,
Curtains to my moulded stage
And all the airs of outdoors
Mute, closed.

Nov 2013

Seán Mac Falls

Beneath the Wave

I remember that day on Mount Tamalpais.
We picnicked under the loving sky
On Bolinas ridge, atop Wicklow hill,
The maiden’s breast.  We found those apple trees,
Who’d gone wild and fell into their world.
A blossom on the way.

I took your picture and you developed into
A sea-horse, or was it a mermaid?  The ridge
Was foaming about you and birds were swimming
Like fish underneath.  We found a tree, an umbrella
Left at the beach.  The coral-grass became our bed
And wine turned into water.

A spiral dance in arms of anemone, it was
All embrace!  That reef was spawning heaven.
At the treasure chest under the sea maiden,
Like children on highland pap, we played
At the beach that day in a castle above the clouds,
Beneath the wave.

*The name Tamalpais was first recorded in 1845. The meaning of the name is not well-established and there are several versions of the etymology of the name. One version holds that the name comes from ostensibly Coast Miwok words for "coast mountain" (tamal pais). Another holds that it comes from the Spanish Tamal pais, meaning "Tamal country," Tamal being the name that the Spanish missionaries gave to the Coast Miwok peoples. Yet another version holds that the name is the Coast Miwok word for "sleeping maiden" and is taken from a "Legend of the Sleeping Maiden."[13][14][15] However, this legend actually has no basis in Coast Miwok myth and is instead a piece of Victorian-era apocrypha.*

Nov 2013

Seán Mac Falls

Haiku ( voyager )

Before even flight . . .
Landed seagull chick strides, reads,
Waddles through bookshop.

Nov 2013

Seán Mac Falls

Haiku ( tall tale )

Zenith of winter—
Lone raven in naked tree,
. . . Spring only legend.

Nov 2013

Seán Mac Falls

Woman of the Far Isle

Woman,
Why do you visit so seldom, and plant things
In my fallen over garden, lavender and thyme,
Only to leave, but not
To tend?

Woman,
Take my sorrow and turn down the moon,
Plaster the sun in golden dress and spill
The ground with buttons
Of flower.

Woman,
Why does your face haunt me in dreams,
Your voice, play as in the spirit well that sings,
Drops forth, the moving waters
Into being?

Woman,
Take my open hands and travel with me,
Beyond the ninth wave, to the lost island
Of Hy-Brasil, and we will long live,
Wondrous as poetry.

Hy-Brasil or several other variants, is a phantom island which was said to lie in the Atlantic Ocean west of Ireland. In Irish myths it was said to be cloaked in mist, except for one day each seven years, when it became visible but still could not be reached. It probably has similar roots to other mythical islands said to exist in the Atlantic, such as Atlantis, Saint Brendan's Island, and the Isle of Man.

In Irish tradition there is the imramma, the sacred sea voyage that takes the wanderer on a soul-journey beyond the ninth wave to mysterious lands — islands of youth, of summer, of apples, of strange creatures and lovely women, and all the many shimmering dark-deep mysteries of the Otherworld.

The etymology of the names Brasil and Hy-Brasil are unknown, but in Irish tradition it is thought to come from the Irish Uí Breasail (meaning "descendants (i.e., clan) of Breasal"), one of the ancient clans of northeastern Ireland. cf. Old Irish: island; bres: beauty, worth, great, mighty.

Nov 2013

Seán Mac Falls

When Senses Run

When senses run together, dull in the rack
Of night, it’s Chaos who culls true meaning.
He mocks the light of day in paradox
Sings: ‘we are such stuff as dreams are made on.’
The ****** end, embodies the souls watery
Beginning, and so the beating star is all
Intermingled; until flesh and fibers are done,
Thus: ‘we are such stuff as dreams are made on.’
Though mighty Jove, who beat the antique world
Down, cast poor Agamemnon his fate, it’s
Helen of Troy whose aisling breaks like doom,
All from the strain of Leda and the Swan.
For, ‘we are such stuff as dreams are made on,
And our little life is rounded with a sleep.’

Nov 2013

Seán Mac Falls

Haiku (snow queen)

Before winter comes,
Blistering— beauty so bright,
. . . Cold grey is the veil.