UNCLE MICHAEL - ALIAS GOD!

His hands(tobacco stained)
twisted & gnarled
knotted like an alive

piece of wood
scrawled gestures
across my mind

as the sick calf
bucked in his arms
& his quiet strength

- calmed:
'Shhhhhh...
shhhhhhh...****...****! '

he crooned
& the sound
soothed

and the veins
(line vines)
ran up & down

his arms
pumping crude life
like a sudden sketch

to suggest the gist of
rather than
the meaning of things.

and he walked
(& I ran)
towards Granny's garden

(like God tending Eden)
& the gate(a little hoarse)
sighed at his hand and

the leaves murmured
(like worshippers
in a church congregation)

& the sunlight
genuflected through the trees
and the trees wore socks & apples

a tablecloth
was laid
on a logan berry bush

and the young tree
gave herself to him
broke tenderly in his hand

and, the knife whistled &
out of the branch
came a man

and he told me
(& I believed him
'cos he was good as God & strong)

that the little wooden man
(the silent statue)
had been waiting

(all the time all ready made)
waiting to be released
from his prison of wood.

'All things...'he whispered
'all things are waiting
for youto call them.'

'Call them to come out...'
'Awake them...'
'Create them...! '

the rhododendrons
were blue with amazement
- at this revelation

a dragonfly
walked
upon the water

a butterfly became
infatuated
with a flower

me...?
I watched as
his hands talked...

...explaining things
that
could not be...said

and he took
my hand in his
and I understood

flowed
like a little stream
into his big river

felt God(close)
near at hand
and...smiling

THE PLOUGH AND THE STARS

I stumble and fall

trying to keep up with Michael and Dolly
as they plough on

ahead
and I follow

in their wake
falling over furrows

that they make.

Dolly's coat glistens
with the immense effort

breathing in the intense strange strong smell of horse.

Uncle Michael
at one with the harrow

muscles taut and tight
controlling everything with his voice.

I copy him & shout:
'Woa...! ' & 'Hey up...! '

but Dolly doesn't listen
...only to him.

He ploughs into the sunset
as if he and Dolly

had turned over these fabulous colours

creating an evening
becoming night.

The moon bright
I try to count

the stars
like seeds

but fall
.. asleep.

*

UNCLE MICHAEL -ALIAS GOD!

His hands
(tobacco stained)    

twisted & gnarled

knotted like an alive
piece of wood

scrawled gestures
across my mind

as the sick calf
bucked in his arms
& his quiet strength

- calmed:

'Shhhhhh... shhhhhhh...****...****! '
he crooned

& the sound
soothed.

And the veins
(line vines)    

ran up & down
his arms
pumping crude life

like a sudden sketch
to suggest the gist of
rather than the meaning of things.

And he walked
(& I ran)    

towards Granny's garden
(like God tending Eden)    

& the gate(a little hoarse)    
sighed at his hand and

the leaves murmured
(like worshippers in a church congregation)    

& the sunlight
genuflected through the trees

and the trees wore socks & apples.

A tablecloth was laid
on a logan berry bush.

And the young tree
gave herself to him

broke tenderly in his hand
and, the knife whistled &
out of the branch came a man.

And he told me
(& I believed him
'cos he was good as God & strong)    

that the little wooden man
(the silent statue)    

had been waiting
(all the time all ready made)    

waiting to be released
from his prison of wood.

'All things...'
he whispered
'all things are
waiting for you
to call them.'

'Call them to come out...'

'Awake them...'

'Create them...! '

The rhododendrons
were blue with amazement

- at this revelation -

a dragonfly walked
upon the water.

A butterfly became
infatuated with a flower.

Me...?

I watched
as his hands
talked...

...explaining things that
could not be...said.

And he took
my hand in his

and I understood

flowed

like a little stream

into his big river

felt God
(close)    
near at hand

and...smiling.

* * * * * * *

YOU WERE LAUGHING

It was so much so
your world, that

(when it died)    

you decided to
accompany it.

Loss, hung festooned(joined hands like decorations) .
Grief, winked like a baublel(on a Christmas tree's ring finger) .

Sadness, drifted dazedly(like the ceiling balloons)    
bobbing up and down on an invisible sea.

Ship
wrecked
cast
away

I...sland.

Later, we learned(Time taught us)    
to fold the tears carefully, careful
not to crease them

like decorations
stash them

away in an attic

until the next time we would need them.

They said(they all said)    
you were dead
but the child(the child)    
would not...believe them.

In his head
(it was you)    

and you
were

laughing
(smiling)    

and the child

touched

your face.

THE VLTAVA PAYS NO MIND TO TIME

the giant
metal head
of Kafka

turned and
turned again
staring at city

that even he couldn't have
conceived of this
strange future

high above
this night scape
an orange window glows

presenting a parent
teaching her child
basic ballet steps

it is this
tiny instant
of a humanity

that my mind
will hold as
a souvenir

they are both
only silhouettes
a shadow theatre

puppets in
demi-plié
grand plié

I watch entranced
at now jetés
now sautés

a man with an owl
perched upon his wrist
passes nonchalantly by

a young girl
singing softly
to her self

Tom Petty's  Wildflowers
"You belong with your love
on your arm."

the Old Town
Astronomical Clock
tells us it is 11

and the twelve apostles
go for a walk as
the tourists gawk

BODY AND SOUL

our cigarette smoke
built up
a spiral staircase

upon which
our conversation climbed
word by word

becoming now
a hieroglyph
blown away by the saxophone

our calligraphy  
of thought
written upon the air

the jazz making it
illegible
as a doctor's signature

words our words
collecting
upon the ceiling

like out of reach
cobwebs
or escaped Christmas balloons

our words looking down
upon us at all that was still left
unsaid

"DELIRIUM FLAPPING ITS THIGH-BONES!"
SHOUTS AUNTIE GRIZELDA

It was said
( though never to her face )

that Aunt had given
her maidenhead too eagerly easily

- away.

But being underwhelmed
by the whole process

gave it up as
a bad lot and

became instead a faux
maiden aunt.

Her world intact.

Unlike other ladies she
smoked a pipe.

Her beloved Maigret
so permeated with pipe smoke that

one could never read them
a minute or more before

succumbing to the smell.

Her books death to the non-smoker.

It also served to preserve her
for far more than her natural

span &
it came as a great surprise

that she could ever die but
...die she did.

The hyacinths in bowl after bowl
wondering where she had gone

and why the dusting had not been
done.

A great silence
filling up the room.

*

Aunt Grizelda would often recite Amy Lowell's poem and would use this phrase when she wanted to curse without cursing. If you heard this Lowell  line then you knew she was mad! An old old man with the silverest of hair told me about his aunt 'cos he saw I was reading about the Imagists on a train heading into the long long ago.

I would have loved to have encountered her.

This is the end of the first movement of her STRAVINSKY'S THREE PIECES

"Bang! Bump! Tong!
Petticoats,
Stockings,
Sabots,
Delirium flapping its thigh-bones;
Red, blue, yellow,
Drunkenness steaming in colours;
Red, yellow, blue,
Colours and flesh weaving together,
In and out, with the dance,
Coarse stuffs and hot flesh weaving together.
Pigs' cries white and tenuous,
White and painful,
White and --
Bump!
Tong!"

THE SHADOW BORROWERS


don't know when
I had copped on
to the fact that

my shadow
had begun
to ressemble Shakespeare

as if the Bard
had reassembled
himself again

by means of
the molecules of
my shadow

"To be me or
not to be me?"
I soliloquised

said that he had "eh
...borrowed my shadow
rather than stolen it!"

admitted that this
'borrowing'
as it were

of the shadows
of the living
enabled him

to keep on
living
outside his words

and so pass through
the world
instead of being dead

which he said
was no fun
at all

confessed he
had only
a week to go

inhabiting
the shadow
of my reality

"What do I get
out of all this?"
I asked politely

"Oh you get to
have a go
at being me

you know
my wisdom
my witticisms!"

and indeed I
had noticed a certain
way with words  so

that in the end I was
sad to see him
go

but that Debussy chap
had now taken
his place

and suddenly I was
able to play his
'Jardins sous la pluie'

as good as
that Nikolai
Lugansky fella

‘nous n’irons
plus au bois’
I sang to myself

who next
what next
I wondered

WHAT THIS ENTIRE WORLDSPIDERWEB IS ABOUT...

The day of the funeral
an intense cold.

The lions roaring
in the zoo beyond

Fluntern Cemetery.

The confluence of
the rivers he loved

obscured from view
as if forever.

The sun too
a milky misty light.

The silence of the necropolis
broken only by an old deaf man

asking all the time:
"Who...is to be...buried here?"

And when he hears, repeats:
"But who is James Joyce?"

Grave No. 1449 is
meant to be temporary

but even in death
he is Ireland's outcast.

His daughter's madness flickers:
"Cet imbécile...what is he.."

Again a roar of lions.

""...doing under the ground
when will he decide to leave!"

Again the deaf man's question.

"He's watching us
all the time."

As indeed he is.
Life but a Work in Progress.

The author leaves
his death

walks abroad
in all his words.

"bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnth­­unntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk"



The last word is the first "thunder-word" of Finnegans Wake as the babble of launguage falls like the Tower of Babel to...begin again.

From page 3…paragraph 3….third word…of Joyce's WAKE.  The first of the ten. . . one-hundred-word “THUNDER-WORDS.”

It is merely a composite word of different languages proclaiming THUNDER!



The last word is the first "thunder-word" of Finnegans Wake as the babble of language falls like the Tower of Babel to...begin again.

*

When he told me about wanting to read The Wake we were passing as it happens the church mentioned at the beginning of the  Wake...or rather...not passing as we were caught in a traffic jam and so were standing still and the church laughing at us in the Dublin sunshine and delighted to be recognised for its prime position in the book.
So I chanted it like a magic spell( the only bit of the book I knew)and joked that the traffic hated Joyce and would do anything it could to escape both church and words.

“riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.”

And like a charm it worked and the traffic flowed fluently onward to my homecoming. It was like cutting the Gordian knot with a sword of words.

The next time he picked me up from the airport we were once again stuck in a knot of traffic at the exact same spot and nothing moving...not even the air.

So he smiles at me and says in a great declaiming voice( he of the so soft voice)and the words hung in the air for a moment,,,

“riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.”

And sure enough the traffic snarled and flowed under the magic words and let us continue on to home and our hugs and kisses.