END OF SUMMER

once
with astonishment
I stole

a butterfly
from the end
of summer

I only meant
to borrow her
admire her

the miracle of her
smeared clumsily
across my child's hand

so that I could not
return her
to what little was left

of summer
leaving a jagged hole
in the time of the sky

where she
should have
been

a box
empty of its matches
served as a makeshift

coffin
matches stuck in
fresh earth

like little red-headed
flowers
blazing all at once

her funeral pyre
often I steal
back to that moment

cut out of summer
the empty place she left
in me

seeing clearly
the butterfly shape
cut awkwardly

out of time
jagged
at the edges

my mind seeing beyond
into the infinity
of death

hoping
her ghost
can forgive me.


*
I then tried to give her the kiss of life and ended up swallowing her...which is another story...another poem!


BETWEEN THE SPACE

When I was small
I wanted - a pet.

My mother didn't
- like pets.

'It followed me home! '
'Can I...keep it...can I...can..! '

didn't work
& I invariably had to
return the kidnapped cat
to the house I had
'borrowed' him from.

Between the space

where my mother wrung screaming wet clothesthrough the rollers
and out the other side to quite flatness

and the coal bunker
where a briquette wire spat at me
almost nearly blinding my left eye

I captured a Cabbage White
hiding amongst the coal.

Emptying the strawberry jam with the gollywog on

I gave her a world of glass
where she danced to the sunlight's mad music.

Neither she nor I
understanding the nature of glass

her dancing grew frantic
my love stifling.

I not knowing
all things
must breathe

the dancing died to a sudden stop.

Being an impressionable child
and after only seeing a life safety film

I dived through the panic
and swam madly against the guilt

took her gently
into my trembling

fingers...her dusty colour
taking my fingerprints

I tried to give her
the kiss of life

choked with grief
and swallowed her

terror in my mind
butterfly in my tummy

and fear running
blind and crazy

that I could not
give her

her dancing
back again.

I said nothing
for years

(about the incident)  

until I could explain
myself to myself

and my self

...understood.

"NOT ALL PEOPLE EXIST IN THE SAME NOW. . ."
( for brother Brian )

your smile
like music for a movie
that will never be made

you travel through
your life, now:
unable to arrive at the present

you no longer
live in the now
that I inhabit

this my great grief
life, but:
life without you

Death has taken you
slammed the door
in my face

me left here
you in an other
place

you have left the planet
somehow escaped Time's prison
a new day dawns without you in it

remembering how you
relished Block's words that
"NOT ALL PEOPLE EXIST

IN THE SAME NOW. . ."

applying the statement to
whatever happening
happened to be happening

your smile
like music for a movie
that can never be made



His world was a world of electricity and circuits and whatnot....mine was of books and study. Work being scarce in Ireland he came to London to be with me....work was just as scarce in London and so he went back...not realising he was about to step into the job that was to last over 20 years.

He could soak up my world of Eliot and Hamlet and Block but his world was beyond my ken.  He would pick up little nuggets of knowledge such as the Block quote and then laugh and apply it to all and every situation.

Little did I think that I would be applying it to his death as a means to understand how my brother can be dead and alive to me at the same time. He and I both living in different NOWS.

Grief is a process and I am lost in a maze of pain desperately trying to find a way out.


"Not all people exist in the same Now."

Ernest  Bloch  in  his 1935  Heritage of our Times(Erbschaft dieser Zeit ).

"Not all people exist in the same Now. They do so only externally, by virtue of the fact that they may all be seen today. But that does not mean that they are living at the same time with others. Rather, they carry earlier things with them, things which are intricately involved. One has one's times according to where one stands corporeally. . . times older than the present continue to effect older strata; here it is easy to return or dream one's way back to older times. . .in general, different years resound in the one that has just been recorded and prevails. Moreover, they do not emerge in a hidden way as previously but rather, they contradict the Now in a very peculiar way, awry, from the rear.  . .many earlier forces, from quite a different Below, are beginning to slip between."

*

"But soon we will die, and all memories of those five will have left earth, and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten. But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love. The only survival, the only meaning."

The Bridge of San Luis Rey

Thornton Wilder in 1927.

IT TAKES ALLSORTS

it was an old
fashioned sweet shop
as if it had stepped

out of another
century
lost to time

something
that could only
exist in memory

I asked for gobstoppers
but the assistant was insistent
that they had not got 'em

despite the fact that
he had one in his gob
and that there was a jar

full of nothing
but
gobstoppers

the same when
I asked for Allsorts
again another "NO!"

all the Allsorts
in the big glass jar
looked longingly at my mouth

"Oh please!" they pleaded
"Choose us...chew us!"
but all to no avail

they were there
but
not for sale

it was like being
in some ring
of Dante's Hell

"Go on...*** out of it!"
the shopkeeper yelled
"You can't fool me!"

"****** aliens!" she shouted
"Coming over here and
nicking our sweets!"

I grabbed whatever
I could lay my several
tentacles on

and made a dash
back to the spaceship
almost out of breath

"Did ya get the sweets
did ya...did ya!"
the crew chanted

"Yes...yes..yes!" I sweated
"Now...get out of here
QUICK!"

A HERD OF LEGENDS


always in the background
of my mind I am
hearing

listening to
the
of Arun's voice

speaking to me
in best Kolatkarese
as I ride

his KALA GHODA
to the outskirts of
JEJURI

and there dismount
walking barefoot
into the town

of his mind
bowing before
his words

this here
this now
drinking his voice

thirstily down
to the very last sound
marking each syllable with turmeric

offering the ashes
of anything I can say
I the humble havildar

to the temple
of your thought
until you take a final drag

from a half bent charminar
flick it from fingers
laugh...tell me to. .
.
"****** off! Go on...
and make
a poem of your own!"



Going to India for the Delhi Poetry Festival....and delving around in all things Indian and the poetry therefof who should I encounter first but the unique voice of Mr. Kolatkar...at once I was in love with his thoughts and decided to elope with his mind. He was by far and away my favourite Indian poet but now he has become my favourite poet. One of the unexpected gifts of going to Delhi to read poetry was to discover this genius hiding in full view! Hopefully the Bloodaxe COLLECTED will propagate him even more in the West and he will become acknowledged as the master he undoubtedly is. He reigns in my mind...long may he reign. Read JEJURI and was completely blown away by his honesty and wit and the lovely wry turn of his mind. How had I lived before without him!




I'LL STILL BRING YOU FLOWERS
( a zendu for Arun Kolatkar )

I listen to you
. . .just be. . .
you escape

the well known photo
the droopy lids
the droopy moustache

caught in a cafe
by the clock
and come alive

in this dimly shot video
the language
flows around me

( Hindi...Marathi?)
like a rock in a river
I listen to

the water's language
as it breaks
and moves around me

the cancer
eats you
I listen

to the language of your smile
the language
of your laughter

listen
to you
. . .just be

"LOVE IS JUST A TEMPORARY TRUTH..."


“Both of them remained floating in an empty universe where the only everyday and eternal reality was love.”

― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude



many years later
as he faced old age
Mr. Michael Murphy

was to remember
that distant afternoon
when his father

shouted that
he didn't know
who he was

and kept calling
for ice for his drink
even though he had none

he kept on reading
his favourite Márquez
even though he had lost the plot

and wandered into
a world of words
without meaning

in his own
private Macando
mirror looking at mirror

reflecting
only
silence and solitude

one could almost
see him attaching
yellow Post-it notes

upon everything
and anything
before they could fade

one upon his son
another on his wife
but they all blew away

or he couldn't remember
what the note
said

soon he would be
erased
knowing nothing

of the world
or
of himself

we of course
loved him
all the more

but
not even our love
could reach him

DRINKING YOUR BLOOD

so still. . .
entranced by the vision
of your own dying

your body
offers itself
up to me

I taste the flavour
of your life
drink your dreams

savour each memory
the delicious tang
of longing

smell the sweet
desire to live
swallow your soul(whole)  

your body now
no use to me
or you

a broken doll
left out in the rain
at best

I kept my promise
there will be
no more pain.

**

My friend who was slowly dying described her cancer as being bitten by a vampire and watching something so unreal drink your life without being able to do anything about it.

ESSE QUAM VIDERI
(to be rather than  to seem to be)  

"What must it be to be someone else?"
- Gerard Manley Hopkins

( In honour of Honora O' Sullivan becoming a great grandmother yet again)




there I am
all 2lbs of me
and nameless as yet

and so for all
these 67 years
it's a Dónall I've been

haven't been
anything else
all my life

but now
with Storm Ciarán
roaring in

I remember me Mam
telling me that I was
due to be a Ciarán

because of my hair
black as anything
and sideburns to boot

I was obviously
doing my best
Elvis impersonation

and this was
after all
1956

she said I was
her own
'little dark-haired one'

and would I have been
a different man
I sometimes wonder

would the name
change the who
I would have become

I often think
of this
alternative self

wonder how
he got on
in a parallel universe

but a Dónall
I was
and have remained

so I guess  I will
just have to learn
to live with my self

and  Dónall of course
transforms into the Irish
"World Mighty...Spear Power!"

a hard name to be sure
to have to live up to
but I'll give it a good go



Ciarán (is a traditionally male given name of Irish origin. It means "little dark one" or "little dark-haired one", produced by appending a diminutive suffix to ciar ("black", "dark"). It is the masculine version of the name Ciara.

But sure as Oscar once told me: “Be yourself, everyone else is taken. In order to be oneself, one has to take risks, to accept that one is not perfect and to be courageous enough to say what one really thinks”
And says I to the Wilde man: "Sure, I will surely...so I will!"

And so it is I have become the man you see before you...as  Dónall as anything!

A Dónall by any other name would still be as sweet!