HORSE OF A DIFFERENT COLOUR

Auden & Isherwood
strolling in China
trying to soak up

The War
by the process of
osmosis

staining it
with words
observe

(at first what seems)  
green horses
but turns out to be

only white horses
painted green
for camouflage purposes.

that evening in Canton
also offering them
the futility of two men

trying to
put a rat
into a bottle

a woman who lived
in a beehive
pouring water into a sieve

War knocks
over the inkwell
spills into men’s lives

covers
the white pages
of their wishes

makes the idea
of Hell
all too real

the spilt ink
eating
the words of men

who send letters home
and die in pain
never to return

only in others' memories
& useless dreams
marble memorials

while green horses
champ the grasses
the bridles & the bits

clanking & glinting
in the hot sun
of Now

as this last lost
evening
dies


*

Sonnets from China was originally published in a considerably different form as “In Time of War.” “In Time of War” was a sonnet sequence included in Journey to a War (December 1938), a book by Auden and Christopher Isherwood that included a travel diary, photos, and a long poetic commentary.

Here is one of Auden's magnificent sonnets from that journey...

HERE WAR IS SIMPLE

Here war is simple like a monument:
A telephone is speaking to a man;
Flags on a map assert that troops were sent;
A boy brings milk in bowls. There is a plan

For living men in terror of their lives,
Who thirst at nine who were to thirst at noon,
And can be lost and are, and miss their wives,
And, unlike an idea, can die too soon.

But ideas can be true although men die,
And we can watch a thousand faces
Made active by one lie:

And maps can really point to places
Where life is evil now:
Nanking. Dachau.

THIS BLOSSOMING INTO BEING

the rose puts
her red armour
on

goes to fight
the common enemy
time

her only weapon
an ephemeral
beauty

three stars rise
above her head
this her last night

on this earth
fallen petal
by petal

was it enough
that she could say
"I am!"



"0H REALLY STEPMOTHER NATURE..."

I was thinking of my first wild rose I ever remember when I can barely remember myself of that time and not realising they had to leave us.

"But why do they have to go?" I asked in "does-everything-go-voice".  And my Da answered in an "Ô vraiment marâtre Nature" voice.

It was the most beautiful of summers and I couldn't believe that time wasn't endless and life but a gift given to us...

I was thinking of my first wild rose I ever remember when I can barely remember myself of that time and not realising they had to leave us. "But why do they have to go?" I asked in does-everything-go-voice. And my Da answered in an "Ô vraiment marâtre Nature" voice. It was the most beautiful of summers and I couldn't believe that time wasn't endless and life but a gift given to us...



Mignonne, allons voir si la rose
(original French text)

Mignonne, allons voir si la rose Qui ce matin avait éclose
Sa robe de pourpre au Soleil, N'a point perdu cette vêprée* Les plis de sa robe pourprée, Et son teint au votre pareil.
Las ! voyez comme en peu d'espace, Mignonne, elle a dessus la place
Las ! las ses beautés laissé choir !
Ô vraiment marâtre Nature, Puisqu'une telle fleur ne dure
Que du matin jusques au soir !
Donc, si vous me croyez, mignonne, Tandis que votre âge fleuronne
En sa plus verte nouveauté, Cueillez, cueillez votre jeunesse : Comme à cette fleur la vieillesse Fera ternir votre beauté.

Pierre de Ronsard (À Cassandre)

RACING INTO OUR FUTURE

we walk
backward
out of the sea

our laughter
gulped
back in our mouths

our words
drifting back
down the past

until
they are only
the original thoughts

our clothes
falling
back on our bodies

as water
falls from us
un-wets us

here I
pause
then press play

the memory
obeying
my mind’s command

as we happen
again &
again

racing into our future
as if it has
never happened yet

THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT
      RICHARD MILHOUS NIXON

It was...
Oct 5th - 1970.

A Monday.

It was the 278th day
of the year...only

87 days remaining
until the end of the year.

I knew I had to act now.
It was now...or never.

Time? I forget the time.
Time was standing still.

Huge clouds
menaced the horizon

impersonating an Armada
of Spanish Galleons.

Full sail ahead then.
I took a step into my future.

The smiling President drawing
nearer and nearer.

In Nass
the drenched crowed cheered.

In Newbridge now
flocks of children chase the car

like he was some
kinda Piper from Hamelin.

I kept a close eye on
the secret service

all dressed in the same suit
looking like clones

of one another
talking into their sleeves.

My gaze searches and settles
upon him

like the cross-hairs
of a ******'s rifle.

Sure he had called his setter
King Timahoe

after where his folks came from
another American looking for his roots

bolstering the Irish-American vote.

And now here he was
the man himself

in person
the 37th President.

Irish colleens dancing
upon a make-shift stage

in the square
of Kildare.

He's here oh so near
I can see the pores of his skin

a bead of sweat trickles into
that infamous Nixon grin.

Dare I do it now?
My hair falling into my eyes.

My mind flashes back to
1729

when his Quaker ancestors
fled the Emerald Isle.

Three centuries pass by in a second and
we're here

in the middle of
The Vietnam War

and he speaks of
"a passion for peace...preventing war...building peace."

Yeah yeah...sure sure!

Carpet bombing Cambodia
the famous Nixon duplicity

the "credibility gap" opening
between what he says and what he does.

Oh there are protests
he has 5 eggs hurlers.

"Splatsplatsplatsplat and splat!"
Only one near hit.

And one man protesting
the price of a pint

up'd( for the occasion )to
one shilling and jaysus seven pence.

What's the world
coming to?

School kids waving
their plastic( in slow mo )

American flags
on little plastic sticks.

I raise my flag.
I raise my...voice

shooting my mouth off
with a great shout:

'TRICKY DICKY! TRICKY DICKY!
WOULD YOU BUY A USED CAR FROM THIS MAN!"

Several secret service scowl.
My words hit him...Nixon frowns.

Character assassination.

Mr. McCann
aka "The Bicycle Man!"

curses me
in Irish.

After all he is
my Irish teacher.

D'anam leis an diabhal...Ó Diomasaigh!"
("Your soul to the devil...Dempsey!")

"THE TIME HAS COME TO CALL
A ***** A ****** SHOVEL..."

I yell as
I get a clip around the ear.

McCann holds his hand
over my mouth.

Then suddenly Nixon
is no longer

there.

The hurled words
disappear into the air.

Us school boys
***** damply back to double Maths.

The De La Salle
Academy looming up before us.

Mr. McCann
hoovers near.

I cover both
my ears.

But he only tousles
my hair.

"Ahhh mo amadán beag cróga!"
( "Ahhh my brave little fool!")

"Maith an bhuachaill...maith an bhuachaill!"
( "Good boy...good boy!")

He grins.
Slips me a sixpence.

I sing the new Led Zep
only released that day.

"So now you'd better stop and rebuild all your ruins,
for peace and trust can win the day despite of all your losing."

Being only 12
I had done what had to be done.

My political life
had only just begun.

*

The long forgotten "never-to-be-forgotten" visit made to Hodgestown near Timahoe in the county of Kildare back in the day as we leave the Sixties sadly behind us for the austerity of the '70's and the "Yes we can" of the Sixties begins to loose its lustre.

The Timahoeans are not exactly proud of giving the world Mr. Nixon and stay quite quiet about it. The Kennedy visit was the golden one and Clinton and Reagan had theirs but Tricky Dicky's one has faded into the fog of history.

"Jessamyn West, who has written so eloquently about the background of our family, has said, the Quakers have a passion for peace. My mother was a pacifist. My grandmother was a pacifist. Jessamyn's mother was, her grandmother, her grandfather, going back as far as we know."

President Nixon in the Timahoe graveyard.

Don't know what happened to him then!

"The time has come to call a ***** a ****** shovel. This country is in an undeclared and unexplained war in Vietnam. Our masters have a lot of long and fancy names for it, like escalation and retaliation, but it is a war just the same." - James Reston.

"So now you'd better stop and rebuild all your ruins,
for peace and trust can win the day despite of all your losing."

Led Zeppelin 111 - Immigrant Song.

TASTING THE WORLD

first snow
falling slow
so slowly

I rush out
my belly
full with you

to taste
a snowflake
upon my tongue

so that you
should know
even before your birth

the delight of a night
taken by
the surprise of night

I still shaping
the form of you
nameless as yet

I ask you
"Come soon...soon!"
eager to show you

this world
you will be
born into

you my falling star
that I wish upon
my wish to see you

hold you in my arms
whisper to you
do you

remember that first
snowflake that time
that fell so slowly

USES OF GREAT LITERATURE

Bluebottle & I
share the same moment

. . .the same hour.

It keeps dive bombing me
like some crazy kamikaze.

It is a beautiful flying jewel
but I can't appreciate that

just now and enraged I
throw Proust at it.

The full weight of A LA RECHERCHE
DE TEMPS PERDU

thrown halfway across the room
brings it down with a bang and

it is no more.

"Heavy!" I praise the Proust.

Ten minutes later its brother
or its ghost

has returned with a vengeance.

"Don't look at me!" says the Proust
"I done my bit!"

I raise the book and
the bluebottle bolts.

Just the threat of the Proust
works just fine...this time.

"...MORT SANS PLEURS..."
(Death without Tears)



"Life is the farce which everyone has to perform."
            Arthur Rimbaud - Bad Blood



Once again she
sensing her time

had come
she prepared

her last words
rehearsed her last breath

disappointed to see
a new day dawn

and Death had
stood her up.

"She has been dying now these
last 20 years!"

her long suffering husband
moans.

A fatal dose of
hypochondria.

She lives to fight yet
another.

Her mind rambling through
half remembered Rimbaud.

"Assez vu. . .
Assez eu. . .
Assez connu. . ."

(Enough seen. . .
Enough had. . .
Enough known. . .).

she intones as if she
were her own priest.

La music savante manque pas à notre désir
( Great music falls short of our desire. )

she chants as if she
were her own sacred ceremony.

Always the same snatches
from ILLUMINATIONS.

"I never read him myself
but know him off by heart

from hearing them from herself!"
sighs her little husband .

Years later she
gets it right at last.

"Il y a une horloge qui ne sonne pas!"
(There is a clock that never strikes!)

She gasps.

"Que les oiseaux et les sources sont ****!"
(How far away the birds and Spring are).