AS ONE CENTURY BECOMES ANOTHER

I take the spiral staircase
one steep step at a time
from the 20th to the 21st

century at the top
as the clock chimes
and a star falls

all over town
puddles hold stars prisoners
wear them as jewellery

unable to escape
the ice that holds
them earthbound

the Milky Way
frozen
in a tree

and so time moves on
the music fading away
moment by moment

rowdy revellers
reel in this
the newest of years

like a fish gasping
on a river bank wondering
just what they have caught

"HELLO MR. DEATH AND HOW ARE YOU?"

I felt like a fog
in the shape of a man
a dream walking

a shadow
come alive
never more

alive now
I was
dying

this moment
the most precious thing
I had ever owned

unable
to believe
I was leaving

the sunlight of this
morning behind
me forever

time lay scattered
on the ground
my reflection trapped

in broken bits of mirror
strange that I
would never be

me
ever
again

a cuckoo
( the clock )
not( the bird )

had the last word
I had to
smile...

*

Felt good to cheat my own heart attack..you kinda attack it back with nothing but words and the need to capture it and make it talk.But it's impossible to grasp and poem after poem tries to hold it only for to flow like water between your fingers....like trying to grab hold of a piece of sky and wrestle it to the ground.

Alas my little brother didn't manage to cheat his and the words keep trying to explain this unexplainable fact to my self. I look at the typewriter and it looks back at me...both of us at a loss for words.

"Бог правду видит, да не скоро скажет", as they say in Russian.

Spring had arrived in that Dublin morning...just snuk in when we weren't looking. We were having breakfast and after we would cycle to Eccles Street to see a real house that was lived in by a fictional character. The house was a mere ruin and would soon be knocked down to make way for a new hospital wing.
Time, as it happens, stops when one is dying or rather that particular moment lengthens forever and a second is a century. Mr. L. Bloom's house was in my mind and my hat would later blow off into its basement and I would be as one with the man himself as I lowered myself down to retrieve it...thus entering a chapter in Ulysses. And the fiction was made real.

I had just read Huxley's TIME MUST HAVE A STOP and afterwards thought how ha ha...apt!

I had also come across a 1664 phrase about buds that "explain into leaves" which I thought delightful.

I had also came upon a battered copy of Bacon's SYLVA SYLVARUM ( A natural history, in ten centuries. Whereunto is newly added the History natural and experimental of life and death, or of the prolongation of life) which alas would go inexplicably missing and which I would never read to this day.

These are the things that were running through my head when I was going to be dead but...just as suddenly wasn't.

Oh and Tolstoy's GOD SEES THE TRUTH BUT WAITS was ratting about in my mind somewhere so it was going to be a very literary( literally )death!

Each Spring I go back and revisit my death( that wasn't )feeling glad to be just....alive and...in the moment

THE FLIGHT OF DARKNESS INTO LIGHT
( for my little brother Brian )

Ahhhh....here you
are again.

You who
are here and yet not

here
a shadow tossed aside

a breeze stalking
the shrubberies

the ghost of leaves
foliage on the move

that then: stops

silence solidified
...or did it?

The flight of darkness
into light

suddenly a paw
tentatively becomes a snout

then the all of you
"Friend fox. . !"

I call to you
mind to mind

you looking
as if you've heard

stare at my silent
voice

both of us amazed
you ever so

red before becoming
a shadow tossed aside

a here not here
the flight of darkness into light

a  breeze
stalking the shrubberies

the ghost of leaves.

*

One of my last conversations with my brother( conversations could be 3 hours on the phone )and he told me of a fox he had seen. He asked me why I had never written a poem for him and would I write his experience for him. I did so and it lay there in my scribbly hieroglyph until I managed to decipher my own writing( this is easier said than done). I was going to read it to him at the next phone call but there never was another phone call. The fox and my brother now merging into one in the here/not here.

My brother said that the next time I came over he would bring me to Glendalough and Newgrange was to planed for a later next time. Little did I know that the next time would be for his funeral.

So I was thinking of going on pilgrimage to here so I could place the spirit of him there. Then my friend said out of the blue and not knowing any of this: "I'm going to bring you to Glendalough!" And he did!

So I was able to place my brother here amongst the silence and the beauty. In the little museum they have there....there was a stuffed fox who looked back into the soul  of me. One of the last things Brian and I spoke of was a fox that came to his window and he asked me to write the poem of that. I had written the poem but he never got to hear it. The poem now exists tied to the picture off this fox.

I felt nearer my brother here than at a lonely graveside.

DROWN IN MY OWN TEARS

I walk with
my mother.

I hold her hand
tightly as

she is dead
and might fly away

with the leaves
that scatter before us.

She sees again
with my eyes.

The world
delights her.

I listen to Ray Charles
with her

as I did
when a child

and we both sing
DROWN IN MY OWN TEARS

as she ironed and
ironed.

I lend her my ears
and she laughs

at the Shakespearean usage

Calls me her( as always)
"little nuisance!"

When she died
she moved in with me

borrows my senses
occasionally.

Always she
uses my laughter>

"Death..."
she smirks
"...He don't scare me!"

She sits inside
my head

as I iron
and iron.

"You want the Ray again
Mam?"

"A huh!"

"I think I'll
drown in my own tears!"

THEM ****** DAFFODILS!

"Ah...howya!"
said the ink blot

throwing itself
all over my copy book.

"Jaysus...wait 'til yer teacher
sees this!"

it chortled
proud as punch with itself.

I stare at it
in an almost total disbelief.

My bladder clamours
to be relieved.

I...squeeze
my knees together.

King Blot bloated with
its own self importance

has totally obliterated
the last word I have penned.

"I wandered lonely as a
. . .!"

Teacher snaps it up
with great glee

holding it between
thumb & forefinger

with mock disgust
& real contempt.

"So, Dempsey...ya
wandered lonely as...

. . .an ink blot!"

The class sniggers
( glad it's me - not them ).

He glowers them
into silence.

"Yes...yes...Sir!"
I whimper &

suddenly seeing a loop hole
( I dive )into it.

"It's...it's...show
not tell. . .Sir!"

His glasses flash
smile becomes sneer.

"COME...HERE...BOY!"
he enunciates clearly

each syllable
chiseled into an awed silence.

The cane cuts through the air.
The class winces.

The tips of my fingers
scream in agony.

I dance a hornpipe
of pain

palms tucked
under my oxters.

"Them ****** daffodils!"
I groan

moaning through
my growing tears.

AS GAEILGE
( In Irish )

Dún do shúile
(Close your eyes)                

Codail go lá...mo ghrá séimh.
(Sleep until day...my gentle love) .

Codail go sámh go sámh.
(Sleep peacefully...peacefully) .

Éirdeoidh an ghealach seo...
...is rachaidh an ghrian seo faoi

(This moon will rise...
...this sun will set)                

aire 'gus grá
i gconaí
(care and love always)                

gach oíche 's gach lá
gach lá 's gach oíche.
(every night every day
every day ever night) .

Mo phlúirín!
Mo stóirín!
Mo mhuirnín!
(My little flower!
My little treasure!
My little darling!)                

Ach anois...
(But now...)                

codail go sámh go séimh
(sleep peacefully...gently)                

go fáinne an lae
(until the break of day)                

le mise
ar do taobh.
(with me
by your side) .

Losing our baby
late into the night

holding this    little thing
that only attempted to be human

unable to let go

I clasped the foetus
tightly in my hand

& buried it in the dawn
of our local park

under a recently planted
red rose bush.

In my grief
flower & baby
became one

and night after night I climbed
over high railings & even higher stars

to talk to her in the dark      in Irish.

Or sing: My Love is like a Red Red Rose.

Or cry...or...cry.

Almost got arrested one night
by an Irish cop
drawn to the sound
of Irish emerging from darkness.

Guess he let me go because -  it wouldn’t look good
on a charge sheet:

“The defendant was talking
& crying to...a flower.”

- in Irish.

Eist...eist
(listen...listen)      

duinne eagin ag caoineadh
(someone is crying)      

in a dorchasan
(in his darkness) .

Fill...fill...a run o!

Fill a run o is  na imigh uaim.

Fill orm a chuisle a stor

agus chifeadh tu an gloire... ma fhillean tu!

THE EMPEROR OF NOW

robin in church
hopping from pew
to pew

a miracle
made real
its sheer joy of being

I hum Haydn
to its every step
Menuetto: Allegro

my little emperor
dances on the altar
it has become the music

it gazes at itself
reflected in the gold
of the tabernacle

a host of sunbeams
chase each other
little fishes of light

now robin
balances on the head
of the Christ

this the secret
prayer
of the moment

leaving me
bereft when
it finds the open door

*

Haydn's Quartet No. 62 in C Major, Hob. 111:77( Op.76 No.3) - the 'Emperor.'  It's Menuetto: Allegro was the musical equivalent of its happy hopping through the sunny church....as if it was the manifestation of Haydn's notes. It was a little epiphany...a kindness given to me...this robin was my only religion.

When they were in Rome, Severn used to rent a piano and play Haydn for the dying Keats in the next room and Keats was delighted with it and said:  "This Haydn is like a child for you never know what he will do next."

It was also accidentally the soundtrack to my daughter's first tentative tottering steps...as if the music was holding up her tiny frame and propelled her along.