May 4
THE MUSIC OF WHAT HAPPENS
The sun a crazy crayoned
yellow swirl
with a sky so blue it has
completely used up the blue crayon.
This is Memory’s drawing of...
...a moment from 1972
complete with furze declaring:
“WE ARE YELLOW TOO!”
I sit stick-person-like upon an Irish hill
upon which perches the old English graveyard.
I read to English soldiers from 1872
MARY BARTON and NORTH AND SOUTH and such like.
A captive audience of broken Celtic crosses.
They listen with all of themselves.
They listen through wild flowers and grasses
holding fast to the sound of my living
voice.
And when sun showers
Interrupt the text of my breath
I climb inside
some tumble-down-tomb
and read so that
even the rain stops
to listen & then
I freewheel down the hill
back to the world of tea.
My dead soldiers
eagerly awaiting
tomorrow’s chapter.
*
Reading for my Leaving Cert. If you have ever seen the John Huston version of Joyce's THE DEAD then...you have seen the entrance to this graveyard. and a few of its graves covered in snow..it's briefly glimpsed as the voiceover narrates the beautiful passage "...: snow is falling all over Ireland...."
The sun a crazy crayoned
yellow swirl
with a sky so blue it has
completely used up the blue crayon.
This is Memory’s drawing of...
...a moment from 1972
complete with furze declaring:
“WE ARE YELLOW TOO!”
I sit stick-person-like upon an Irish hill
upon which perches the old English graveyard.
I read to English soldiers from 1872
MARY BARTON and NORTH AND SOUTH and such like.
A captive audience of broken Celtic crosses.
They listen with all of themselves.
They listen through wild flowers and grasses
holding fast to the sound of my living
voice.
And when sun showers
Interrupt the text of my breath
I climb inside
some tumble-down-tomb
and read so that
even the rain stops
to listen & then
I freewheel down the hill
back to the world of tea.
My dead soldiers
eagerly awaiting
tomorrow’s chapter.
*
Reading for my Leaving Cert. If you have ever seen the John Huston version of Joyce's THE DEAD then...you have seen the entrance to this graveyard. and a few of its graves covered in snow..it's briefly glimpsed as the voiceover narrates the beautiful passage "...: snow is falling all over Ireland...."
