Come, let us to the sunways of the west,
Hasten, while crystal dews the rose-cups fill,
Let us dream dreams again in our blithe quest
O'er whispering wold and hill.
Castles of air yon wimpling valleys keep
Where milk-white mist steals from the purpling sea,
They shall be ours in the moon's wizardry,
While the fates, wearied, sleep.

The viewless spirit of the wind will sing
In the soft starshine by the reedy mere,
The elfin harps of hemlock boughs will ring
Fitfully far and near;
The fields will yield their trove of spice and musk,
And balsam from the glens of pine will fall,
Till twilight weaves its tangled shadows all
In one dim web of dusk.

Let us put tears and memories away,
While the fates sleep time stops for revelry;
Let us look, speak, and kiss as if no day
Has been or yet will be;
Let us make friends with laughter 'neath the moon,
With music on the immemorial shore,
Yea, let us dance as lovers danced of yore­
The fates will waken soon!

foam floral caps, work of wet hydrangea,        

                          or pulse of caucasian lilacs in a sky-relieved frieze.        

                                   cambric pennons swag reconsidering      

                                          margins of wimpling burn,      

                                        wherein the stars…twiring stars,    

                                    the declining stars, moon and planets        

                                                            tur­ned--



                                      purchase light with morning-hands:        

                                         ­         green-bedizened;      

                                              amber trammeling bud.      

                                          absolve qualm suffusing tyre,      

                                             violet’s violent leniency--        

                                            a­nd feel, o’bask! in velvet      

                                                   ­ flume of veins,        

                                          as beams of conspiracy raise      

                                                  to­ post and lintel,      

                                         crutching a young god’s legs--



                                      and feel, o’supplicate!  bathe in      

                                                day’s anatomies,      

                                   til greave deposit in lacunary sleeves,    

                                   and a genuflecting sun bow eternally--

A POET'S WORK

"Oh my God is...that the time!
12 o'clock and not
a poem in the house written!

quick! wash those adjectives!
quick! bathe those verbs!
feed those nouns!

have you adverbs gone back to bed?
come on 'Smile!'
like a simile!

noooo! don't
wear the same metaphors
you wore yesterday

aghhhhhhhhhhhhh!
and so with a little playful
smack on its btm

the poem is sent
out into the world.
'See ya...be good'

a poet's work
is never  ever
done!"


*


As a child I was sick and poorly and often missed school so that I found myself at home with me Ma and doing all the Ma things that she had to do....I followed her about the house helping out and seeing what an amazing myriad of things she had to do in order to make our life run like effortless clockwork only I found out it wasn't so effortless.

"Dónall son....!" she'd yell from the bedroom amidst sweeping and bed changing and making....will you cut the potatoes for the chips love!" And from bedroom to kitchen we would sing all the Ray Charles we knew.

She would always say the same thing like a little work mantra...
"Jaysus...oh Holy Jaysus....12 o'clock and not a child in the house washed!" And a whole litany of things yet to do. These were like well worn beautiful pebbles being rounded and smoothed in a stream of language....I loved hearing them even for the thousand time! So I cross pollinated all her mad cap hell for leather sayings into this making of poems poem to get the same urgency for tidying up my brain and getting the words washed and up and out making signs upon a page so that other brains could decipher my thoughts.

On one of these being my mother days I was watching "Telefís Scoile" RTE's educational prog. when up popped poet Brendan Kennelly. Now despite only starting my secondary education I was reading all around me so I was reading the Leaving Cert. poems as well. I was having a hard time with Hopkins but then Brendan started to recite The Windhover in his lovely Kerry accent and I at once understood it as the music of his mouth brought the words to life in glorious sound that I at once fell in love with and it splashed against my mind like a wave breaking over the headland that was my tiny mind. It was an epiphany.
Years years later I met Brendan in a pub having a quiet pint by himself at the bar and I went up to him to tell him of this moment made glorious for me by him and Hopkins. So he started to recite it for me again after all this time.

"I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin,"
And I said the next bit.....
"dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding;
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! "
And then he...
"then off, off forth on swing,"
And we traded lines until we had completed the Hopkins.
And then he said: "Well wil ya...have a pint?"
And I said: "I will...so I will!"

And then he said he loved my CRAZY LONELINESS HIJACKS MEMORY OF A BEAUTIFUL GIRL. And I said: "What! Ya still remember that!" And he said:" 'deed I do!" And so I recited it for him. It was so I felt I had come into my poethood!

AND THE BEAUTY THAT BREAKS FROM THEE THEN!

Here in Stratford
upon Avon

our love so
(so Shakespearean)      

“...this the very naked name of love...”

& here
upon this
naked hillside

hidden amongst summer’s
long tall grasses

each time
our loving

graced by the presence
of a windhover

as if Gerard Manley Hopkins
blessed our union

sending us this sign

touching us with the beauty
of his lines:


“...a billion times told...lovelier! ”


*

   This windhover(kestrel)       seemed to follow us through the unfurling story of our love and always appeared when we were making love whether it be a hotel bedroom or a sunny hillside.   As if it were the same windhover watching over us or a blessing from Fr. Hopkins whose poem I had always loved since I was a child.

    Here then was the beauty of this woman before me waking to our first morning ever together and her beauty almost blinded me and so the misquote of the Hopkins line...'AND the fire that breaks from thee then...' as her beauty flowered in my mind and almost eclipsed me. Her tongue had taught me comfort...her touch had quenched my tears...had touched my heart. Suddenly love had found me and I surrendered myself to the tenderness that befell me with even the littlest of her smiles.

   And yes...she was 'a billion times told lovelier' than I could ever have imagined her. I was blessed and she was my blessing.


And here is Hopkins...in all its wonder and glory!

                         The Windhover:

                         To Christ our Lord

I caught this morning morning’s minion. King-
  dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn Falcon, in his riding
  Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! Then off, off forth on swing,
  As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
  Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, -the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
  Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
  No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
  Fall, gall themselves, and **** gold-vermillion.

Gerard Manley Hopkins