Boyne Writers Group

Light
Dublin, December 1979

Clippering and capering on the boards -
tongues of headlamps flick and lick.
...................................................Taxis
creeping by the craning window disgorge
their gorgeous cargoes at the discotheques.
Behind: a wall of words and youthful years,
pretty voices muddle in the night.
................................................I long
the all-overing of light, morning's wild
corona; yet worse, play truant from it.
In rented rooms where lust and old ghosts quail
the coming of the evening, aloneness
can even there caress itself.
.......................................Conjure
the glut of milk-vetch and fool's parsley
'round Kilsallaghan or winter's hummocks
high and fulgent at the cross - I'm back
in wide-eyed hope, impetuous, unlearnable;
the spoor of purity, a diaphanous gloved hand.

By day, the dross of side-walks; the chimneys
of the city rise like stamens and the last
tower-crane enduring till the eighties
circles overhead: its crawling driver
fixing fairy-lights on the jib, spiders
out above the Liffey.
..............................Knowing his
fragility I stand off, damp on palm
and brood a headmost slump - grainy water;
the simplicity of it; the silence
of the cartwheels curling down.

..............................................Later
Christmas revellers dribble home through side streets,
chanting, calling.
.........................Hear the struggle and pant
of lovers by the gable of the house;
their gasps and muffled laughter fluttering
to the roof-tops, along rafters, through the chutes.
Seeping in the corners of my light-box.
........................................................Guttering.

The Once-Red Cart

In the end the only way to stop him
was to take the wheels off the cart
and hang them on the shed side,
totems of infirmity.

Shuffle the street on walking stick,
gape at the wheels, two eyes stare
back unblinking, sun and moon
mock your immobility.

Ass grazed freely in the river field
liberated from cart and tackle.
Straddle and bridle, hames and harness
stowed away eternally.

Shout if you will, she'll just ignore,
shake her head, resume her grazing.
Accept, submit, capitulate
cry your incapacity

It ends again cart against ditch
red paint peeled in squalid rain.
He retreated to wheelwreck rim
beached inactivity.

Turn with care on the cobbled street,
shamble a slow retreat indoors
turn the key, switch on the light,
illuminate your misery.

Mushrooms in the Dark

The dawn has hit me.
How difficult it has been
to pick mushrooms in the dark
in a sixty four acre field
without the aid of a moon
or a guiding hand and
I on the mar'in side of fifty.
Of all things learned
of all things discussed
of what's been learned of the seasons of the year
and learned of the seasons of the body
but very little ever learned
ever discussed on the picking of mushrooms
and how the pink changes colour.
A guilt exists in not knowing
what we are born to know.
The free education generation
has been afforded a knowledge to acquire
a depth of information, but never
the depth of a truffle in a
sixty four acre field.
In the dark I smell all these senses
but cannot see how you lift your tongue
when you utter joy, or does the word
sex cause you to grit your teeth.
In this rural oral world how do I
touch on these difficulties without
soiling what I want most,
to pass from Dusk to Dawn with a
full voluptuous moon, a guiding hand
an understanding of the whispers of the breeze
in a six by four, with stalks and
cups all around me with you.

The Burial of Alice de Fir

Once upon a time I would feed the donkeys
Carrots and sugar cubes down by the river
When it was blue and petting their soft noses
They looked on me with gentle eyes until I,
Longing, became humble too.

I do not know how I died to a thin whispering voice
But like freedom I am unafraid; the ice of the river
When it is blue is the sky full of snow
By twilight changing hue.

(She came through the fields a river of sighs,
The North Wind like a prayer awoke me,
Praised me and told me to rise)

Snow

They look, look quickly
away.
Easier to admire
a robin's festive breast
red
upon the black railings;

brushing away a thin,
red-tracked arm
shrug further into winter
coats,
on to red wine, rich food,
friends,

a neat line of pure snow.

Catherine Hastings