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BOYNE BERRIES
A literary magazine |
The second issue of the magazine was published at the end of September 2007.
Here are some of the contributions which appear in that issue.
Francis Ledwidge
A five acre garden, apples, cherries,
Sunday crowds at ease.
Children laughing, blackbirds
sleeping, cherry-drunk.
Matt’s fiddle calms you,
your thoughts read at a glance.
You walk the tangled roads
round Slane, dreaming of Ellie.
Homesick in Gallipoli.
Home-rivers wonder where you are.
Killed by shrapnel at Ypres.
Empty roads are grieving.
Matt’s grave at Donaghmore,
Ellie’s on the Hill of Slane.
At Rossnaree I saw you,
Sleeping by the Boyne.
Susan Connolly
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The Fiancée under Canvas
(To all the victims of rape in war time)
Run, run, run, I remember my mother screaming
When I came back from school, I was a beauty during this era of madness
A fresh flesh due to satisfy my lover
O poor pearl with all the attributes of happiness
My wedding, how I have imagined it? A magical ceremony
I had the traits of my ancestors:
My lips were two small doors of wisdom
My nose was straight like the mast of the caravels
A brown and oiled skin, last heritage of my Peul and Bantu ancestors
O poor pearl with all the attributes of happiness
The smell of sumptuous dishes was escaping
From the improvised kitchen in the forest
The loud laugh of the guests was heard from my bedroom
The fiancée under the canvas was resigned
The warlord was ready to send his troop
To possess the fiancée under the canvas
I had a vision of my youth stolen
My dreams of motherhood were gone.
I can cry I can suffer
But I cannot die
O poor pearl with all the attributes of happiness
Can you really die from the seed of fifty soldiers of peace?
Landa Wo |
Diogenes
It wasn't a
Barrel of laughs
You know,
Being cooped up
For hours
And the dung heap
Festering.
You'd never know
Who'd drop in,
The cold call
And then another
Free lunch
The reports to
Be read.
And the suits
Were everywhere,
The accolades!
The world beating
Its path
To your door
And the dog to
Be fed.
It was all Greek
To me.
Frank Murphy
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The Middle of the Road Cow
At seventy
she is as stubborn
as the pie-eyed heifer
stood
in the middle of the road
the distance between us
gauged at a half yard
of grass and stone.
In her hay day
she was as strong
as she now is wide
muscled calves thrust
into black rubber wellies
pink soles baked
in a crust
of manure and mud.
Now when she moves
it is with the certainty
that I follow behind
head lowered
back to the wind
guiding my path
with the sway
of white hair.
Rachael Mooney
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A New Year Sky
Across the unwritten sky
pale and clean as a fresh page
one swan appears
neck stretched in flight.
This white sculpted shape
of grace must have flown
from the hand
of some Italian stuccoist.
In wintry Drumsna
gale-bent Shannon grasses underfoot,
we look skyward, ask each other
where the swan is headed,
- perhaps to join her flock
at some Connemara lake
or Hy Brasil or even Tír na nÓg
a queenly odyssey to another world.
Our swan has disappeared now,
the sky bears no trace of silverchain
but her image sharply bones
into your soul and mine.
Eithne Cavanagh
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Like Eve, I was Tempted
Eve, Man’s plight,
You chose my path,
Forsaking Eden
Barefoot.
Grass to stone,
Due to blood,
Fallen from grace
Into womanhood
Adam, Eve’s faithful,
Stayed her side,
Loved her,
Lifted her,
Shamed she cried.
Born of her
Two with such shame,
Cain slew Abel,
Eve is to blame.
Had she pined away
From temptations tree,
I would walk Eden,
Woman would be free.
Yet I have no Adam
To soothe my pain,
Alone I live lesser
Always, Eve is to blame.
Sarah Gibbons
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It was September and she was beautiful, crowned with yellow sundrenched hair, wispy like the hay we were saving. She was scarcely out of her teens? What was she? Sixteen. Sweet sixteen. Dettie. Her birthday only a few weeks ago, yes, I remember now because she had kept me a generous portion of her sponge cake. Dettie with the sky blue eyes lighting up the freckled galaxy of her face; I was in love with her eternal summer. The jokes she had to tell, bonding to me. She saw me in an avuncular sort of way, I, being the long standing neighbour like a member of the fatherless family helping out at the harvest every year with my chrome-gleaming tractor. Shone specially for her.
After the work, in their kitchen, awash with oceans of tea and replete with ham sandwiches, we gaze at their small sash window towards the sun, hinting of greater things. An Indian summer, her mother, Mrs Kelleher says, as flies buzz around in a frantic last gasp at this late season renewal. Their two dogs barking in a confused stereo. Mrs Kelleher mopping her brow with her floral apron. Dettie in her powder blue jeans, smiling towards me with a morsel of sandwich trapped in the song lark’s gap of her shining teeth. Contained to table, but only half sitting, on the edge of her chair, willing something to happen so she can run into the sunsoaked world, free from the shadowed house of dark flagstones and parental proscriptions.
‘Will I tell you another one, Michael?’
‘Enough of that,’ Mrs Kelleher says sternly. Michael doesn’t want to hear…’
But I did. I loved it in fact, to hear those fruitsweet tones.
‘Let me drive your tractor, Michael.’
Derring-do, my daring girl. How could I refuse her?
‘Michael has better things to be doing.’ Mrs Kelleher’s voice, crackly like the pale skin of her gnarled hand topping up my cup for the third unwanted time.
‘It’s no trouble.’
In the dry, cowpatted yard, the tractor, like a sunkissed animal, waiting. I offer to whoosh her up.
‘I can do it, Michael.’
A lithe tomboy, gleaming angel, scampering up a mudguard. I commence to point out the brake, the accelerator, the…
‘I know, Michael.’ The voice of youthful impatience.
‘Let me do it.’
The key, silver-glinting in her lightly tanned fingers. The engine splutters. The tractor lurches forward.
‘Easy What are you doing, Dettie? Press the brake.’
She is laughing excitedly.
‘I’m moving, Michael. See.’
‘The brake, Dettie.’
The tractor bounces and accelerates down the boreen, toppling over, and for the first, the only time, I hear an unfamiliar sound, a shrill tone coming from Dettie. But that can’t be Dettie. Surely? It is the painful plea of an interloper, addressing me, ‘Michael, Michael.’
I run after the tractor shouting down the boreen, the two dogs barking, human voices in my wake. Her body, crushed under. Dettie. Her voice now is the engine whimpering, coming to a standstill. My lips release a cry of incomprehension. ‘How could...?’ Tears. A mother’s wail.
Where has time gone? All those months, those seasons in between? Why have you not come back to haunt me, Dettie, to ask me where the brake is? Can’t you see, it is another September and the sun is glinting on the haystacks, on a world of warmth and honey.
James Lawless
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