Filiocht Nua: New Poetry

Timbre

A word does not head out alone.
It is carried about the way something essential,
a blade, say, or a bowl,
is brought from here to there when there is work to be done.
Sometimes, after a long journey,
it is pressed into a different service.

A tree keeps its record
of the temper of years
well hidden.

After the timber has been sawn
rough rings release the song of the place--
droughts, good summers, long frosts--
the way pain and joy unlock in a voice.

 

Script

The double line of prints
showed where a pup had dragged itself up
a few yards above the tidemark.
It panted, blinking away the driven sand,
while a wind-ripped tide ebbed fast.

A few other November strays
arrived to taste the end of the gale--
a couple in bright raincoats, down for the weekend,
and two boys on bikes who'd heard the news.

Rested now, maybe, or scared,
it took off down the long white beach,
its blubbery weight gallumphing
as it hauled itself up and forward on its front flippers,
building up speed
until its flesh rippled and it was carried
as much by rhythm as by strength,
like the great statues on Easter Island,
like ourselves.

It stopped, its sides heaving
as if the small, grey-spotted body might burst
but gathered itself and set off again
collapsing again, yards short of the water, spent.

After a long time it raised its head,
pulled itself down the last slope of sand,
through the first thin broken waves,
into its own depth
and then nothing
but the winter sea
and the double row of prints.
We walked down the shore for a closer look.

Dug hard into the sand,
claw-marks
recorded a breast-stroke,
a perfect, cursive script
which reached
the ocean's lip.

 

Pollen

And this dust survives
through the deaths of ages.
It sleeps in deep layers of mud--
black, red and umber;
it sleeps under the wet pelt of a November hill
where long grass is the colour of fox;
it sleeps deep under lakes;
twelve metres down it survives,
dust of arctic meadows,
old and tough
as love.

 

Going For Milk

Coming on the Stop sign at night
on the bend of a side road
I braked too fast,
too far from the barrier.

The soldier with the red torch
and the machine-gun
stepped back,
spoke to someone in the steel tower
then half-circled the southern car.

You'll be all right.
They won't do you a bit of harm if you don't scare them.

Every morning before school
I took the can,
crossed the road,
climbed a stile into McGarvey's field,
stepped down sideways from the bottom step
to avoid the mud
and turned a corner behind Barlows'
to where the cows lifted their horns out of the long grass,
started to move in.

Keep on going, they are far more afraid of you
than you are of them.

The soldier at the car window has a helmet too big for him,
is barely an adult, seventeen, eighteen maybe,
younger than my nephew, smaller.
He smiles, in relief.

Who sent him out?
Who sent any of them out
telling them once more
absent mindedly, maybe,
turning off the TV or hanging a cup up on a hook,

They are all the same, that crowd,
trust none of them
they're all tarred with the same brush.

And who is going to tell them the truth
which is not simple
which sounds like the blackest lie
when they have stood
in a kitchen
where killing was done--

They're not all the same
most of them are far more afraid of you
than you are of them.

Be careful now,
go on over, the milk is badly needed.

 

Tombolo

Sometimes, at low spring tide in February,
if the wind is right,
the moon hauls the sea back...