Filíocht Nua: New Poetry

Seeing the Pictures

for Bernard O’Donoghue

It all flickered back into my mind When, at your reading, you recalled going Not to a film, or cinema, but to the pictures At whatever time it was, and when to leave Was not decided by the final credits Or any directorial cue, but by the whispered I think that this is where we came in. God knows, of course, it lacked all judgment.

And so, God knows, does this: how would it be If the big picture always rolled out that way, Freed from all that weight of ends and beginnings, So that, recognising more or less your time, While cigarettes glowed here and there in the dark And smoke rose votively through projector beams, You excused yourself past couples rearranging themselves And slipped out, at the place where you came in?

Heron Dreams of Becoming Crane

for Phyl Herbert

I am tired of bog, of its grey drizzle, Of its oozing blackness drawing me down To its dark heart, below even the horizons That constrain me. I dream of the beyond.

I dream, especially, when passing over estuaries Where fresh and salt water commingle According to the moon’s decree. Here is order Flowing between the bog where I roost

And the rocky shore I fish. My nicknames Among the peasants—ragged Nóra Ragaí, Scrawny-necked Jónaí Scrogall—hurt My wings into faltering, my flight into leadenness,

Until I dream myself into a looping glide To where I hunch, dead still, against the light And free myself into oriental streams of thought That flow like sunlight over my greyness.

Slowly, my plumage changes. I stretch white wings In wonder, arrange the rich red-and-black mantle Below my coronet, and proceed in stateliness Across great distances to where my worth is known.

I pass over secluded roofs and gardens, easing down To glide by lotus-ponds where scribes and scholars, Who earlier have gathered for debate and poetry, Look up, and acknowledge my auspicious passing,

As I soar again, refreshed, towards the far north And to a high lake where my kind is gathering For a ceremony where each bird knows its rank, And I slowly fold my elegant, heraldic wings.

A Good-Morrow to My Wife in New Zealand

The night sky, I know, is different Where you’ve gone, all that jangle of stars

Resettling. But even up here now seems Antipodean. Although I won’t fall off,

My world feels upside down, polarities reversed, And all my equators unbalanced. So come

Back safe and soon, my better hemisphere, To the sharp north, to the declining west,

Bearing southern balm, bearing eastern light, And make the old world whole again.

Dog and Waterdog

It hardly knew itself, the beach, Wide-eyed in the unfamiliar Sunlit frost that grained the whole High-up and low-down of it.

And how the banked seaweed Gleamed fresh at the tide-line, Redolent of translucent depths And waving, beckoning mysteries.

Even my golden retriever Lost the usual run of himself, Sniffing the air for something Strange in all that clarity.

When the seaweed erupted Into a mighty flurry of snarling, It was all stand-off and hackles Until dog and otter subsided

Into wary curiosity, heads In sideways sizings up and down. Then all at once the otter Streaked undulously to the sea,

And my knight errant, my fool Of a dog followed, adventurous To the tip of his streaming tail, Braving this new otter-world,

Tipping and tilting wildly At every dive and yards-away Resurfacing, the otter teasing Among underwater beams.

Puzzled, he paddled back. But now that aureate head, Blazoned on shining, argent sea, Was touched with otherworldly light.

My Lord Buddha of Carraig Éanna

It’s to keep the bay level, I joked, As I nudged him into balance At the edge of the cliff, his bland Garden-centre smile facing out to sea

And to Carraig Éanna, its silhouetted Birds, and its occasional almost-strain Of old stories recounting themselves Among the indifferent heads of seals...