Over the Boundaries

There’s a land out west

To which I was wed,

A land in the setting sun

Where the sun never sets,

The light on the dancing trees on the hill

Strong as the wind that blows through my dreams

And endless days lifted aloft

On strong arms that now lie still —

My life as the sea, ebbing and flowing,

Ebbing and flowing with the swell.

The kind of day that sets me back in childhood reverie -

Familiar west wind blowing in bare trees

Under a grey and water-laden sky,

Man and beast thrown together

In this landscape nothingness.

Wonder if we are facing west or east,

The ones we loved all the while,

The ones we are leaving still,

Or a new love somewhere

That opens up new skies

Filling our days, these last times, with definite light.

Think the sum of the missing parts, miraculously,

To make up a whole in the God-given scheme of things.

Nature has reclaimed the earth,

Called it back to herself

In floods and flowing rivulets.

We picked our steps

Between the water and the wet hedge,

The sun, for days now, hidden from view

In a sea of cloud and heavy mist.

Encapsulated as a dewdrop on a leaf,

Senses sunk in the vaporous smell of the sodden earth

And held fast like children to her bosom,

We are the free ones soon to be liberated,

The expectant ones, the exultant.

Be true to the day that rises,

Silently like any other,

Inexorably like all the rest

In fulfilment of its own plan.

The day that, like all the others,

Carries us forward in its bosom,

Touched as we still are by the tears and fears,

The childhood scrapes and falls,

The half-loves in the half-light,

By chimeric dreams you and I enthralled.

And called, some of us above our years,

Above the joys, above the tears,

In the sun that rises again anew

Complete with promises of life,

O miracle of miracles, in this body of clay

That fit and lift and stretch and bend —

like glass in the hands of the blower

Or dough, the breadmaker —

We are jewels called forth to shine,

Transcend, we are the new Jerusalem.

Who keeps watch from one unremitting day to the next,

Not breaking the continuity therein.

Swept to higher ground,

Conscious decision made to come down -

As clouds rolling in from the south that, somehow we

know,

Will not infringe greatly upon the high -

This parallel truth dawning, this watch-light,

Mystical reckoning of man-nature-God

Where silence speaks far, far louder than words.

The burning of the weeds continues,

Night and day, all summer long.

Weeds you can’t tell by name

But whose habit is familiar.

The one of weak root that entwines itself

Round rosemary and blackcurrant bush,

Growing as it goes until it sits victorious

Like a crown atop its host.

The fire burns all summer long,

Red glow aided by used timber,

Overgrown bush and spreading tree,

The remains of the day.

Not yet the disused and spent weaponry

Of the redundant warrior.

We have moved into the still realm of the ITCZ,

Intertropical convergence zone where trade winds,

North and south, cease to blow —

Not a twig or leaf moves and the air

Oozes droplets of misty water vapour

That caress our cheeks and weary brow.

Our eyes scan a sea where no warships roll,

Look out over the immeasurable land

Where no one buys or sells anymore

And the booty is handed out in rich measure

And all are satisfied to the core —

Young and old alike enthralled

By the righteous demands of love

And truth and justice, and moved, moreover,

By the ineffable beauty and majesty of our warrior Lord.

The Lord is in his holy Temple; let everyone on earth
be silent in his presence.

Habakkuk 2:20

Silence of the Good Friday hours.

Silence of the refectory hall.

Silence of the Judaean wilderness

Where he fasted the lonely forty nights and days.

Silence of the bereaved,

Of the long walk back to the crowd,

The slow walk back to happiness.

Silence of the languid autumn nights

As, overcome, nature begins her descent again

Into the bosom of the earth.

They came, sporadically at first,

Then continuously in a stream

As you gave us to drink from full and holy cisterns.

‘Poetry is mine,’ I heard a voice say, ‘and the body of

believers.’

Time to pick up the pen again then and write, I thought,

As Cisneros did or Gerardo Diego —

Versos Divinos, Angeles de Compostela

Amor Solo, or in some other way,

Thus ending the silence, growth of the great barrier-reef,

Crust of coral rock, thoughts hardened to an anomalous

mass

And not sifted or free as the bright fish that swim

In the cerulean blue of sky below, above and beyond.

For Brendan Kennelly

I stood in defiance of your call —

Your smile, the sun on dancing leaves,

Mine, a beam of light pure as milkwood

That absorbed you in its embrace.

I must fight, I thought, and not risk defeat;

With cunning I viewed the skilled warrior

And did not know if he would receive

As friend or foe the child lost to love’s face.

My chest is become a map,

Veinous ways a web of paths

You walk across.

Your steps fall, heavy as stone,

Down some obscure lane

On Dame, d’Olier Street;

Fall silenced at the cross Of redeemed, beleaguered love

I am stretched upon.

The dogs of war are at my window,

Snarling jaws circling for the kill.

To go outside now would be certain suicide,

I sit, heart pounding, waiting for daylight to come.

Was it that I was my father’s favourite child,

Even the Father’s prodigal son

Or just that, having loved and lost,

I had finally loved and won?

Fairy light of star

In a winter twilight sky.

Haze on the forest slope,

Houses sunk in evergreen groves,

Smell of silage and cattle-fodder fills the air

With a sweet musk perfume.

Emerging from behind a cloud,

Venus breaks her moorings

And heads for her appointed zenith

Way out over the western horizon.

Earth lifts up her heavy sighing

To the tops of barren, ivy-clad trees,

An old soldier’s journey draws to a close —

Trees would fly free in the heavens

Ere soul kissed soul again

In freedom’s sweet embrace.

If you love me as much as I loved my dog

When she lay bleeding to death

And I hugged and caressed her

And she miraculously survived, it’s alright.

As I loved the hounded terrorist sitting in his den

On his final fling of freedom,

Media and mediators turned cold,

Chilled by his numbing deeds —

Only he and I saw the hidden escape route,

A tunnel through the barned hay,

And we crawled our way suffocatingly to the light,

It’s alright. Or, as when, surfacing finally from sleep,

The man reclining on raised ground with his friends

And tents pitched high in the heavens above,

Viewing it all from afar and me with such an intenseness

of love,

It’s alright, Lord, it’s alright.

For Paul Higgins

The kids didn’t want teaching, mama,

So we left them alone.

They were hungry, just as we were,

Only nobody came to our rescue back then.

Just like now ’cause when we tried to give them the word,

You came along with your cohort of rampaging friends,

Shouting, “Look, there he is, stop him,” and ye snatched

The food right out of their mouths, sending us away.

The seed that would have grown inside them,

Life-giving, fruit-bearing.

Instead we have disease and destruction, sickness and

decay.

“The education system only serves Satan,” I heard the

Spirit say.

There is nothing in my life,

No love in my heart, I have not surrendered.

Empty though not empty-handed,

I await the coming;