Poems

Private, intimate, sensate;  breaching that homeless ache beyond the reach of language,  to make sculptures that seem  to float just above the ground,  narrow columns, six feet high, clothed in succulent colours;  sentinels in communion, sensate spirits always reaching upward, into the light, letting go the personal to know the divine. Age eleven Anne longs to escape from the private gloom of home; is given a red and white bicycle, explores her home town, mapping Easton’s grid pattern, cycling north,  south, east and west, memorising its layout, until she knows every alley, finds in a neglected yard, a strange being, a mirror ball reflecting the town, the trees, her own face turned comical.

Today, fifteen years later and counting, your formal raincoat still belongs to me. It’s the black one you bought for funerals when your own old age was fast approaching. I’d leave it at home, safe from rips or stains, but every time I head for the trade fair and shrug it on in the hotel lobby,  it pauses to give me an awkward hug.

Rather than who were picking upthe big bonuses, it was his signatureI’d look for when signing for my wages.Just another bloke on the gang,no particular accent or hairstyle,but his handwriting – in fountain pen,not the Sellotape-bound birodangling from the clipboard –wouldn’t have been out of placein a shipping company’s ledgeror even a Book of Hours.

You can hear it coming down the road: the stick of old age. No Yeats. No rage. Insistent, pervasive, it permeates the brain like acid. Like an insistent stain. Inside the carapace it works its insidious way into the very heart of existence. There to stay. Silent inside the darkness  hidden from all evidence, it finds its way alone into the very marrow, through the bone. The tap, tap, tap of time beating its threatening percussions on the brain.  Insistent. Like pain. Not a hint of wind. From leaves, not the slightest stir. The sky clear.

Your parents, like mine a decade ago, are hauling themselves around their own home like a team of exhausted footballers who’ve given up on finding a winner but are still chasing an equaliser in the ninety-third minute to make up for the chances they’ve missed throughout the match, knowing full well that the final whistle is set to be blown any moment now.

That brush I happened uponin our dimly lit outhouse, onemother used whilst I was in her bellyand all through my childhood. Its bristles worn shorter than a fingernail,I wrapped it in Saturday’s Finaland tied it with string, put it in for exchangeon a day he was too rushed to check. Clearly not one of the firm’s,they displayed it down the offices,hung it up on the wall, an exampleof how far he’d driven his men.

Our walking-tour guide says sealsfor sails and crayeen for crown, leads usalong the Lagan to 70 foot Nualawith the Hula (aka The Beacon of Hope).For every jab at the IRA, there’s a quipagainst the UVF. Ask me my politics, my religion,you can’t shock me. A gauntlet thrownwith an ironic smile: to rip himby the roots, box and label,here where lamp posts flash allegianceand street names are fuses. The secret leaks into how we listen,refuses to break covenantwith neutrality, shields tribal DNAfrom trip wires of language.Some call them freedom fighters,some say terrorists, but I say bastards! Only joking – I say paramilitaries.

The first newspaper after the cyclone was surprisingly welcome, not so much for the news but for the paper itself, the newsprint, with its soft spot-colour, cartoons, non-jittery ads and above all for the puzzle pages aching for the press of biro and unhurried completion. Welcome, too, the simple foldable feel of it, just me and the daily rag, the global hordes pressing behind my personal screen negated for a bit, and me and the world none the worse for it.

Who are we to wish the clocks reverse and we are back to spring? Who would deny the falling leaves, the receding hairline of autumn? Who would wish away the change in air, hope to transformation? The elegance of gusty days, leaves flying in eddies of reminiscences, a quiet comfort to becalm the storm, to listen to the fury, out there, elsewhere. We embrace autumn and even winter has its charms, embraced in wonder. Time is a ghost, but we aren’t yet, we welcome new horizons, waiting.

The kettle doesn’t know it needs a cup To hold the water it was plugged to boil: Where was the I when nature thought me up? When air entered my lungs, made me uncoil? Now that the body starts to flinch and falter, There’s no way that the I is getting out. Nature persists as circumstances alter. The cup’s the part that’s broken, not the spout. Again, what of the primal soup so-called? What consciousness was lurking in that gloop To meet the grateful bowl that holds our brains? Brimful, our life, and what it all contains Is nothing but the sight of death, forestalled By stubborn hope of something more than soup.

We read poetry to each other by flickering glow,  leaning into lilting seas, an eloquent calling,  a mesmerising renewal, our whole world opens up before us, clear light, sensation of sand on  toes, warm and delicate as future memories, feelings of spring, a quiet warming of lives to all that’s to come. Voices gently tremble, so close to each other now, an opening up  of hearts and flowers. Candles flicker in distant breeze, articulation of poetry’s sacred grace,  something so powerful to articulate the stars, the whole universe is in our hands, lush oasis in the tempest, words and lips hold such power, books fall to the floor, the night is ours alone.