CANTO XVII (continues here)

Another day, another bed.
How many pillows have I known this week?
Traipsing from house to house,
across county as a bounty hunter.
I have my job: I follow my nose,
I wait for the accident to happen,
putting myself about vulnerable,
till the inspiration comes.

Last night, I had a three-quarter sized
doss-down place,
the one I grew in:
St Francis Xaviour on the wall
above the Holy Water font,
across from the mantelpiece
with the Sacred Heart
throbbing with love for sinners,
pulsating with glamour of exotic ritual
crystallised by the drama
in the Garden of Gethsemane
where the berberis made long slim thorns,
blood suckers.
I remember fixing one.
No, I remember picking one
from the bush,
fixing it to an arrow-head,
bending a bow I’d broken
from the side of the wall of Fort Mary,
stringing twine for gut,
and aiming the needled weapon straight
at the posterior of my sister.

There were no arses in those days,
the priests swept the language
free of vulgar words.

I fired right at the plumpest part of her bottom,
through whatever clothing the five year old wore,
I drew blood from her
as she howled for cover of her mother.

Layers of sediment, beware the sentiment.
As I saw the beds I’d vacated,
I heard the tunes fixated.
Every turn released a drop of the remembered,
all reminded me of roots I’d disturbed.
Wouldn’t I be wonderful if there were no memory,
and every moment born without history,
a formula for life without patina,
a landscape composed of snowflake.
But I am doomed to carry
the baggage of my years,
the scythe I learned to whet,
the blade I never forget:
I am one fuck of a memory-peddler,
printed, published, pushed
into the readers’ hand.
Read me,
write me,
ride me.
Take the hand I profer.
Let me stir your colour chart,
agitate your palate
and ultimately, sinisiterly,
inspire your stories to demi-semi quavers.

Trees wave in the gym
stretch limbs to fullest extent
an oak blows its nose

Ivy fibrilates
clings to the trunk, digs in deep
- infant fixed on nipple. 

(end of Canto 17) 

CANTO XVII (starts here)

"I saw him.  He didn’t escape
my attention darling.  Oh, yes,
our little pen-pusher’s back
to hack his way into Montenotte.
Snotty little fellow
with his purple cravat,
a very English Irish type,
full of pity for the self.

"What happened to the Englynion he promised?
Couldn’t he have brought us
a gift from the valleys?
His favourite sweating men,
Dylan Thomas men,
eventually he’ll go to the Fall in Ennistymon,
as if he was a Discworld Head.

"We MOLESKINES only get one chance to an epic.
We’re not going to spoil it by default.
Moley in The Wind in the Willows
Don’t be Ratty,
Diversity in the vestuary
Duckie
Remember the verse.
The only son of the preacherman me,
a flag for thee,
bring on the dancing girls.
Dorothy didn’t carry Willie’s verse for nothing.
Where are the women poets
with their naked forms,
pornverse baby?"

Into the land of the long-skirted girls,
to the shopping centre on its knees,
praying Santa will be kind:
lights, candles, incandescent prayers.
It is already Christmas,
the infant conceived,
the census designed.
Bring your donkeys,
they must be counted, this of all years.
The President decrees you return to the parish
and be counted.
Count yourself lucky
you weren’t born a gull on the Skelligs,
or a lobster in Liscannor.

Under a crescent moon,
the harvest mouse copulated
with an indescribably fancy little rodent,
and brought forth issue,
immaculately conceived in swaddling straw.

That was a practice run for the real thing
in Dooradoyle
- the world’s greatest crib,
the mind’s greatest fib… 

(to be continued) 

This won’t be easy.  That’s the point.  Rory was a one-off.  There has never been a doctor like him, nor will there ever be.  He died on Friday.  I went to his ‘removal’ - more a walk up to his open coffin - yesterday. Tears through my body.  

I’ll never get on with the poem if I dwell on what it felt like for me…

These are his death notices:  here, & The Irish Times 

Rory Lehane (this is your first draft… there will be many)

You are a difficult man to write
a person without parallel,
a cluster of energy
that has never been seen
in  my lifetime…

I walk from your graveside:
that pile of stones and earth yours,
those flowers here for you.
You rest below the surface,
deep in the minds 
of your congregations.

A church service,
a song,
a nave full of prayers.

How can I compare you,
put you in context,
encapsulate you in frame,
reach you with words
that limit you?

Waiting for you to arrive was a public experience:
the surgery, the hole in the wall
through which a secretary frowned.
You were late back from seeing someone.
I had no idea where you’d been,
you were a mystery to me.

And then you came
with undoctorly energy.
- I came to know your entrances
as a returning warrior
bustled back to court
with the glow of battle
for the noble cause.

Your crumpled pinstripes,
disheveled tie,
indominitable focus,
the way you leant back in the chair,
assured me
"I’ll tend to your mind".

You stood beside me
as I lost my mind
and clung for your grip.
I showed you  my prescription,
you offered another medication:
attention, attention, attention. 

Your computer screen,
your toyful practice,
your complete disregard of time.
A waiting room full of a queue,
didn’t matter to you,
attender to people.

No time for the niceties of convention,
you did your doctoring your way
on your terms
without apology.

No selfish bone in body,
you were an absolute giver:
you gave away love
as if it was simply
air.

I’m told of fabulous fingers,
piano in Douglas golf club.
I imagine you never used a driver,
or pitched into the 18th:
for me, you were a clubhouse man,
music maker.

You composed love in a consulting room:
every crotchet that visited you
joined into a melody.
They came in staves,
clinging to lines they’d learned
from childhood days.

You closed the door on the past,
fixed me with an eye that wrapped.
Brought me into the moment,
I heard your assurance:
"we are going to fix you,
I am here for you:
you are a special case."

Oh, Rory Lehane,
you had so many special cases.
I found an inventor
the day I stumbled into your general practice.

You took my child into your heart,
as if she was your own… 

______________________________

Now I am getting more pleased with it: it is closer to saying what I want to say to Rory. [The first draft said: "And there I stop. It is too general.  There is no enough Rory detail there.  But it is good because it it what came straight out of me the first time I tried to write down my response to Rory." ]

The first collection of poems I wrote were set in North Cyprus.  That was 1995 - the year I became a poet.  Almost 15 years later, I’ve written another collection, this time during a week in Tenerife.  These are early drafts…  My plan is to publish all 24 here.

Tenerife

Are you Atlantis darling,
or am I misdirected?
I met a camel trader,
a Guanche that never shaved,
but read my love of age.
I’ve come in search of string
to link islands connected
by Hades‘ common Saviour,
the folk of Teide waved
ashore, Fortunate.
I have a path with wings:
a Celtic shallow disects
ocean streams that were
a way from Drago braved
- a Homer tale I wage.
Atlantic dreamers, gigantic gold,
the golden apple in shade of Atlas.
Tenerife, you know what’s to be told.

___________________________________________________

Breakfast in Mare Nostrum 

There is far too much food
served up for travellers.
Never seen such piles
plums pawpaw platefuls
presented portentously.
They call this holiday,
I call it faraway madness.
There are ten thousand sausages in Mare Nostrum:
Beijing, eat your heart out. 
It’s payback time for Nelson’s Arm:
the Guanches of Tenerife stuff you
on sliced meat.

_______________________________________________________ 

 The First Dip

It’s the water that’s chilling me,
not the wind in from the sea,
nor the breeze of the bay.
The cold between toes is quickly borne
and the arteries around my knees
recovering from the pinch.
It’s when the swimming pool meets
the soft inside of my thigh
I feel the Irish winter shiver.

I am more used to frost and damp. 

__________________________________________________ 

Mothers’ Day Haiku Muddle

We all have one I suppose
She sits in background
I am my mother

_______________________________________________________

The Development 

There is an island in this fountain pool,
intelligence at the heart of a watery beat,
a birdless place where children float from school,
all built, constructed, the image of a one-eyed beast.
Here the flow is on when a switch is thrown,
the shower falls in a dependable rhythm,
a complex designed when first the germ was sown
in a shallow dream where the architects’ team hum.

I came out crying from a liquid place,
my uterine shouts ignored, no echo splayed.
From here I see the sky and float in space
caressing sunlight with flickering eyelash made.
The concrete and the jungle twine below
the undergrowth of mind over time will show… 

_________________________________________________

Untitled

This will burn off
so your skin may fry

Tan the flesh
Fresh meat
Platterfuls.

___________________________________________________

 Waterladies 

I need the exercise,
I’ve been pumping-up all year.
They say water aerobics
is the new black,
so I’m joining in.

How the exercise frees the mind
to compare like with unlike. 

_____________________________________________

On first reading Stieg Larsson 

I must be the last one to begin
to climb this mountain from Sweden.
Sucked into three volumes,
best sellers, more sold that Dan Brown.
This is catch-up, keeping in touch
popular taste.  What marketing:
hand over three books, die,
reap the reward.
I am afraid to think,
there is a story to eat,
a journey I can only afford
on holiday. 

_____________________________________________

The woman in the brown cardigan smokes 

The ring on her middle finger matches
the buckle of the sandal.
She’s a player in a murder mystery,
she schemes,
plans it all over breakfast,
alone.

The other lady has pink lipstick in grey hair,
dark marscara, a hint of eye-brow,
she’s the victim.

No one eats an identical breakfast.
_________________________________________

Reflections

I see my face in the glass,
my shadow in the water,
ripples all over.
A plastic cup, transparent,
floats on surface-tension.
This is where stream meets dream,
undercurrent courts wave
- the story of the pool.
Indigo tiles, sky-blue play-mates:
we have a playground here.
A pipe pumps a push of liquid disturbance
into the mix.

___________________________________

A slight finger-slip
bikini-top falls, reveals
a blink of nipple

_____________________________________

The Germans are loud
carelessly proud of their breasts
Heil pool of sunlight 

_______________________________________

Above the pine line 

I 

I am above the pine line,
beyond the growth I’m used to.
From here the cablecar climbs
to the Devil’s Mouth.

The black and brown of Volcanoland,
cinders that would tear flesh,
have burnt hearts.

The monster at the core of Teidi prowls
on the draft.

This machine metal, electric force,
carries sacrifice, as Abraham did,
as Cowen should have.

We are all children suspended
above ruins.
Is that a tealeaf I read?

II

The fire is bitter here,
even in sun wind blows
across the mouth,
a breath of ice exhale,
bodies crush into cablecar.

I crave the warmth of a stranger’s breath,
reminds me of Babel’s Tower.
We have no need of familiarity,
only bodies recovering
from sight of another side. 

 
_____________________________________________

Table Chat

"I never have two tomatoes for breakfast,
strictly melons for me,
maybe an espresso or three." 

"Oh, I’m a hot milk man.
The morning after Rioja,
I prefer fried eggs with split yokes,
pineapple and strawberries too."

"In that case, I’ll have a double helping of raspberries,
alongside croissants
- provided they’re not sweet."

"There’s a man with a bald head staring;
I bet you anything he’s sipping Cava
with a smirk on his face.
He’s the type that puts pepper on his porridge." 

"I saw a German eating cheese."

"So what? The Spanish are inclined
to wipe the jam off with napkins."

"You’re right, there’s something asparagus-like
about all these continentals."

"Do you see that belly-button over there,
carrying baguette and imitation Parma?
She’ll be on to scrambled egg later,
before the pool.

"Your milk is gone."

"So’s your coffee."

"Fancy a dip in pawpaw juice?" 

"I thought you’d never ask."

"Remember the figs in Lawrence’s novel?"

"The film you mean…" 

______________________________________________________

Breast Sight 

The old breasts are out,
the well-used ones that flop.
Some slip to each side,
like a pair of tyres in balance,
deflated.

But I can see a few retired retreats,
as if crumpled wallpaper.
The glory days are past,
into memory.
I’m sure they are still recalled on lonely nights,
when there’s need for re-affirming balm.

The young breasts are off at work,
topping up the next generation,
or cleavage-joy for the hunt.
I love the wizened eyes,
tantalising lines,
sag marks. 
__________________________________________

 The Man from the East

He came from Kiev,
Minsk or Moscow
on laundered money,
or oil:
I was that sure.
He was too well-developed
to be a rugby player,
but he might have been
a protector.
I noticed his big toe,
broader than my wrist,
size sixteen shoes,
no military tatoos
- certainly not from Intelligence.
He wore a French football shirt:
in a crowded goalmouth,
he’d give no one a half-chance.

I played with his child,
the blond curls,
threw coins into the pool
for two "smallies" to reach.
From seventy metres
the giant trained every eye
on every touch I laid
on his successor. 

__________________________________________ 

Going up Teide 

I have a mountain to climb,
a caldera to traverse:
magma strewn, lava sown.
I wish the Devil would stretch
down to hoist me from this scree

I burn in the light
no grassblade or lichen grows
a dead volcano

The Devil stole the sun,
until the sky god Chaman
heard the beggars’ play
and scattered the ash
on the National Park. 
________________________________________

Slow Coach to Whales

A coach to Loro Parque,
a mist-blanket,
neither sky nor sea alive.
Vines before bloom,
a conventional motorway,
La Matanza,
a stanza on the lower deck
with "A Scattering" for company,
a few colouring pens
- Millenium I finished now.

My child’s hair matted,
she needs her mother.
I’m fascinated by the open mouth
and raw tongue of a sleeping man
in dark glasses:
he too hasn’t shaved today.

We’ll be there in a minute,
I see a Lidl sign and palms,
but I have to twist round
to see where the driver has reached.
Half a banana, plumbago, downhill.

A glimpse of the John Katzenbach
- "Al Hombre Equivacado" -
which the bald man,
with wristwatch on the right,
hides under an orange waterproof.

Downhill slope to the seaside,
a stop to drop off the neighbours.
With my six words of Spanish
I’m told the Parque is on its way
in five minutes.

Teide has no smile today,
a scowl, stop-starting,
hick-cupping jerk.
I make the man at the wheel
into a trickster 
that lured me 
into a marathon…

Hurray, the gates of Loro Parque. 

___________________________________________________ 

 Striking Lizards After Lunch

I’m going to get a lizard with my stick,
find the long tail in the shade,
disturb its curve,
scatter brittle leaves and dust,
rustle dried stems.
I’ll get my ice cream later.
It’s not often I get the chance
to strike with a sword of palm,
to be a knight errant.

______________________________________ 

 Developments

I look for signs of unfinished developments,
concrete blocks, roofless walls,
empty shells, undercoats of paint
left to flake,
a bridge without a ramp,
a quarry boarded up,
a car park promised,
a site abandoned to weather.
Surely the detritus of the market
hasn’t let Tenerife off the hook?

Pescado del dia, grilled,
these small soapy potatoes in salt too.
I like my mojo
finished with red chilli peppers.
________________________________________

The Wind from Africa 

The wind from Africa landed,
all consuming virus,
no escaping,
sticky, clammy, a shirt that clings.
All, all
I see its heat. There is no warmth in it.
Calima took the fresh air,
replaced it with a fog.

Is that blue sky or a blanket of cloud?
Are we completely covered?
It’s not a wind that’s come to take over,
it’s air-clamp.
Invisible visibility, a disabling visitor.
The energy that was here is gone.

The day is taken from me.  Invaded.
Incense from the Weather God.
This is a reminder: assume nothing.
A new force is just around the corner.
_______________________________________

Leaving Day

"Packing-up is so very hard to do..."

The Last Breakfast,
familiar mixture of melon, grape,
kiwi, pawpaw, apricot, grain, fruit juice…
across the table from the pancake,
yogurt, prune,
the salt and pepper in glass, see through,
unclogged holes punched into stainless steel,
the pigeon calls, palms sway,
the blue towel claiming ritual,
the broken-down coffee dispenser
that ground beans and dribbled
half decent caffine.

We are all holiday-makers now,
all slotting into place
- as I gather goods and chattels
and look round for my Judas. 
______________________________________

The Last Swim

The final plunge is nigh,
an underwater experience 
in blue mosaic.
One last look at rippling reflections,
as the fountain tumbles
into the Mare Nostrum Resort.
Grand Central Station,
La Piazza del Mundo.
It’s a father’s job to be pushed under
by his daughter,
to throw her off his back,
to see her crash face down,
until all the hair floats,
and it crosses the mind
how precious she is,
and worth rescuing.
_____________________________

Similarities

I see the yellow peaked cap
from Loro Parque,
the red parrot, the blue of the orca.

I see the girl with dark apricot
curls that fall long down the back
of a body suit designed to protect

fair skin from burning.
I spot a suggestion of mucous,
her chest coughs.

"Daddy, I want a sausage"
and I know immediately
it’s not food she’s after.

It’s a sea horse,
a float for play,
the same the oldies use
for their exercise
in the same pool. 

___________________________ 

"When you’re in Tenerife, photograph a timple…"

If I didn’t know Roger Overall better, I might have thought that was a spelling mistake.  He’s not one to mix up his temples with his timples.  He gave me one condition: I must not ask anyone what a timple was.  So I asked Google.

So now I can bore the pants off you about timples, the five or four stringed instruments from the Canaries. They’re made up north in Tenerife.  I was staying in hotelland, down south - where the only industry seems to be tourism.  But I found a shop selling timples, and went there by taxi on Friday: this timple took about 15 days to make, sells for about 250 euros.  It’s top of the range…

The snaps don’t do it justice…

I’ve kept 327 of the snaps I took on holiday in Tenerife.  It’ll be a fine challenge to pick my 10 favorites…

This is from breakfast. I love the image for its contrast between the silver & the purple - more than the taste of the fruit… 

a mask she made at "KidsClub"… 

the fish that greet you @ Loro Parque. - again there is something about the dark I love 

I had to push the Fujifilm compact camera optical zoom hard to get this one: love her face…

I was in that cable car going up to Teide: the texture of the snow and the way the car sits appeals to me 

an easy choice this… the way she rises out of the water in your face, as pool life goes on behind… 

I suppose this should be last: I love the still life, and the crumbs… 

I love street furniture… 

fish tank in Loro Parque…  weird eh? 

the arrival dance… (one of a series of four) 

CANTO XVI  (begins & ends here) 

The return into Cork was flaky,
a rush through Shannon,
a dash down the road,
a blink, and Newtwopothouse was left behind.
Mallow was swimming,
Clonakilty was under water.

All the talk was of the hand of Henri 
cheating, of the shaving cream,
a referee fireman from Sweden.
A Minister for Justice
indignant at the injustice
- how our poor country
could be robbed of an inheritance
we’d surely deserved
from a single performance.
The country was up in arms.
The Bankers, Developers, Speculators,
even the Politicians,
none of them,
even all of them in cahoots
had managed to galvinise the people
half as much as a skinny Frog
brought up on emails.

On the matter of a ball of wind,
all fell over themselves
with honesty, integrity, decent up-bringing of children,
the moral dilemma.
How do you bring up a child
that knows right from wrong,
when you let the bad guy win
with his flat palm,
with his double handling of the football?

Prometheus Unbound,
Ireland’s Miltonic moment,
harvests the malcontent into a fighting force
to change the course of the Sepp Blatter,
Amazonman Michel Platini
henchman
the International French Conspiracy
to rig the result,
to put us all into negative equity
for the rest of our lives.

Diaspora comes to life:
New York Times, Melbourne Gazette,
Birmingham Times.
Don’t forget your indignation
if you want to come to work, 
Brian.
Even the great turd stirred.

The FAI and BNI merged
in their demands for attention
- the man with the MOLESKINE drove on
through reams of precipitation
and indignation.
By the time he reached the Jury,
the hostelry by the Lee,
there was more incitement from the spectators
than from every evicted family.

The Famine saw the houses torn,
the children put on a cattle track,
the rentless forced on to the boat.
The Famine was dismal failure
of potatoes.
It was the undoing of those lines
Survivors Gain
Diaspora Reign
Let’s all go off to America
in the rusty bottom of tin vessel 
fit for cattle.
Barely a fuss,
this time we will not be moved.
We will not be robbed,
or fobbed off by pundits with reason.
We want a rematch,
History Re-run.
We may have let the blight
force us from our hovels,
but never again will we
fail to swim against the tide of apathy.
We have our sword raised,
our temperature boiled,
those video replays better evidence of the Apparition
than any Lourdes needed to become a shrine.

Our Lady has appeared,
Kathleen, Roisin, Drisheen
- the patina of Fatima abounds.
There is no force on earth
that can stop the march 
of the righteous man
who would be a South African.

One by one,
the impotent leaders of the lost tribe
came from under the woodlice,
proclaimed a Crusade
to regain the soul of Football
on behalf of my child and yours.
Ahern, Cowen, Coughlan,
watch them voice an opinion for change.
Oh yes, PR maestro,
I take your point.
Let them eat distraction.
Let them eat Henri, the ref,
the culture of the ball
- anything but NAMA and its budget.
Keep their eye on another ball,
turn the Natonal Strike
into a vendetta on the striker.

How do you hold down your breakfast
when you spin for Ireland?
Harness the disappointment,
nurture the frustrated
whose only relief was their belief
on the road to Johannesburg.

The country, awash with an army of Jack-the-Lads,
riding into war,
the soil saturated
so that it floated,
streamed, torrented,
forced the people of West Cork
to stay by their home.
The old stone bridge
over which O’Neill and O’Donnell
marched to Kinsale,
arches of silt washed into salt.
There will be no forgetting that weather,
that November day,
after the Gods of Football
poured a bucket load of shite
into the rivers of the Irish
and poked the heavens to cry,
so that the price of water
became general,
and there were not enough priests
to mobilise the defences.

(end of Canto 16) 

CANTO XV (continues here) 

Over the Irish Sea, over the English wave,
out of reach of the Welsh dragon
that guards St David’s Head,
Carmarthen Man looks up to the sky
where there is buried treasure from Dinefwr.
Everyman can see the plane flying
to the land of NeverNever.

We have passed the Saltees,
where the flight went down 
to visit the exhibition mounted by the folk
from "The Final Judgement".
Bitter cold it was,
none of the flames promised
to those deserving Purgatory.
As this shower passes over,
I hope it rains with pity.
Because those that live on
face a fearsome life
festooned with blind bends
and flags proclaiming 
the Republic of their dreams:
Utopia, Myopia, Cornucopia
- there’s hope for yea.

Have you packed you firearm?
Semtex is out of fashion.
If you can’t use a knife,
remember the skewer you used to use
for Sunday lunch.
Anything that draws blood will do.
If you go naked into this good night,
you better carry a meat-cleaver.
It’s not the gang from Moyross
that’s after you,
they know you don’t need to check them out.
It’s Castletroy and Dublin 4
that likely to come knocking on your door,
the lawyers from the tribunals,
conveyancers of blazers they wear for disguise.
If you land in one piece,
you won’t stay whole for long.
Only the schizoid seem to survive
on this other side.

It’s pissing - as if you didn’t expect it,
under the cover of rain.

CANTO XV  (begins here) 

Twirl the hair as you’d wrap the Saint you love.
Open your mouth, release the joy within.
Sing out those lips your mother formed above
in Dublin town, and let the Vikings in.
You have the face of Liffey water’s cream,
such nails accent the timbre from the vox,
a handbag rife with symbols from those dreams,
cherished in rush to throw your breasts on rocks.

My darling child unlearn the vagaries
that haunt the church where you were met with pride.
Sail breeze through storms, make all your victories
lavish with rings, magicians on the tide.
Uncross the knees, stand up for all you own,
the day will come when style is free to roam.

The sonnet’s an exhausting peak to climb,
a form of words that shrieks the ancient cry:
"I am Bic, pentameter,
as fixed as Irish dancing
before the river dance rang.
I’ll excommunicate
all your oeuvre,
and banish the hell fires of damnation
from the grit in your pocket."

There are turds in poetry,
they cannot hide for long,
so laboured for expression,
cow-pats and food for anteaters.
I’ll have a tapir sandwich please.
All the training at Fota is paying off,
I’ll soon know my diphthongs
from my fricatives,
anal from anil,
anvils from absurdity.

(to be continued) 

CANTO XIV  (continues here)

Death is the wallpaper of Ireland.
Backdropped against it
are the cute hewers.

There’s worse than DRUMCONDRA ahead.

I hope you went to Glastonbury
and consulted Joseph of Aramathea.
The road well travelled by gurus
isn’t where I’d start 
if I was starting this search.
When you’ve turned a stone,
and found the cheating smell
of the hand of Henri,
you may overlook the return of the sneak.
As soon as you’ve moved on,
the minefield resurges itself,
the devils of Loudun are never done.
Prepare yourself for a killing.

There are so many hedgefunds
in the Irish Financial Centre,
you can spread-bet the rate
at which the list of the honest
is being depleted.

Fly back to your people,
get off the ground on which you felt secure.
It’s a corracle you need
to slide around on ice.
There are those from NAMA planning your funeral. 

(end of Canto 14) 

CANTO XIV (continues here)

Oliver’s Gaff
Salami in the fennel
truffles in the soup
rib of a lamb gone pink
mint from every pore.
At least I can chew my garlic
and apologise.
What’s the point of desert
when it’s all sweet?

Overslept.  
Chained to the bed.,
unfit to wake in time for his airplane.
Shit, bollocks, damn and blast it.
The alarm - what the fuck happened to that runt!
I’m sure I programmed it carefully.
The bastard never went off.
Time, tide and RyanAir wait for no man.
It’s hopeless to rush.
I’m lost now, marooned on this island,
this mainland from which the conquerors came.
England has me in its grip.
I might as well saddle up the donkey,
load up the paniers,
sample the delights of Chew Magna reservoir,
and saunter back to Hertz. 
They’ll want their precious jaunting car.

He put on the same shirt from yesterday,
underpants too.
Left the stubble alone,
made sure all his belongings were in one bag,
slipped out without alerting his host,
and was gone from Bath
before the postman came.

"This is my trunk. I warned you
not to expect this maze to decipher itself.
I have my ears to your ground.
Elephants abound around your sound…

Ireland has a famine.  A dearth of honest men.  A dreadful period during which public life has been corrupted so thoroughly that few even know the difference between taking advantage and living a grounded life.

I exaggerate to make a point.
The politicians are all useless.  The bankers are all chancers.  The civil and public service at the highest level is beyond description.  I despair of the prospect of change.  This was the mentality I was in last November when I wrote my epic poem. The poem I’ve been publishing in bits on this blog…

The core theme that kept my focus during frenetic writing [178 pages of handwritten Moleskine] was the search for one honest man in Ireland. 

Yesterday’s The Irish Times (The Saturday Interview: Niall FitzGerald by Fintan O’Toole) shook me.  I was shocked to read:

"He also found the world of Irish business ‘claustrophobic’. It was ‘the same people, the same smallish group’. Even now, he believes part of the problem that led to Ireland’s current crisis was ‘that very intimacy, the knowledge that you can take one small envelope and write all the names that matter on the back of it. Because we’re all human - you can think something very strongly, but to express to you, as a very good friend of mine, that I think you’re screwing things up here and actually doing wrong things is quite tough"

You can read the whole interview here…

He tells the story of a dinner in summer 2009. He confronted old friends all of whom had been directors of Irish banks.

“I said, ‘I want to confront you as a friend with a very difficult question’,” he recalls. “Because unless we all – together and individually – learn from this, I’m not sure it has been of any great value. The question you have to ask yourselves is: did you know what the institution was doing and the full consequences of what it was doing? Because, if you did, you were complicit with the recklessness. Or if the answer is you didn’t know, then you cannot have been discharging your responsibility as a director of the company properly.”

This sort of clarity and set of values is rare in Ireland.  
I haven’t found the like of it in public life. For me it was as if I’d found one honest man at last.

The whole interview is wonderful.  It includes a section on the need for authenticity.

 “If you’re not authentic, people can’t relate to you – you with all the warts, you with all the failings, all the weaknesses. If you try to hold yourself up as some kind of icon of perfection who has all the answers, you will fail.”

Authenticity, as he sees it, also involves responsibility and accountability. He is highly critical of those in the banking industry who insist that the bonus culture can go on as before.

“I have been genuinely amazed at what I would regard – because I know most of them – as very bright, able leaders of international banks, that they just haven’t got it. They don’t realise the degree of rage and anger that’s around, and that they have to make significant personal sacrifices to rebuild society’s trust in them and their institutions. There’s too much of ‘we can’t do this because our competitors will grab our best people away’. Fine, let them grab them away. You mean, these terribly valuable people who either didn’t understand the risks they were running, or understood them and continued anyway without thought for the consequences? You know what? I could do without those valuable people.”

Authenticity is an achievement
… not something many achieve without difficulty.  Read the rest of the interview and see what you think of it.

Niall FitzGerald was born in Sligo, and grew up in Limerick.  He went to St Munchin’s school.  His business CV:

Niall FitzGerald’s career
Joined Unilever in Ireland in 1968. Chief executive of its South African food business, 1980-1987. Youngest and first non-British chairman & chief executive of Unilever 1996 to 2004, acquiring such brands as Knorr & Ben & Jerry’s, and employing 250,000 people worldwide. Chairman of Reuters, 2004; now deputy chairman of ThompsonReuters.

CANTO XIV  (begins here)

Another RyanAir flight ahead of schedule,
another victory for O’Leary’s and Ryan’s.
Have you paid for your toilet?
Maybe there is honesty in buffoonery?

The Man inside the Jacket smiled
a crisp hello.
Mr Tayto, arms behind the man,
is ready to guide you on the next stage of your adventure.
He’s coming out in public.

The Old Green Tree in Bath, opposite the fish,
across the street from sausages,
that’s where the man in the charcoal coat
from Harrod’s
went to rest legs.
There was something unfamiliarly familiar,
a thoroughfare without a "To Let" sign,
where the draught beers included
"Pitchfork", "Dursley Stream",
and three others over 4%.
Bitter warm bitter, cider too.
Romans came to the warm spring
among trees, to the hills that sang
of Romulus and Remus,
and the steep slope up
on to the Cotswold Way. 

HABITAT survives to trade another Xmas,
another Abbey where the paint has faded,
Reformation come,
and Counter-Reformation dissipated. 

Three pints exchange guilt for company.
It’s as if we were UnderMilkWood
early one evening in November,
before the hedgehogs hid.

So how did we rise from Swansea Bay,
travel the rainbow that straddles the day,
look over the sea to Cork?
There is copper in the Valley boys,
and coddle on the Gower,
through sleet the Mumbles. 

Erda, in her dressing gown,
surrounded by old comrades
from the class struggle,
a court on Seaview Terrace,
the Central Committee for the prosecution.
One Molotov cocktail would do the lot of them.
The fellow with the beard is a sleeper,
buried so deep within the establishment,
you’d need to split the atom to expose him,
cropped with red hair, pianist fingers,
an eyeful of yesterday’s masquera,
a Rosa Luxemburg look-alike,
and the Maoist old prospector
who was with me in the Sushi bar
in Paddington Station. 

Erda’s man shuffled the deck,
dispensed the cards,
set the sand dripping through.
"You have nine minutes.
After that, you’re out.
I had no business letting you in."

Nine times the space
that measures day and night
to mortal man…

CANTO XIII  (continues here)

Go on Boy, die for Ireland
I’ll knit your funeral shroud…

I’ll iron the tunic of your martyr.
I’ll see visions for your memory.

The female deadlier that the male, 
feminine interrupta.
It’ll be a woman who leads us to our Grail.

Over in Swansea
which waits the arrival of the Ferry Julia,
there is my Erda muse,
Dylan’s drinking mate.

If you are asked where I’ve gone,
say I won’t be long,
but I’ll return stronger than the dragon.
Heaney knows the score,
he went underwater to slay the mother of the beast,
restored the poet’s honour through translation.
Beowulf, the Conqueror of Illusion,
knight before the realm,
a pre-Tudor, pre-Chaucerian saga…
an old story from the old country,
where they buried silver hairs in caskets of Rowan,
and watch the swans fly home to Coole.

We are on a fumbled journey,
in space bedecked in ivory
phrases, praises and mazes
taken from the recipe book
written by Finn McCool’s wife.

I give you a patchquilt,
crossed in hedgerow,
seams of streams.
The trees are leafless now,
their pride all blown away.
You have a tapestry for a mind,
use it,
or lose it.
When the rough get going,
the tough get sewing.
I wish you the applause of the fainthearted. 
Touch down safely.
Kiss the tarmac, if you will.
There is a reservoir over the Combe.
Glastonbury Child, come meet your Newgrange genes…

(end of Canto 13) 

[dbgg1979’s photostream on Flickr]

"This report … is… the most important

report to have been published since

Vision…"

 - Tony Bates in today’s The Irish Times HEALTHplus 

So I printed it off.  Resolved to read the whole report, and see what I think.  The headline in Tony Bates’ column "Mind Moves" is "Stigma thrives on a suspicion of no recovery". Tony’s piece seems to be a summary of the report.

I’m too tired now to write more.  I’ll carry on this blog post after I’ve consumed the whole report. I feel like immersing myself in this issue… 

CANTO XIII  (continues here)

Leaves of dust, teabag
born on the bush, Darjeeling
calls cobwebs to life.

Reinforcement needed.
The quest is beyond us.
The business of sifting through all 1.4 million applications
for the position of Honest Joe,
the job of hanging out at political conventions
with Greenies,
the sweat of being there for the touching of hands
across pews over the weekend.
There isn’t a football team called Ethics in Ireland.
At most, it’s tougher than the needle in the haybales.

We need a new search engine.
That’s why Siegfried has left Shannon
on the 1010 RyanAir to Bristol.
Consultations are in order.
I remember Breffny O’Rourke,
he went to France for help
and met a Welsh Lord willing to invade the island
to find one honest priest
who was selling indulgences for a fair price.
The rumor is no such creative was ever uncovered
after no end of Synods.
My own view is that Murray may have been
the one fair hierarch.
- he was routed in Cashel (or Thurles) about 1850,
before the Pope became infallible to compensate.
But what is history to me now?
Now that all the women have been shredded from it… 

(to be continued) 

CANTO XIII  (begins here)

The night has gone, and now is gone.
All that’s left is the appearance.
The kettle wakes to the sound of electrical click.
My water awaits.

So do I boil the entrance of day.
So do I lay aside the vestiges of lightless sleep.
I’ve had a child in bed with me
looking for her mother.  She’s gone:
this is a house where musical beds
are par for the course of parenting. 
You get your share of disturbance,
so that you’re never cut off
from the issues of the flesh.

Morning has broken
- a cry from the landing.
I find it stretches me to stick to the pouring of the tea.
Barry would be proud of me.

Ritual is the splice of life.
There is no cock to crow,
you have to do it yourself.
Recognise the day,
it is unlike another.
This is the first time in eternity
this day has dawned,
it will not come again.
As soon as you sense it,
it has moved on.
There is a moment,
and that was it.
Patterns, inventions to bring comfort in chaos.
All is and WAS.
As soon as you’ve imagined the shape of day,
you’ve lost that vision.
It never disappears,
simply plays with memory.

The trail of the one surviving honest person in Ireland
is cold. It’s been warm in the past,
but, as soon as the trail’s become hot,
live, pulsating,
it’s gone.
Another trail opens up.
You live in spirits.

A sleepy head joins up the dots of life
in a particular way
that serves the story it writes.

If you don’t tea, they’ll be down the stairs
on top of you
and that’ll be an end to the dark
from which you take off.
This is all like fishing with insects
that bubble to the surface
and explode into actions in flight.
So comes the thoughts of day
into the stream,
where it may take a hermit carving a stone
to indicate the path best followed
on your fruitless journey.

"Halt, I am the ALMIGHTY.
I will not hear the voice of reason.
If I let the reasonable rule the world,
it is doomed.
Close that mouth through which tumble
the cry of the ordinary fears
of the ordinary eyes.
We ALMIGHTY bless the extraordinary,
the unreasonable belief that there will be a Saviour.
Believe me, there is a stone among the stones,
uncover it and Paradise becomes.
If that’s not clue to action,
We have chosen the wrong batch of human beings.
Maybe we’ll simply have to start again with a new beginning.

In the beginning was the
un-word
and the un-word was paying
no heed to its God.

That is a matter for the Gods.
Meanwhile, close your mouth to the defeated.
Embrace those in the gutter
who are not stuck there,
they will pull the others out.

I am your ALMIGHTY
and the ALMIGHTY of all.

Get on with that for which you were annointed.

Time is beyond us all… "