Poetry Samples

"Silence your din, sweet soul within, and tether your thoughts to time,

We'll burst like bombs round Bridge-a-crinn, and unite to write this rhyme."

*** Click on Title of Poem or scroll down page ***

1.  Valentine

Give me that biro, turn back the clock,

Bleed the turnips, make hens of the cocks,

Make the Black Kettle steam into Dundalk,

Till I rhyme lost time, to the heart's tick tock.                      

                                                               |Return to Top of Page|

2.  Before the first shovelful - An Epitaph

All you thoughtful thousands, round my grave,

Hear this:

I’m not away,

I shine in all your shaven faces,

Whisper through the mystery of trees.

Look!  That crow carries me.

For years I drifted here and there –

Now, I’m feckin’ everywhere.

                                                               |Return to Top of Page|

3.  Faughart's Holy Ground

THIS ground is holy

because we stamped it so

on our imaginations.

It is sanctified and special

because the generations

kneed hilly breasts,

kissing dumb stones.

Walking in rymning thousands

on newly hedge-trimmed roads

by walls, freshly white-washed,

along a summer stream.

Strewing prayers and banners on the way

headed by the humble horse and dray.

Triumphing through fields with Ronnie's band,

bearing white-veiled Brigids

through avenues of honour

to the treed Míle Fáilte

of Faughart.

This precious trickle through the grassy grove,

puts hot New Zealand geysers in the shade,

because the faith of centuries is pulsing in the glade.

These stones are rendered holy by the trusting touch of love.

This place, this shrine, will always live

above religion

beyond time

an oasis of tradition

in sandy wastes of change.                         |Return to Top of Page|

4.  Shame

Eyes met in the basement

outside the ladies.

A young nun guilty going in.

The secret's out

Someone's caught with trousers half down.   |Return to Top of Page|

5.  Free Speech

If I could fairly open my mouth

Openly speak my mind,

If I could vault the low moon

or spell "pretend,"

Or just like any normal pig

Watch the passing wind,

I'd be able to say God's good

The poor priests are going round in rags

Nothin' wrong with gun or bomb

So long as you give a warnin'

And save us plastic bags.

Instead, there's a halter on my tongue;

I have to shout that God's a Cod.

I couldn't vault a four-foot moon,

I have to mouth my pygmy lies.

Christ, the clergy have us robbed

And, since I cannot see the wind,

I scream from steeples, curse your bombs.

With or without warning.                            |Return to Top of Page|

6.  Black Beauty

Down the back road

I led "Black" home.

On a very short rein

He kept plodding on.

Old walls redolent of song,

Fields soaking July sun.

Men will make baskets from these sallies

Along an easy stream.

Peter Levins puffed behind.

The monster's huge eyes

Never left my too-near back;

Worse still, in bare-feet-

Just petrified.

His nostrils, breathing

I loved him, feared him.

"Peter, he's watching me."

"You're alright, Jem."

How could I feel secure

Leading home a dinosaur?

We were ploughing out spuds.

I've often heard of cowardly mice

Fleeing from terrified lions.

I loved big "Black"

Daren't shout or cry

'Case he'd shy,

Three in a sunny field -

Man, horse and boy.

I should have got sandals

For leading "Black" a mile.

Now I have a bigger fear -

Afraid to die.                                       |Return to Top of Page|

7. Looking into an enlarged photo in the Queen's Hotel,

    of Dundalk's market square.

Tortoiseing shod wheels, the twentieth snorts;

Whinnying steam.

A gas lamp;

Kilmore's summering leaves.

Tussauded, capped oldies grouped chatting (tongues tied)

Or loners watching the side-cars standing by,

Or the horse-cart parade, on aching roads

To foetus Ford.

The peaked, bearded constable

Pins a cribbed cart-parking offender

Or unplated vendor?

Whist !

Bowlered, dour (in a Grecian trio)

Stanced like Paddy Kavanagh,

Your man dunts the camera.

Where have all the young things gone?

Shops, stables, wheels?

In the fields?

Three figures march the dust

away from us -

Towards Thomas Craig's.

Out on her own, through horsedung tang,

A Lady

Shawls a Victorian back, in blacked identity;

Turns neither cap nor bowler.

Who were you?

MAUD GONNE?

Please, please turn round.

GRANNY !                                               |Return to Top of Page|