the may flower is out
and a warm wind
storms along
the coast;
twilight
gathers shadows
into the sea,
the night
swells, heavy
with anticipation;
far away
blows
a whale,
a candle
throws shadows
on these pages
where the light
infantry
march along,
whistling
a cheerful
song,
wink
at the pretty girls,
who shake their ribbons
and their curls,
so fleetingly.
This rose for all the world for you
These tears for all the dead,
Those empty words of morningtide
This ever-present dread..
Those cloying smells of perfume
On the dresses of the rich,
This workman stumbling homeward
His body in a ditch.
September’s moon still shining
On this old planet’s doom,
Her wind and tide conspiring;
A chill invades the room.
When sadnesses besiege me
At the dying of the light
And starlight illuminates
The ending of the day
Then star-crossed lovers
Quietly drift away.
Sigh silently out of sight
Of mirrors, water, eyes
And I will find, momentarily,
humankind loses its disguise.
We spin and whirl,
dance like hemlock in the hay,
we are Witch and Wicca and Wizard
we sway beneath the moon, all night, all day.
Dream our dreams away.
For all that was lost
Is summoned a-new
Pentacles set aflame tonight
the sky, the earth, the light.
Time and tide and star-shine do not lie.
Warp & weft weaves its way across the sky,
I turn towards the dying of the light,
The goddess in the moon deceiving,
As light bends and curves —
Our aphrodite-night occurs.
Rain clouds the lungs
of the men who tread
these black horizons;
two hundred years
and more
of smog
sank deep, into these
black stone villages.
Villages
set like concrete
into these stark
sheep-ridden hills;
and in the pubs,
the worn down late-afternoon light
shadows the men
who drink in the half light.
.
— you will see
the passing beauty of a butterfly —
Egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, butterfly
this natural magic of transformation
can happen to you too. Time makes you
more beautiful. Human metamorphosis
liberates souls. Such a rare achievement
Requires an emptying of the mind,
a deep (and so painful) compassion.
to defeat your expectations;
to free yourself and you will see
the passing beauty of a butterfly.
Butterflies live for about a week
Butterflies taste with their feet.
Butterflies do not have mouths.
Butterflies need the warmth of the sun to fly by.
Butterflies can see red, yellow, and green.
A butterfly’s skeleton is on the outside of her body.
The wings of a butterfly are transparent.
Tiny scales give their wings colour.
The souls of saints fly by metempsychosis
Into the bodies of butterflies
As they flutter hour after hour from flower to flower
Tasting the nectar through their proboscis
Remembering the caterpillar’s cocoon
& speculating upon the depths and heights of eternity.
a
The tone of the big bell settles in the dust
of this small market town in county meath
and on the stained glass window still
the sun-marked resonance of bell
circles of uninscribed sound
uncaged
through all the cerebral centuries
chimes and chants for christ the king
chimes of crucifix, pyx and plate
these bells have blessed the insouciant faithful
buttressed, battered, no-man mattered
through all the occupied centuries
turning dust to dust again
& straining to the music of bells.
If you can see the good in everyone
If you do not condemn the less fortunate
If you can speak the plain unvarnished truth
When all about you are prattling prevarications
If you are patient with those who lack luck
If, when faced with stupid bias you do not duck or dive
Or respond to haters with hatred
Or respond to the wicked with evil.
If you can modestly accept success and failure –
Twin deceivers at the feast of life –
If you can face up to disaster with smiles and laughter
If you can bear to look into the mirror
& truly see what others see
If you can accept that your words can be twisted
If your heart is big enough to glory in the success of others
If you can accept life-threatening illness without self-pity
If instead of “Why me?” you can sit for hours nursing parent or child
If you can smile and laugh when all about you is loss upon loss
If you can spot hypocrisy by a country mile
& damn the pompous with a winning smile
If you can skip the nets of race, nationality, religion, class
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And — which is more — you’ll be a woman my son!
Monday 16th January 2023 8:17 pm
a psychic distillation
in the centre
of this stinking nation
the poor’s unfocused struggle
for existence
this patient is bound up
in a charlie darwin struggle
in A&E: at 2am, 200 bpm
no sweat, he thinks,
the drugs’ll bring it down
eventually
& as the mist lifts
my heart skips a beat
i see:
the frozen children
the ‘failing’ families
the unwanted poor
in the grip of
stinking bare-faced complacency
by John E Marks
Monday 26th December 2022 7:19 pm
I, too, was potentially everything at birth. I, too, was stunted, narrowed, warped by my environment, my outcroppings of heredity. Sylvia Plath
The past is present in all our genes
and when you begin to recognize ancestors
running through your blood
you begin the blessed process of forgetting
the here and now, as a free-standing reality,
and so begin the unknowing of yourself.
Discarding the slippery glimmer of today,
putting on the face to meet
the faces that we meet.
We now can apprehend
consciousness moving away from us nto the dark recesses
of the blood,
jumping along, generation after generation,
always arriving back in the present
bruised from the fight yet shining a light
into the dangerous past of Vikings, Jacobites
men whose hands were never clean,
those who shared their homes with animals,
young men who Recruiting Sergeants marched off to war
by means of the old king’s shilling.
We carry the genes of victims
of Droit du seigneur (ius primae noctis)
which allowed the Lord to take the virginity
of all new wives. We can taste the ways
in which the past seeps into the present
and notice how our genetic inheritance
is left to do its work, again,
in this particular time and place.
BY THOMAS HARDY
Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
“Now they are all on their knees,”
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.
We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.
So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
“Come; see the oxen kneel,
“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.
InnerUrban 