Authors: Sue Morgan
Did you anoint with sacramental oils and intercede?
Or turn your back and leave those nuns to pray?
Climb slowly
down
stone step
after stone step,
swallowing time,
backwards.
Through dust's darkness
into the tomb.
Alone with the Boy King
in his carved sarcophagus.
He lies patiently
waiting for time's end.
Silence separates behind glass screens,
reverberates with after-life awe.
Staring, I don't blink,
but he wins.
Stone step
up
stone step,
back to the light.
In the closing of a
blind eye I see the future.
Blue gentian
dripped
by liquid sky.
Lively yellow bindi,
button with no name,
brilliant sun pixel of beauty.
Lay you back in the warmth
let little jewels fall,
blanket you with dotted joy.
Spotted brilliance
to cover you through winter.
Peel off and swallow brightness
until the spring equinox is come again.
Mystery of the mountains
concealed behind your night shroud
let the soft illuminating light
of the newly born sun
part your veil
and may you salute my dreams.
Oh, binding cord of spirit,
Silver skein of sorrow,
Twist like a girdle round this frame.
Penetrate the weft
And weave into my soul
But do not leave me.
I am Fish Eye.
It seems you dreamed me alive
and I swallowed the rainbow of that dream.
See, I am black and white duality,
polarity born of ancient time.
Truth walks the lie of my fish feet,
fins that feel for patterns of new life.
So know that as you circle
in your shades of grey
the all-seeing Fish Eye
sees you.
Shadows scud across your countenance
Like black sighs from a Dark Lord.
What depths of despair can I not see
behind the flat summer calm of your face?
I spied a woebegone sight on the shores of Galway Bay.
A single file of women, black clad ravens all,
sloughed along a rise above the sea,
so stark in summer sunshine.
A coffin of a man was lifted high
and carried on salt breezes.
Grieving waves below could hold no more
and sprayed their sad lament
on slabs of solemn limestone.
Seagulls screeched and wheeled
in arcs of life, as if to chase away
this grisled silhouette of death.
Its lack shone like a beacon on her finger.
The third on the left, or second from the right,
dependant on which way you looked.
That empty digit sore lacked love's external pulse.
Wanted! A fat, shiny diamond from the mine at Kimberley,
seen as a child in the days before we knew
that rivers of blood carried sparkle and greed.
So pained that that finger was bare,
her daydreams drew initials, joined and filigreed,
pink ink at the back of her school-books.
She walked past Weir's, sneaking glances askance,
with a quickening of feet that would have preferred
to dawdle and tread carefully over carat and clarity, and sheer size.
When the day came though, it was perfunctory.
She chose her own ring and paid from her purse.
An opal with little white diamonds, circled around
like seven vestal virgins, mocking her need to comply.
As soon as she could, it was slipped from the finger.
Her first born, here early, had skin like thin tissue
which tore in the breeze, and a hard stone that'd cut
was nothing that couldn't be kept, in the earthenware pot
that sat on the shelf in her kitchen.
Death swells towards you.
Pneumonia's cold tide washes,
Floods your beating heart,
Steals away your warmth.
Caught in a final net of no tomorrows.
Brittle air breathes the misted
Number of your days.
The dumb echo of my tears
Sounds your death knell.
Colour seeps and greyness falls
But quiet, like the mermaid's caul.
I passed Paddy Doyle at the crossroads today,
at the wheel of his old âGrey Donkey'.
There was but a single tooth in his mouth
and a shock of hay at his temple.
I raised my hand in a greeting
but he didn't wave back, why should he?
He's been there as long
as the ancient yew and the old Celtic cross,
both visible over his shoulder.
Needles click- clack, chattering tongues,
fingers knit one, purl one, knit two together.
Worn-down points exposed as silver tips
in blurred motion, too fast for my eyes.
All the while the conversation spins and weaves
its spells, wound lightly round gnarled fingers.
Words rise in the tip- tap cadence
of women's secrets, wrapped firmly beneath curled knees.
Stretched hands in pairs receive skeined wool
with an unwinding and rewinding of tales
told tightly into coloured balls, binding
life's patterns in intricate word melodies.
Itchy wool that seals out rain and wind
with words to keep young ears warm.
The sod of our land has a deep soul
And holds its stories close.
Ages pass, unbidden but not forgotten.
Turf bonds with its tales.
Strike a match and light the fire.
Bring bread and cheese,
Fresh salmon from Loch Erne.
Come stay a while, take a sup to drink,
Chat about your day and tell me again
The feats of Ulster's kings and their ways.
Let not our hospitality be blown away on brash winds,
Let mellow words carry far on turf's sweet smoke.
Let's go with that flow,
Slow.
Drift and find your magic.
Take it easy, make it easy,
Flow with your soul.
Let it take you,
Lift you, carry you.
Go slow,
Flow, go with your heart.
Grow.
Find your true meaning,
Meander at ease, go with the breeze.
Blow. Catch your own drift
And soar to the shore
Of your dreams.
Tip-toe over fairy steps,
clint and gryke ritual,
once performed, transforms parched rock,
on altar's solemn limestone,
a rich communion of black bounty
hoist heavenwards on barbed arcs.
Unreachable, round and heavy,
Clots fat as my maiden thumb.
Acid sweetness rains, dribbles down
From upturned corners of my childish mouth.
Stigmata, summer wounds appear
purple on soft hands that risk a piercing.
Those welts, glistening berries along a razor line,
stretch far for a crown of thorns,
until wasp stings remind
the Devil spits come Michaelmas.
I am a traveller in this world,
I am from places past.
Your language breaks as waves,
a welling of the sea within my ear,
tides that wash across
the distant faces that I see
but do not know.
I drown in its depths.
I doubt the truth of those who speak for me,
tired, as nonsense slips unnoticed from their lips,
slick pebbles washed up on an empty beach.
I walk along once familiar shores
made strange by my lack of care.
Here in this foreign place,
a disconnected time of pain and angst.
I am nothing!
Dumbness strikes.
I have no voice to shout that
âI am here!'
I look in vain for signposts back
to my promised life.
Up from the country near Donaghmore
For afternoon tea, a birthday surprise.
Beneath that cupola, the all-seeing eye
Of mercantile endeavour,
We sit enthralled by excess.
Starched white napkins
Hide self-made paunches,
Buttocks spread wide,
Comfortable on over-stuffed red velvet.
Hands too big for dainty wee sandwiches.
Tastes too raw for lapsang souchong.
But the sound of champagne corks popping
Has fingers entwined with pride
Below white double- damask
From Ferguson's Mill in Banbridge.
They turned off your machines this morning.
Mid-summer's day and I woke early to see the solstice dawn.
Plastic tubes breathed for you.
Instruments took the measure of your hours,
Working to a rhythm that was not yours.
You passed the gift of time to me.
Showed that it is indeed relative.
Stretched, elastic thoughts of time without you,
Snapped back short as I watched the monitor
Slow and slow and stop.
âIn Privacy Mode' blinked from its blind eye.
You took those last few breaths yourself.
Gasps more than breaths and then you were gone.
The yellow waxy look of death was yours
Before Iâd even wiped the sweat from your face,
Had lifted your fingers to my mouth for one last kiss goodbye.
And then I watched the sun's strength
Begin to wane at dusk on Alban Hefin.
I have just been reading the news
I expect you follow it quite closely.
It is, I suppose, happening not far from you.
Simla was having rain and cool weather
But they were not complaining.
We are having a prolonged dry spell
Which is expected to continue
For another few months
My travel plans are not advancing very fast
My spirits have dampened a little
And I wonder if I should make a plan B.
The family patriarch is not very well.
His condition will to a certain extent
Dictate my summer plans.
I bought three books today
All about travel in far flung places
And mystical mountains
From an excellent shop
Very close to the office at lunch time.
Strangely, it did not occur to me
Until I looked at them this evening
That they were all so similar.
I hope the exams went well.
I am not a hunter.
It is not who I am,
but I witnessed the hunt.
At home in the dusty scrub of the Nafud desert
the white oryx moves with easy grace and ancient rhythm.
Watchful eyes scan for hostile horizons
and mark him separate from his kind. Aloof.
With dipped horns he bids to purify acrid waters,
then leads on into heat's obscuring haze.
Winds change and sour smoke from burning towers
turns his beard the colour of bone-ash.
The oryx, born for the desert,
lives in wild places refusing to be tamed.
Constantly moving, now pursued,
he looks for rains to wash away the dust
and digs a shallow pit and waits.
I am not the hunter,
I am distanced from the hunt.
Still, a savage screen proxies hatred
and reports the ardent crack of the rifle.
A marksman finds his prey,
with sure bullet between wide eyes,
death-dulled, the shape of bitter almonds.
But silenced unicorns don't shout for jihad