Year: 2022

Solace – Molly Rosenberg

irlandesuk poetry ,

glade

SOLACE

1971

WB dominated my thoughts,
His ‘Bee loud glade‘
Buzzed through my mind,
Bringing such longing ,
To go far away to that
Special place.

2022

WB still dominating my thoughts,
Another century indeed,
Now I have my own,
‘Bee loud glade’

No plane, no car, no sea to sail,
Just an open door to,
A special place,
Where the bees buzz,
In the lavender,
Landing on the Lilly pads,
In the cool greenness,
They sate their thirst.

We truly have had our
Wings clipped,
Our horizons
Narrowed.
The world holds
Its breath,
Yet there is a
Solace and a
Quenching to be had,
If only we can find
Our own ‘Bee loud glade.

Molly Rosenberg

Molly’s beautiful lyric is inspired by W B Yeats’ https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43281/the-lake-isle-of-innisfree

Pablo Neruda – Sonnet 44

irlandesuk poetry, translation ,


Neruda

You’ll be aware that I do and don’t love you
since there are two modes to life,
the word is a wing of silence,
and there’s a cold side to fire.

I love you in beginning to love you
to reengage in what is infinite
and so as never to stop loving you:
that’s why I still don’t love you.

I do and don’t love you as though I held
in my hands the keys to happiness
and an uncertain fate of unhappiness.

My love has two lives with which to love you,
that’s why I do love you when I don’t
and why I do love you when I do too.

Pablo Neruda

From One Hundred Love Sonnets

Translation by John Lyons

Love that sets the path

irlandesuk poetry ,

Light that reaches back
to the origin of light
the original species
of light from which
all emanates

Has time ever stood still ?
Has movement ever ceased ?
The universe that expands
within our minds
within our hearts
all energy recycled
all growth turned
to advantage

So too love
in all its leisure
and our internal life
governed by purpose
and by attraction
by what we call desire
the passion that fires up
the humbled penitent soul
to action

Love that reaches back
into all our yesterdays
Love that sets the path
for all our days to come

John Lyons

Too many to mention

irlandesuk poetry

Time draws on
        but what of our memories
what of our dreams ?
        Night stretches into day
and in the mirror I notice
        new lines etched
while I slept

All my past is in that face
        and what’s left of me
is there too

I write and I paint
        the subjects of my life
the moments of my life
        the lips and the hair on her head
the memory of all those kisses
        the knowledge that nothing
is ever lost

Trees I have known from birth
        are still there : oaks and birches
and sycamores and laburnums
        will all outlive me

though age is no accomplishment
        survival of the fittest means little
quite a different matter
        are the paths we tread
the paths we have trodden
        and the indelible memories
of love sweet love

how our hands met
        how our eyes locked
into one another
        how slowly but surely
we began to share
        the same breath

lines cut deeply
        blood-rich memories
curated in our beating hearts
        to have tasted paradise
made it all worthwhile

Regrets
        too many to mentioned
but not you

John Lyons

A view from my room

irlandesuk poetry

A clear day and no memories
        I see the tall overgrown grass
bathed in the grey light and
        here and there the stems
of dandelions waiting for the sun
        before they’ll unfold their flowers
: birds are flying overhead
        but there is complete silence

As the wind rises the branches
        of the trees at the end of the garden
begin to sway to its rhythm
        The picnic table is littered
with dry faded blossom and the empty
        wooden chairs have that forlorn
abandoned look as though none of us
        had ever been here before

John Lyons

Let innocence age

irlandesuk poetry

Let innocence age
        how light travels
through the decades
        a young child
on a suburban train
        gazes at me
smiles
        across the cosmos
down the tunnel
        of time
seeing his origins
        in reverse

Those early years
        of which so little
is remembered
        life’s preamble
barely off hands
        and knees
and how the hands
        themselves vie
with the eyes
        in the search
for understanding
        and palpable love

John Lyons

Not of words

irlandesuk poetry

Not of words
        the poet uses words
to denounce words
        longs for a love
not of ideas but of gestures
        stability of the land
lapped by the sea
        not an expression
but as the sun pulses
        as lilies in the field grow
and as the bees
        collect their nectar

Words are brief
        are soon over
are often lost
        or displaced
by the mind
        but love is strong
and quiet and peace
        and tenderness
are its embodiment
        the kiss its seal

John Lyons

Tangled web

irlandesuk art, poetry

Jack11
Tangled web, John Lyons (70 x 50 cm, oil and enamel paint on canvas)

We have been 
over this ground
a thousand times
she said

This is the tangled web
we have woven—
a landscape 
in which we can
barely distinguish
the wood for the trees

John Lyons