poetry

September, by Molly Rosenberg

irlandesuk poetry

The air is still, not a breath anywhere,
Everything seems to be hanging immobile
In the amber sultriness of the September
Afternoon.

The bees having a last foray into the
Dying lavender,
Greedily collecting their final harvest,
To store the sweetness through the,
Hard winter months.

The fish in the cool deep pond,
Flapping and mouthing at feeding time,
Anxious to make the most of these last,
Summer rays
Before retreating to the murky depths
To while away those winter days.

The summer days seemed endless,
But the nights are earlier and cooler,
We retreat to warmth and slumber,
Until the misty water colour of a sun,
Rises over the distant Weald.

Molly Rosenberg

Out of kindness come words

irlandesuk poetry ,

Out of kindness come words and silence and
caution and colours   and nothing painful
that cannot be removed   perhaps with a
kiss    or a blind eye   or a ribbon tied
loosely or a fingerboard of rose wood
or a string plucked gently
                                     sounding a note
of fragrant harmony  no distress  no 
anger  no panic  not a hair out of
place at a bend in the river where white
swans gather under a pale blue sky on
a Wednesday at noon   and very likely
feelings of love are expressed and dinner
is served and a bed is made and lips are
licked and time peters out 
                              This is the end

John Lyons

Child of nature

irlandesuk poetry

How strange that you are hereless   Like the wind
gone   leaving the sky   the earth   the green world
in your wake   wordless in the chill silence
When I was a child I dreamt as a child
and lived a life about which I knew no-
thing   I ate   slept  played 
                           learned what I was taught
loved the fields  the grass   the trees   the woodlands
anything that kept me close to nature
thought that cities were places where people
went to die   But you I loved   step by step
I grew into your smile  your tenderness
my eyes   my ears   always attentive to
the simplicity and ease with which you
negotiated each hour of the day

John Lyons

Jackson Pollock rules

irlandesuk art, poetry

Pollock_untitled
                           Jackson Pollock, Untitled

Days tumble one after the other   dawn
to dusk   Sometimes
                   in pure broad light   sometimes
through an empty indeterminate dark
in which newspapers pave the way for time
to progress    segmenting our lives into
events while extolling humanity’s
wounds and achievements
                            Art seeks to oppose
the indifference to simple being
in which jewels are jingled as trophies
worthless possessions heralded as signs
of worth and social standing   Thus Jackson
Pollock rescued the rectangle and re-
vealed the sinews of a chaotic world
Promethean pigments poured on canvas

John Lyons

Stephansdom

irlandesuk poetry ,

Stephansdom

How to read
      the intricacies of faith
chiselled into pale stone
      every plane every angle
and in the cool silent shadows
      weary emblems of ecstatic energy
of saintly narratives
      and terrifying passions

The names in the inscriptions
      gradually fading into dust
the corrosive way
      of the world
of all life
      humbled by death

What persists
      is the belief
and something of the love
      the kiss that outlives
the tears
      the cross borne with a smile

Through the towering spire
      cold winds whisper
and in the square below
      the carriage wheels grind
and hard hooves resound
      on the worn cobblestones

Yes a monument
       to the warmth of fellowship
to a common purpose
      expressed in dying crafts
an overwhelming art in which
      the devil is in the detail

John Lyons

Ode to Joy

irlandesuk art, poetry ,

Ode to Joy

Ode to Joy, Joan Mitchell (oil on canvas, 1970)

Ode to Joy

Within these words   many silences   I
have nothing to say and I’m saying it
Overnight the world
                         has turned green  :  oak
ash   sycamore on the skyline   The sap
has risen and nature is rejoicing
The daffodils accomplish nothing   nor
does the cherry blossom now lining the
gutter    I think of space as silent dis-
tance I think of time as silent space   wait-
ing to be used    No more dying Frank wrote
in his ode to joy and then he died   This
is life     the bare bones of it   the warm soft
tissue of it    Live it and love it while
you can before cold death
                                puts you to bed

John Lyons

Click on the painting to follow a link to the Joan Mitchell Foundation

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