Advent Calendar 2009: Christmas Day December 24, 2009
Posted by bazmcstay in Advent, Life, Photography, Poetry.Tags: A Christmas Childhood, Advent Calendar, Barry McStay, Christmas, December, Friarstown, Frost, Ireland, Kildare, Oaklawn Stud, Patrick Kavanagh, Photo, Poem, Presents, Sherry, Snow, Sunlight, Tree, Turkey
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Christmas Eve 2009 at Oaklawn Stud, Co. Kildare
December 25th swings round again and many will moan and groan and other words sounding like moan and groan about how much they can’t stand it. Well, why not? Life is short, why decide that you hate your family, Christmas trees look tacky, you don’t like cheerful people, giving presents is a false generosity and you don’t really care for turkey anyway? Whatever your religious belief, there is a lot to be said for an annual event which draws friends and family closer, which reminds us about certain values which, to be fair, should be at the centre of our lives all year round, which makes people smile about brilliant – or crap – presents and which allows you the chance to finally get a nice photo of everyone together, including your Uncle Ralph who is the one passed out on the sofa at the back with a bottle of sherry hanging from his mouth. Oh yes, and to laugh at the line “As I pulled on my trousers in a hurry / I knew something strange had happened” in the accompanying poem - I know how your minds work! So, no complaints this year. It’s time out from the otherwise dull drudge of winter. Make the most of it. Happy Christmas.
A Christmas Childhood – by Patrick Kavanagh
My father played the melodion Outside at our gate; There were stars in the morning east; And they danced to his music. Across the wild bogs his melodion called To Lennons and Callans. As I pulled on my trousers in a hurry I knew some strange thing had happened. Outside in the cow-house my mother Made the music of milking; The light of her stable-lamp was a star And the frost of Bethlehem made it twinkle. A water-hen screeched in the bog, Mass-going feet Crunched the wafer-ice on the pot-holes, Somebody wistfully twisted the bellows wheel. My child poet picked out the letters On the grey stone, In silver the wonder of a Christmas townland, The winking glitter of a frosty dawn. Cassiopeia was over Cassidy’s hanging hill, I looked and three whin bushes rode across The horizon – the Three Wise Kings. An old man passing said: “Can’t he make it talk” - The melodion, I hid in the doorway And tightened the belt of my box-pleated coat. I nicked six nicks on the door-post With my penknife’s big blade - There was a little one for cutting tobacco. And I was six Christmases of age. My father played the melodion, My mother milked the cows, And I had a prayer like a white rose pinned On the Virgin Mary’s blouse.Advent Calendar 2009: December 10th – Love Letter December 3, 2009
Posted by bazmcstay in Advent, Poetry.Tags: Advent, Calendar, December, Literature, Louis MacNeice, Love, Love Letter, Mayfly, Poem, Poetry, Unrequited
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I sometimes worry that this may be the best poem I’ve written and one I’ll not surpass. It’s very passionate, slightly tortured by a love beyond reach, a love so simple that a mere sneeze is “embarrassingly gorgeous”. The idea of unrequited love, “just out of reach” is one well expounded throughout poetry everywhere and this is just a submission of mine to the great list of love poems. The pain of the experience turns wistful as the poem ends, finding a simple moment almost unbearably beautiful. Rather than an accompanying poem, I have added my favourite quote from poetry. It is from “Mayfly” by Louis MacNeice. The mayfly, which only lives for 18 hours, must live a lifetime in that short space of time. The qoute illustrates the zest for life which we should all emulate. Thanks for reading these poetic entries, normal service will shortly resume.
Love Letter
the curious whiplash of love rips red stripes from my hide I bleed chalices for her when she touches my arm, brushes the crumbs from her lips and then smiles or when time mercifully allows just one more sentence between us before we rush apart, and as she slips away, I feel my soul weep a strange, one-sided affair as I fake joy, inside aching to turn hug into caress turn her cheek and kiss really weave fantasies in her hair where shadows fly above tiger eyes and thread to her dress streams of foolish love letter looks embarrassingly gorgeous when she sneezes into her sleeve- 8th June 2007
What of time they have They stretch out taut and thin and ringing clear; So we, whose strand of life is not much more, Let us too make our time elastic and Inconsequently dance above the dazzling wave.-“Mayfly”, Louis MacNeice
Advent Calendar 2009: December 9th – Docklands December 3, 2009
Posted by bazmcstay in Advent, Poetry.Tags: Adam Zagajewski, Advent, Calendar, Death, December, Docklands, Dublin, Renata Gorczynski, Try To Praise The Mutilated World, Urban, Wasteland
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I suppose this creates a bit of an urban wasteland scene,an early-morning walk along the docks. I suppose it’s the country boy in me that has the love-hate relationship with the city. Sometimes I love it, the warm sunny days, the mild nights and magical city lights; sometimes I hate it, the greyness or the violent colours, the dirt, the sex and lies and fakeness and manufacturedness and heavy unreality, the semi-dead life it leads and leads us into. All poetry is a vague and vain attempt to, as Adam Zagajewski says, “Praise the mutilated world” and those within it. This is what I try with all poems, and this, despite its depressed nature, is no exception. The accompanying poem is “Try To Praise The Mutilated World” by Adam Zagajewski, translated by Renata Gorczynski.
Docklands
The city wakes long before he sleeps, roused by the whir and drone of buses and an alarm-clock fanfare of foghorns. Cranky gulls croak their objections and mongrels whine for ten minutes more. No river views from this ivory tower block, just dog turds on the grey balcony, brooding cranes, hulking over mucky sites and warehouse roofs like rusty metal patchwork. These flat-pack, pop-up high-rises balance like b-movie scenery, stretch and strain, try to outreach each other, sucking at nothing, sucking in everything. Nothing like such hollow grand designs, pits and skeletons, roads, works-in-progress. All’s pulled taut tight, a world through cling-film, pushed and pulled by plastic legacies, blinding hi-viz vests and orange traffic cones. In the cotton-wool, mournful morning, the river doesn’t flow. It cuts and stains. Suits and coffees float past, heading out to sea.- 24th February 2009
Try To Praise The Mutilated World - by Adam Zagajewski, Translated by Renata Gorczynski
Try to praise the mutilated world.
Remember June’s long days,
and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
The nettles that methodically overgrow
the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
You must praise the mutilated world.
You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
while salty oblivion awaited others.
You’ve seen the refugees heading nowhere,
you’ve heard the executioners sing joyfully.
You should praise the mutilated world.
Remember the moments when we were together
in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
and leaves eddied over the earth’s scars.
Praise the mutilated world
and the grey feather a thrush lost,
and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
and returns.
Advent Calendar 2009: December 8th – Rainfall, Mount Street, 21st February 2007 December 3, 2009
Posted by bazmcstay in Advent, Poetry.Tags: Advent, Calendar, Canal, December, Derek Mahon, Dublin, Everything Is Going To Be All Right, Light, Mount Street, Rain
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This poem is about how the most beautiful moments can ambush us and affirm us when we least expect it. The interaction of water in light, the musical quality of rain springing off leaves and pavements, the primitive feeling of being caught in a downpour – those factors combined struck me one evening walking home. Beauty can come in so many different forms and when they do, it does make you think that everything is going to be ok. The accompanying poem is “Everything Is Going To Be All Right” by Derek Mahon.
Rainfall, Mount Street, 21st February 2007
Anoint me with down-drip-droppy Ringing rain! Humming a tune, the water whistles and sings On my jacket and the pavement. An electric field of orange-white firefly flecks Flock around the streetlamps. Crossing Mount Street Bridge, the lock brims full And flashes with foam. Scrags of oily hair dampen and cling for life To my sopping, bare head As the twilight heavens pour down a riverfull of raindrops And drench me. God, you always pick the best moments, Don’t you?- 21st February 2007
Everything Is Going To Be All Right – by Derek Mahon
How should I not be glad to contemplate
the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window
and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?
There will be dying, there will be dying,
but there is no need to go into that.
The poems flow from the hand unbidden
and the hidden source is the watchful heart.
The sun rises in spite of everything
and the far cities are beautiful and bright.
I lie here in a riot of sunlight
watching the day break and the clouds flying.
Everything is going to be all right.
Advent Calendar 2009: December 7th – Death December 3, 2009
Posted by bazmcstay in Advent, Poetry.Tags: Advent, Blackberry Picking, Calendar, Childhood, Death, December, Innocence, Literature, Poem, Poetry, Seamus Heaney
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Something I admire so much in the likes of Heaney is the conversion of personal experiences as a child into a meaningul, profound meditation on a greater subject. Childhood ends in that moment when you realise death exists. I hope the cinematic nature of the poem works and that it manages to zoom out and in effectively. That one word death reminds itself to us so often, and I wanted to know where it first announced itself. I think I make it really work, for once, in this poem. The accompanying poem is “Blackberry-Picking” by Séamus Heaney.
Death
when the cat killed rabbits, slit them from bobtail to brow, mum scooped them onto a coal shovel and catapulted them onto the compost heap. once upon a time though, bunny is still busy breathing, too scared to stop, flopped on the carpet, wanting out of Mister McGregor’s garden. the front door open, a morose evening breeze, dripping with the last of daylight, crawls into the house and sets the scene with creepy cinematics: hacking crows stagger and perch, the sun is trampled by horse chestnuts, the lawn drowns in piranhic midge swarms. trapped in celluloid, popcorn-muncher and actor, a wide-eyed boy, brown hair etc., watches himself discover the murder scene uncensored, un-PG. he stares unsurely rudely, big blues trying to patch over the unsightly tear in bunny’s fur coat, focused on its own rolling tiger’s eye beads, scattered across the sunny porch, runaway marbles knocked ringing away. he hunkers down, strokes the sinking head as he would that damn cat daily in return for grins and capricious purrs. no magic springs from that fat index finger – what did he think it might do? what was the alternative remedy? eyes die open, bunny breath exhausts, limp, lost to the next touch – the boy knows that this is the first time. now a pause see this pathetic pieta in June’s garden of Golgotha carved in falling dew and violet dusk. snap out of it into the obvious action: a garden trowel digs the grave, a sycamore twig is the headstone. no onion sobs for bunny as he slides from the coal shovel underground, - no place like home – a motherless child, paws under his head, foetal, sleeping, really sleeping – not like some tv princess or knight – daring you to drop the soil across him. seemed a good idea but really, only messy – what if he wakes, screams the criss-crossed blackbird to the boy he stands firm, chief mourner crying meaningful tears by the flowerbed planted with lily, bamboo and sycamore twig. that twig rotted, mulch to the earth it stabbed, bleeding into these future screenshots where the boy inhabits late nights and remembers: street-lamps pissing rain or woollen early grey light simplify memories such as this into one word and that word is death.- 16th May 2009
Blackberry-Picking – by Séamus Heaney
Late August, given heavy rain and sunFor a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer’s blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full,
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard’s.
We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn’t fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they’d keep, knew they would not.
Advent Calendar 2009: December 6th – Huntsman December 3, 2009
Posted by bazmcstay in Advent, Poetry.Tags: Advent, Calendar, Coleridge, December, Hedonism, Kubla Khan, Literature, Lust, Orgy, Poem, Poetry, Sex, Violence
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There is a bit of a structure to this poem, which I hope builds, through the language and rhythm to the frenzy the poem ends up in. The huntsman is an animalistic figure, strong and confident, full of cash and bloodthirst. These are the people who go out and pick up girls (“birds”) and satisfy a lust for sex with such ease. It’s almost ritualistic, like some sort of pagan orgy and that notion of sex-meets-violence is something I enjoy using now and again. The hedonism of the poem reminds me a little of the sizzling, sexual language in Kubla Khan which creates a “savage place” full of life and lust. The accompanying poem, therefore, is “Kubla Khan” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Huntsman
Huntsman, you bastard, you stalk my prey and prayers on wild nights, wild nights spent frivolous and free. Sink coins down new-sunken wells, toss and backflip and wet. Draw rich bucketfuls and drink your fill to piss it right back up and mark this unfound territory of beasts. Lurch, splash and track your readymade targets in sound and overbearing heat, slash through leaves of stars and take your pick, and aim and shoot and kill. The fresh carcass slumps, leaks slick puddles of life. Your zinc smile sparks, slits this nightdress of dark and pounding winds and rips the clouds in two. Riot in blood and gusts with loud cries of lust, and push and shove and broken colour and glass, and reap and repent and restart, break bones, eat, swallow and burst.- 28th May 2009
Kubla Khan – by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
In Xanadu did Kubla KhanA stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round :
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. But oh ! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover !
A savage place ! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover !
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced :
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail :
And ‘mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean :
And ‘mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war ! The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves ;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves. It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice ! A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw :
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ‘twould win me, That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome ! those caves of ice !
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware ! Beware !
His flashing eyes, his floating hair !
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
Advent Calendar 2009: December 5th – December 3, 2009
Posted by bazmcstay in Advent, Poetry.Tags: Advent, Archibald MacLeish, Ars Poetica, Calendar, December, Hearing, Poem, Poetry, Senses, Sight, Smell, Taste, Touch
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Constructed around the basic foundation of our interactivity with the world – the five senses - this poem is really about how the poet senses the world. The eye is placed first in all these section, and gets the final say too – the poet doesn’t live the life through the lens, but acts as the lense himself. Archibald McLeish says “A poem should be equal to / Not true…A poem should not mean / but be” – it’s reveals nothing more than its own creation itself and this poem is about appreciating both the gift of the world, and the gift of poetry and the world it creates. The accompanying poem is “Ars Poetica” by Archibald MacLeish.
Common Sense
Give thanks for your life which is more than that which amiably meets the eye, than the not-too-tight, not-too-limp handshake, than a little half full glass of frothy mouthfuls, than mere buzzwords, cliché or simple hearsay, than the mask of dress-sense, make-up, perfume, a life lived not brilliantly but beautifully with wide eyes, not tarnished but touched by depression, not tasteful but toasted for its freckles, not plagued but placated by plagal cadence, not sowing but smelling the roses. Look through broken glass. Feel rain soak jeans. Eat too many cookies. Hear familiar words wrong. Smell burning and laugh. Give thanks for your life lived not through but as the lens.- 28th January 2009
A poem should be palpable and mute
As a globed fruit,
Dumb
As old medallions to the thumb,
Silent as the sleeve-worn stone
Of casement ledges where the moss has grown –
A poem should be wordless
As the flight of birds.
*
A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs,
Leaving, as the moon releases
Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,
Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,
Memory by memory the mind –
A poem should be motionless in time
As the moon climbs.
*
A poem should be equal to
Not true.
For all the history of grief
An empty doorway and a maple leaf.
For love
The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea –
A poem should not mean
But be.
Advent Calendar 2009: December 4th – Why I Write December 3, 2009
Posted by bazmcstay in Advent, Poetry.Tags: Advent, Calendar, December, Emotion, Literature, Poems, Poetry, Writing
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The next 6 days I will be out of the country and travelling a bit so writing expansive posts may be difficult. So, I have decided I will post six poems of mine each day along with a paragraph or two about the poem and my poetic life and outlook. I will also include in each post one of my favourite poems by a different poet. Hopefully you will enjoy these poems and they may give you an insight into me and a different side of my written life. Firstly though, today’s post will be a general treatise about Why I Write.
I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what it is that keeps me coming back to write poetry. Tonight I think I may have hit on something. It’s interesting for me to examine the progression of my poetic style and subject matter as the past three or four years have gone by. What started out as tentative and somewhat juvenile attempts at a difficult artform have gradually matured as I have developed an understanding of the intricacies of poetic composition. Occasionally I have stumbled on a decent poem; occasionally I still mess things up completely; no one is perfect.
But I have become fascinated by the increasingly insular nature of that which I write; gradually my poetry has focused in on my self. Of course I wrote about myself in the early days too – all poets do! However, I am discovering a larger force of my emotions coming through my writing; I am more visible, audible, tangible in the words I string together. This seems to indicate to me that as I write more poems, I become more aware of and more acquainted with myself; I delve farther into myself and I allow myself to reveal more of my interior.
Not only that, but I also believe that the reason I continue writing and feel such a fervour (desperation?) to do so is because I am not yet satisfied that I have encapsulated my emotions adequately in words: I have not demonstrated my anger and frustration – those two words alone simply cannot embody the whole of their signified; I have not yet captured my sadness and happiness – the gulf of feeling between those two experiences is infinite beyond words; I have not yet conveyed my cynicism and adoration – those deserving of such attitudes have not yet felt their full poetic emphasis.
Poetry is an extraordinary thing: I can feel very pleased with a composition one day and completely despise it the next. There is always that feeling of imperfection hanging over the poetry I write – I pour out these words which never fully frame that untouchable frame of mind I am in. No one writes perfect poetry, I have already said as much, and it is because of this that I am always engaged by the poetic.
Maybe one day I will be able to say “Yes, this is perfect. This puts exactly into words the exact emotions, the exact sensation, the exact concept I want to write.” If the day comes when I can be sure that the reader, through reading my poetry, will undergo the precise experience I actually want them to undergo, then perhaps I will stop. Probably not, because I am almost certain that that day will not arrive. But I think it is the possibility of that day which keeps me coming back for more.
