Over the Boundaries (2 page)

Give back as I am given

Loved ones I cannot reach, yet carry still,

A teenage girl’s light prayer,

A man’s mid-life frustrations — these I let fall

And, shot on our screen, a young wife’s tearful farewell

To her bullet-ridden husband dying on the floor…

And, from yesterday, some strange love I hand over

But keeps coming back again and again

And stronger still as the sun bringing yet another spring.

Lambs drop in the field, covered in ewe’s blood,

A whisper of a prayer falls from my lips

As I stand at dusk by the river in flood:

O bring this love again and come, Lord Jesus, come.

We came downstairs, out into the afternoon heat

And resumed working on the summer beds,

Digging carnations out of the dry, parched earth.

We made it,’ you said non-comittedly as you came

And sat beside me on a rocky ledge,

‘I’m glad we’ve come this far,’ I said.

Raised up on this, our platform of faith,

We looked out across a plateau

On horizons yet to be reached.

Looked down on the climb successfully negotiated thus

far—

Though we had lost a little something along the way,

perhaps,

What matter, no victory is won at no cost in any war.

They took the quarry from the stone

And the water from the mill;

They placed a no-go sign outside your door,

The place of your still moving will.

They took the meadow from the long grass,

The valley and the hill;

The white-curved moon they thieved from the sky

And a trillion stars harnessed for war.

O war of wars! What giant step

Slowly and stealthily taken

From small turning back

Of one man, woman, in the garden.

Night and the seasons wrap themselves

Round us as winter draws in.

I welcome the shortening day, the departing sun -

It cannot rob me of what I do not have

And of what I long, eternally, to hold.

I am in love with this darkness,

My life’s course not far from run.

All that’s left to do is wait -

Wait by the deep-girthed beech

Prematurely devoid of its leaves,

Dank smell of decaying wood in the undergrowth

Drawing out the senses in narcosis-inducing ease,

With the animals that come and go -

The fast growing kittens in the fruit bushes,

Dogs lying languidly by the open door,

The two flighty fillies settling into their stabling routine,

Knowing they will be cared for as winter slowly

approaches

And nature shuts down on us once more.

We met by the high walls,

This time as friends;

You were taking the rubbish out to burn —

Bits of broken timber gathered in a pile

In the shade of sycamore and tall oak.

I observed your efforts, standing

At the borders of my own lot.

“You don’t think of me now,” you said lightly

As I approached, causing me to protest.

“I follow your progress all the time,” I said.

The sound of your fast beating heart —

Result of strain, struggling with the fiery cohorts —

As we walked arm in arm, drew me on.

We walked long, out over the boundaries

Of our lives, over time present and past,

Seeking new ground, leaving old faces behind,

The cynicism and mistrust,

Two unsung heroes from some Greek tragedy

Or Hansel and Gretel lost in the deep woods.

Creamery carts, their milk-tankards full,

Harness jingling as iron hooves met stone,

Their coming and going, as we rose and sank in sleep

The glorious summer mornings long, echoed our own.

I stood, a timid figure, on the road

Waiting for his familiar form to appear

And ran to meet him when it did,

I was only three or four.

We drew water from the well,

Brought the turf up from the rick.

Dreaming up monsters in the dark,

We fought our fears out loud.

A summer’s evening upstairs in bed, truth dawned,

I cried and would not stop, I have a pain in my tummy,’

Was all I said when she brought me down and asked,

when,

‘You are going to die and Daddy too,’ was all that was in

my heart.

I must have been only five or six —

It was before we moved from the old school up to the

new,

The one with flower-gardens and concrete paths.

We sat then on long, hard, wooden benches

And suffered the daily onslaught of teachers’ censorious

remarks

While they, the circus folk, basked in open sunshine,

No roof over their heads but a canvas dome,

Moveable caravans for a home. We envied them so,

Endless days and nights on the merry-go-round,

Juggling balls, standing upside down on their heads,

Leaping through hoops on white, crested-neck ponies,

Walking across open spaces, through obstacles of fire.

They were gods in our eyes, exempt from all laws

And if we could have gone with them when they pulled

up pegs

And broke camp, we would. Dreams of being tight-rope

walkers

And acrobats — we made do with lessons from Joy instead

As she played with us briefly in the schoolyard

Before moving on, time out from skipping and hopscotch,

Hurling ourselves at her on instruction

While she caught us up firmly astride her hips.

When the circus came to town, to our village,

And set up shop in Bill Reidy’s field next door,

We passed by their tents, Josie and myself,

As often as we could each day,

Heads filled with romance,

After the cold and rain of winter,

Our young lives temporarily rescued

From the monotonous drabness of our ways.

The river flows past manor walls

Steadily on its course past woodland gardens

Where oak and silver birch and rhododendron held sway

And we walked in dappled shade amid riotous scent

On to the wild wood beyond.

Past the well-kept lawns and rose-beds it flowed,

The french windows, piano notes drifting through,

Now lost on the wind.

That old colonial post turned emancipation house

Where suffragette-in-arms ran guns with her friends.

Where choir and choral group raised orchestrated voices

To the tune of ’Murder in the Cathedral’ and The

Sheperd’s Farewell’.

The shouting from the playing fields still haunts,

Tennis-courts open to estuary breezes

That blew westerly up the mouth of the wide river

Shannon —

Tidal river, resting bed of youth’s dreams and aspirations,

Of many a false tear and a true one,

From stage-set to retreat halls,

Girlhood to womanhood, generation upon generation,

Gone in silence, gone in glory.

The last of the tennis players had left the courts,

Deserted now, echoes of rebounding balls

Lingered in our ears, hearts filled

With poignancy, uneasy peace.

How long can this thing last? Sweet thing

Called youth, life, happiness. Elusive as

The gentle breeze that touched our cheeks

As we loitered in the trees’ warm shade,

Mingling in the branches,

Chatting and playing like children —

Touching, running, jumping — full of a sense

Of the timelessness of warm sunny days.

Winding our way slowly back up the steps,

We leave it all behind. Spell broken, we say goodbye,

Flinging the cherryblossom from our arms,

Laughing still, our disparate paths strewn

With showers of petal pink. Strangers

From the four corners of the province,

We had briefly met, broken the solitude of our shells,

Conquered the fears, mistrust, the part-forgotten pain,

Come out and walked like angels

Or flown like birds on the wing

And, what if only for one summer, for a day,

We were almost beautiful then.

They came from the hill fields,

From the rushy plains beyond

Where bogcotton dots the heather,

Where lark and curlew sing.

Their hearts were light as they tripped gaily

Down to the village church —

If they carried a cross, I could not see it then:

O meekness of the saints, friendliness unbounded,

You smiled as you went past in your Sunday best

While the world rode by you

And you knew it not nor cared.

They came to pay their respects at last,

Not on foot this time but in motorcars.

I watched them as they filed past,

Their downcast faces as they climbed the stairs —

As Gaels they had lost a chieftain,

Sheep, their sheperd had gone.

I had lost a dad, but they said goodbye to a friend:

O meekness of the saints, friendliness unbounded,

You grieved as you went past in your Sunday best

While the world rode by you

And you knew it not nor cared.

Tall trees stand in the schoolyard,

A big wind blows in the ragged branches above our heads.

We hop, jump in the caked mud,

Eyes drawn to the blue slate

Thrown at a square in the lined earth.

We stood at the schoolhouse door,

With the eyes of a five year old I beheld the workplace of

my dad.

The chimney belched loud puffs of smoke into the sky

above,

The teachers smiled when I replied, “I’d slap her hard,”

Catherine K. couldn’t spell a word.

Nothing’s changed, nothing’s changed

Though the engine’s chug-chug is dead and Catherine’s

gone,

A west wind blows through the pines

And a blackbird sings

Where my heart once sang in the old schoolyard.

September Morning

To the memory of Major Tom Moloney, killed in

manoeuvres in Baldonnel in 1925, aged twenty-six

Without hiding, I hid

From what I knew to be love,

knowing love would find me anyway;

Lingered in the shadows serving my fellow-man,

Looked for the transformation of my woes

In history’s files. What I found there,

What I saw high overhead the battlefields

Urged me to speak with a voice the dead are denied,

To look again for truth

Which offers itself anew in every touch,

In each new experience, however tried.

Storm clouds gather beneath the moon,

Dark forms swirling in her haloed light;

The hour of reckoning fast approaches

Yet my step will not be quickened,

My heart awaits with customary reticence

A fate it will not shirk. Who will rid me

Of this burden? The knowledge that all is sinking,

All is sunk and no-one can flee the trap.

Voices divorced from the speaker, actions from the doer;

I am a loser in this game where the stakes are high,

The odds piled high against me.

The planes are war-worn, their engines tired.

‘Our army must be tested’ my superiors argue, ’our men

tried.’

The enemy is man’s heart, home to murder and

destruction,

Jealousy and pride. With heavy heart I put on my belt -

Will man ever rid himself of the curse of war?

I have one weapon, one friend left me -

Hope, sweet hope, to which I cling.

Hope, you who chasten all sadness

And temper all joy, to you I surrender my trophy,

A thing so small, a greeting from the past

As the horseman rode by.

We follow the path of your reminiscing

Up the river of your youth, the Moy,

Where you stand knee-deep in the Ridge Pool,

Slaughter-house nearby, as you fish for eels

In the brown, swirling waters.

Serious fisherman then as now,

Self-deprecating humour punctuating sentences,

You note where the plough has turned the sod

In another’s field and nimbly tread the furrows

Knowing that the work is but half-done.

A measure of the intelligence of the man,

To appreciate thus what another has sown,

To walk in someone else’s shoes,

Mere spectator in the flesh

Knowing true circumcision of the heart.

for Jack Donovan

’I keep the two sides of my work separate — portraits,

stuff I can do with my eyes closed, well, almost, and this

…

Finger pointed at the daring splashes of colour

Of the Punch and Judy-like figures strutting about

On the canvas stage. Statements tinged with sarcasm,

perhaps,

And that surfaced only on the painted board, images

From the subconscious of old ladies in their second

childhood

And from history, bishops, warriors, peasants, lords,

All reduced in a few strokes to their essence

In ridiculous and exaggerated pose, giving no hint

Of the colour left waiting on his palate

To paint the real man, the artist soul, childlike innocence

Trapped like a caged bird in light, neglected frame.

Giving no hint at all of what he had left

So entirely to someone else to say,

The most difficult and challenging part always,

As with him now, to rescue a glimpse of the true self

Hovering between tremulous expression