What comes to mind in Ireland
What is black? An absence of light,
the cassocks of parish priests,
dark peat in an Irish bog.
What is brown? A leather belt,
decaying plants, veins of iron in stones,
the layered bark of a log.
What is grey? Lowering clouds,
skies threatening rain over windswept water,
the speckled muzzle of an old dog.
What is silver? A crucifix round a neck,
handcuffs and shackles, thirty shiny coins,
a flash of light through heavy fog.
Feature Image: Daniele Idini
Vitruvian Woman
For Laura
A Poem for Halloween
Svelte limbs, aquiline and flow, her enjambment;
The whole pelvic girdle hypnotically balances,
Famously compared to a serpent which dances,
And which has all full-blooded heterosexual males entranced…!
And, there you have it! The Feminists declare,
“No more male gazing here!”
Where are we? How did we get here?
Whatever happened to coup de foudre, colpo di fulmine ?
It was a Friday night, I had been sitting, drinking with colleagues,
When you entered the public bar dressed in your finery;
The cream- coloured micro-skirt, the flesh coloured tights,
The pliant leather of your black knee high boots!…
Colpo di fulmine!… my ass jumped off the bench, reflexively!
We have known each other now for 25 Halloweens.
Maldon days
hēt þā hyssa hwæne hors forlǣtan,
feorr āfȳsan, and forð gangan,
hicgan tō handum, and tō hige gōdum.
The Battle of Maldon (991 AD)
Galvanized into action, my companion horses neighed
as they galloped to the woods, riderless and rudderless.
I turned back to my liege lord, reluctant to retreat,
but he waved me away from him, although I was his steadfast steed
who had taken him into battle boldly before on many occasions.
In the woods, we regrouped. Ealdorman Byrhtnoth’s proud hawk
circled and swooped overhead, dismissed as we had been,
uneasy as we were. We faced out towards the riverbank,
watching the fighting begin, watching the ruthless invaders wreak havoc.
We waited for the command to return but it never came.
I went down to the battlefield first, saw my beloved ealdorman
bristling with spears, slaughtered alongside his faithful warriors.
Leaving our heroes, our lords lying lifeless, we trotted back to our stables,
knowing that our return would herald the defeat, set off the lamentations
of the families left behind, filling us all with sorrow for our great loss.
Feature Image: Battle of Maldon plains.
Discovery
Discovery are coloured dark deep red.
I heard one falling as I brushed the tree —
a startled bird troubling bushy leaves —
but with more plummet, accelerated
power, crimson sinker parting waves of green,
descending progeny, seeds sheathed in a cream
flesh, webs of genes cradling what could be,
bound for the food waste bin, sequence
on sequence of supercoiled code unread.
But another journey took place instead
ascent through sound, to ears, into words
as you can almost taste that zingy first
apple of the season, sharp on your tongue,
sweet on your lips, parted and showing crimson.
And Me
Naked for you, beneath
some moon somewhere, which sounds
like an ending, unless you begin
with it. White as a page, as a unicorn’s
horn, some skin—all of mine. So stare
down—star-down is how I want to lay
with you. Come further up. Go
further in. Night is falling with us.
Night, the witch’s sweet-tooth craving—
she can’t stop biting it, can’t stop licking
out the hours. Don’t think about that
just now. Don’t watch her. Watch me.
Feature Image: Two Nudes in a Forest, Frida Kahlo 1939
No animals died
Our research on toads and carabids
considered predator and prey.
Japanese toads and bombardier beetles
were ‘introduced’, let’s say.
The relationships were explosive –
but complied with current laws.
We intend to show you footage.
Please, hold your applause.
Our methodology? Each beetle placed
in tongue’s reach of a toad.
Each swallowed.
Chemical explosions soon showed
toads bulging, swelling,
changing shape –
till finally, through emesis,
they let their prey escape.
Our results? All beetles were ejected –
and survived. No toads died.
We timed explosions, measured vomit,
observed from every side.
We’ve now described how toxic creatures
can avoid digestion.
Ah yes sir, at the back there,
do you have a question?
Reference
Sugiura, S., Sato, T. 2018 Successful escape of bombardier beetles from predator digestive systems. Biol.Lett. 14: 20170647. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2017.0647
Feature Image: Japanese Common Toad by Yasunori Koide.
Vincent in Hiroshima
“A work of art is a corner of creation viewed through a temperament.”—Emile Zola
I.
Daubigny’s Garden, a late
masterpiece of Vincent van Gogh,
painted in July 1890 (the same month he died),
now hangs in Hiroshima. Talk about
ghosts of the blast. Beauty clings
to Horror, and still clings, even when
it let’s go; just as we suspected:
Siamese twins.
II.
Glimmer at the edge of fog.
Sphinx at sunset, red paws.
Oval flocks of moons while drunk.
A bow of measure in a coffee spoon.
The way her delicate lips pucker
while thinking of yesterdays
you never entered.
III.
Back to Vincent in Hiroshima.
Back to the gravity of collage. How each day
slips into the groove of whirling
months. How the garden
swirls with flowers and a church
tower in his final summer. How
Vincent’s last words were:
“I wish it were all over now.”
How the true page is never printed. How
the puzzle we call history shrinks
as the world grows into one
piece of a larger puzzle.
Feature Image: Vincent Van Gogh’s ‘Daubigny’s Garden’
Lovely Dead
If I were to let you go
who would I show this garden to;
who would be there to tell me ‘no’
it’s not enough to say it’s blue
in June, when echiums greet the bees
(just as later they give finches seeds)
and turns yellow in summer sun,
burns to red with heleniums
in autumn. I leave their raw
shaggy stems all through winter now —
food and shelter for birds and mice,
hope and remembering too — but more
for the texture they bring to cold light;
though to say it’s not enough, I know.
Are there no spirits moving in the air
_ ruling the region between earth and sky ?
And do you shine from the sky
_ goddess in decay,
_ as respite from the spit of day ?
For this world could not hold you ?
Whose arm twitches with your pulse,
_ as your ghost drifts through the lining
_ of the throat ?
Whose voice crackles as it shouts,
_ Whose chest wheezes like a blade of grass,
_ split for air to move through ?
Were they torn by tongues of anguish,
_ the remnants of your melody,
_ stretching a voice into a cry
_ thwarting the borders of a heart ?
You leave behind that crumpled piece of paper,
_ Not the wrinkles of your face.
If language should leave you,
_ alone to the touch,
where beckons the quiver of
_ ageless almighty ?
Each one of us a teardrop,
_ enters the world’s heart chamber
_ and congeals before your eyes?
Do you kiss the half-flown ivory tongues
_ that swipe across the many lips ?
And do the stars cluster,
_ as though gulls in search of comfort,
_ their screams of spirals broken,
_ their feathers like stilled flames ?
And were eternal chasms or a breath
_ to fill the shells
_ of their lost melodies ?
Paul Downes’ latest work Towards a Concentric Spatial Psychology for Social and Emotional Education Beyond the Interlocking Spatial Pillars of Modernism (2024) is an open access book.
Feature Image: The Flammarion engraving, c.1888.