Low Vaulted Ceilings
within those man-stone walls
promoting their god
bringing us to him
i told the priest—
you tell us to be content
with poverty
while you live in this big house
throwing us scraps
begged from money lenders.
this is not what Jesus
asked his disciples to do.
this is not what he died for.
he said live amongst us
and share what they have.
the priest,
red with rage,
oppressive and oppressed—
pulled my mam aside
made her shrink in his stare
weep in his words
walk me in our sins
from his dark-damp house of angels.
outside
in feral sunshine
i pointed to grinning gargoyles
chasing chastened shadows
back down primitive paths-
to a cellar flat,
bare bulb dangling
prison beam probing
baptised flesh
and mam tipped tears
soaking into straw mattresses
sucking up cold from the flagstone floor
woodworms eating a Van Gogh table
where six mouths sat
sharing stale bread and cold beans
with whiskered skirting board mice.
years later,
i left Dedalus in Dublin
in the pages of a book
to his epiphany
and Jesuit suit of guilt—
while i quenched
my glistening fruit
in street light ladies—
drenched in smokey curling
dancing clouds
and stories from voices
bouncing off low vaulted ceilings
caressing human in darkness.
An Old Man’s Overcoat
summer wore
an old man’s overcoat
again
this year
roaming emptied streets,
children and neighbours chatting
gone,
reflecting
his reflection
in reflections
where sky meets walls
trapping the watchers
inside curtained windows
behind closed doors
and holes in floors holding pools.
modern mirages of money
infiltrating stone circles,
pass through standing bones
like ring wraiths
possessing the solstice
of reason and meaning
in Us being here,
while my old man, changes his God
dying as he lived
in his house,
skeleton and skin
going to meet the awesome silent ashes
of the man he was
when last summer wore
an old man’s overcoat.
Rubicon of Reason
i am nothing
as usual,
if not, this might as well be mine-
the silent sea
flat calm,
some beans in a hessian bag,
a thought without shape
and no one
down the years
to coddle and be coddled with—
homeless after the harvest
gathered up couples and threw away chaff—
a soft echo in the laughing crowd
that leaves early, sauntering back
through fallow fields in fertile spring
mouthing his mantra
to the deaf darkness-
like a much rehearsed
rubicon rolled in reason
not to be alone.
* * *