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Naom Ciaran

 

The boat too small to take my Norton aboard
so it is smaller than a North sea trawler …
when I get to the island I must walk
they say there are no roads there, anyway
no cars there, but I take that for talk
they don’t want a motorcycle on Clear,
there is no Garda, either, that is normally.
I remember a similar boat, the coble Hilda
this as clinkered a cell, oratory but gilded
not dark, old gold and white paint the mark
of Mass vestments, a priest’s and a nun’s hands
keel; they’re going over with me from Skibbereen
skull of a seal the one, eye gleam and spray sheen
skilled at a song the other, seal-low lulls her beads.
When I came back after weeks walking aboard
the whole little island gorse gold, "white horses"
someone had sheeted her down against the storms
some people, maybe little ones, but no-one was saying
except they’d done the same for their little fishing curraghs
pulled well above high water. As they had done for the Hilda
beached at Sandsend. After porter, all were agreed in the port
it was the garda’s daughter of Skibbereen, thirteen,
they’d taught to polish the cases, the alloy wheels, against the salt.

 

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Cinghiale, Alpi Albruzzi

 

We were going too fast through the rovere, the rovo
for the lone boar that comes out of its own stone shadows
forest that uses its own shadows, the shadows of its ranged faces
chiaroscuro and contrast fused in, in the shadows of its form abrupt
commoner that contadini, the face familiar but recognised late
pig-rearing in boyhood had not prepared me, subbito, agouti
brushing past, only just past, appennine Irish, unshaven
brisk but not lish, a short fuse confusing controlled crescendo
rushing at the passage we had made in the bosca, its tangle
and gone, its scent heavy transforming the way we had made
by coming; a sense of pent-up waters released in braid
hushing to show us, scouring the fell, or if any, the brae

the trickle (the only water in a dry winter) bunding far below
he’d gone, cinghiale, only, but enough
we had feared bear.
Buono!

(with Bruno)

cinghiale: wild boar; contadini: country people; bosca: woods

 

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The largest of the falcons speaks : June 24, 1998

 

(Buland Point, Isafordhurdjup)

o gyr screams on sudden take-off
loneliest of landforms, emotion
we make a bird of the remoteness
peopled as if by giants, by this
such birds of their kind
and of their stormwind-kind only,
none heard like this one

this bird; for it takes just one,
than by any other of the myriad others –
for all the beauty, music, clamour and whirr
of waders, terns, snow buntings, gulls, eiders, fulmars, ptarmigan
for all the silence of sea-eagles there
except ravens and the few ravens
that do speak are more to compare

(was he saying) 'if you need to call me
      I so rarely call, but have called you
      having no reason to come out of this mountain
      other than because of you;
      having no reason to scream
      unless I would dislodge
      you off the ledge you crawl fearful'
      in the teeth of the northeast squall
      (hardly able to stand at all)
 

'These take their history from me
and value; for you this must also be true.
I have not laid down to become stone, yet.
I have dropped into the fjord: (I do not get wet
being so fast through the air) – my hair
is not over my eyes from the wind.
I nest north-facing – that is my measure
and composure. You have not grasped
the one, or disturbed the other.' Let winds rasp.

 

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Tumbleweed Originated Here

 

Sex may be sacred in India.
In Afghanistan it is interior

"the heat of the skin comes in
prevents it from coming out again:
poetry, war and love, superior".

From a shambles of rambling desires
one man smothers, fires up the others
one man to lead is enough because
only one can will know himself,
clear sight for the long-distance fight
one man without any brothers.

Barbed wire, all Russian influence
its output is Russian affluence –
mills’ overture, steely snags
abundance where there is no existence
as of the steppelands northward
but blowing from nothing at all
more wiry bundles access our senses
tap, rattle as flags, assess no attack
trap nothing but shreds, yet exercise plastic.
Thinking of wells? We, passing whole
bedeck checked strands with fresh dressings.

(1986)

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Jill Merlin of a calm, clear morning

 

flights the Ladygill pastures
almost at ground-level at first

at first noticing a slight-burst
hard to focus on.
From a blur greyer than their
colours, and the colour
the grey-in-tone
(to do with) as the earth

and the light is (all) angle and strength
the flight at any length
stretches the sense (of it) its air
single and sudden, single and swifter
than any flicking right-and-length-
'spar-' because further and bolder

left-and-right and a
crossline of road, sight, horizon
is display for you, I say:
she is accustomed to me
is generous of that energy
and she’s not hunted yet today

personal as tracer focuses in on us
little grey-brown long-wing shows-off
all over the hill within our vision
but beyond it. Learn if we will
she’ll whiffle down as if on to prey
look back at us, and go into the grey

(Feb 21, 2004)

Copyright © Colin Simms, 2004.