passing of heaney

30 Friday Aug 2013

Posted by in Illustration and art, Passings and Death Notes

≈ Comments Off on passing of heaney

Tags

, , ,

seamusheaney

The BBC has just announced that the Irish poet Seamus Heaney has passed away at the age 74. Besides winning 1995 Nobel Prize for Literature, I adored his translation of Beowulf (1998). Below is one of my favorite sonnets of his.

Clink a pint and Oíche Mhaith.

Requiem for the Croppies

The pockets of our greatcoats full of barley…

No kitchens on the run, no striking camp…

We moved quick and sudden in our own country.

The priest lay behind ditches with the tramp.

A people hardly marching… on the hike…

We found new tactics happening each day:

We’d cut through reins and rider with the pike

And stampede cattle into infantry,

Then retreat through hedges where cavalry must be thrown.

Until… on Vinegar Hill… the final conclave.

Terraced thousands died, shaking scythes at cannon.

The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave.

They buried us without shroud or coffin

And in August… the barley grew up out of our grave.

a drop on the tongue, just one

29 Thursday Aug 2013

Posted by in Poetry, sonnet

≈ Comments Off on a drop on the tongue, just one

Tags

, , , , , , ,

Do not trust still water. It has no salt.
The first time I drank another’s life blood,
one lone dribble from behind the ear, fault
of fuck bites, that brackish taste, that queer flood,
filled me, alien and perverse, I knew
that no rush of river, no stagnate pond,
nothing that was simple like day-blind dew,
rain or fresh water could take me beyond.
Not the way orgasms lead us to ride
the gods or how a blood drop holds life’s curse.
It’s all about making the sweat begin.
I wish to know the wild thing that you hide,
the thing that makes you alien and perverse,
the thing hidden in the salt on your skin.

faith the scar

29 Thursday Aug 2013

Posted by in Poetry, sonnet

≈ Comments Off on faith the scar

Tags

, , , , , , ,

Sexless – godless — raptus — itself a drift
without dim mortal faith the scar-marred home
of sand wind look into the sea the rift
between walking naked into froth-foam
of tide naked before a vast junkyard
of words that do not please. To worship sea
is to worship alien a graveyard
for the others to worship mystery
all that words cannot name a god shark finned
I will not die. On land dry I will swim
out drown drown drown into bliss into bliss
into bliss into that which drives the wind
because it has come to this it has come
to this O faith it has come to this.

cut here

28 Wednesday Aug 2013

Posted by in Erotic, Poetry, sonnet

≈ Comments Off on cut here

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

Tonight I’ll drink and think. Tonight I’ll pluck
from the air one last clamorous kiss. Ghost
lovers shall come and cum. As in: we’ll fuck.
As in: I’ll boast of my dumb brute brawn. Boast
of my blade, but not this blood. Rouge’s belly.
Twin-twined guts. Cut here. Though each layer flails
the skin nothing to breathe in what body,
what shape, what pains to give you my entrails
I got guts beating days off through the blur
of stone and dark bud. All that I still trust
I still love. I’m weary of ugliness,
but not drinking, not thinking. And after?
Will we still fuck when I’m dead? When our lust
is the only thing standing between us?

ghost winds

28 Wednesday Aug 2013

Posted by in Poetry, sonnet

≈ Comments Off on ghost winds

Tags

, , , , , ,

Hearing nothing, understanding nothing,
I have wandered out among the long, dry
ghost winds. The sky has stolen everything.
My eyes are full of dust. Why does the sky
blind me and wish me ill? On my two hands
tattooed stars shine, but they are useless guides.
Blind. Blind. Blind. Maybe up in the highlands
I’ll find rest, make a dress out of goat hides
and sleep among the sad daphi-daphi-
dillies. Then I’ll forget to be afraid
and eat raw honey right out of the comb.
Maybe. But look what’s been stolen from me;
my sight, my soul, my name and why I prayed,
even this mirage that I called my home.