Blog Archives
Humanity’s Mark
Been reading this book,
It’s pretty informative.
And it inspired the following poem…
Along with this little guy…
Humanity’s Mark
.
My youngest child, holding his newest toy,
Up overhead, like a talisman: a soft doll
Sewn in the shape of a turbaned genie,
Pronounced his wishes would the words
Only carry the power of the fable.
.
“I would have Geniousious – its given name –
Kill Putin, and make it not be able
To have any animal in danger of extinction.”
A sad assertion for a six-year-old.
Which sunk my soul deeper into my bowels.
.
From reading an outline of human history
From the fall of the Roman Empire to
The fall of the Third Reich, I could
Summarise the centuries of papal succession
Crusaders and invaders swaying
To and fro, back and forth over the soil,
Staining with flesh and blood the Earth,
Sweeping millions to their massacres,
In thrusting, thirsting, for supremacy,
In short sentences: shit happened
That never should have, had we only
Stayed on the savannah with mere spears.
.
The bastard causing my son such sadness
And the statement bringing me to tears
Is just the latest in a long list, I insist:
He is not alone. Regardless of their tone
The rest of the pantheon are playing
As if the planet is actually replaceable
Or simply a stepping-stone to the next
Star system they can subjugate.
.
Too late to save those of the second wish
From their fate: the genie would have to
Hold the secret of time, to travel back
To the time of tribes seeking new lands,
Stop seafaring, sledding, steel science…
.
The systems we created to control
Have slipped from our own, and seem
Destined to deliver us back our destiny:
We shall stumble, back to our beginnings
.
As just another species on a rock
Awash with water and organic molecules
Transforming from one shape to another
As all are eaten, even the ones with weapons,
.
Until our form of life dies out, along with lots
Of other sorts, and some others evolve, I surmise,
We shall suffer, I am grieved to say, son, for
We are already, sliding, and, Jesus wept,
.
Seem inept at dodging, not just bullets aimed at us,
But oncoming steam engines of our own devising,
From far off with a blinding light beckoning at us.
.
We sleepwalked into a new disease creation,
Let it clutch enough of us so it shall cling on
Like a long list of poxes yet to appear, but near.
.
The heat waves and fires washing over white houses
Have had no effect on our behaviour any more
Than the waves of refugees fleeing from its results:
Even now the crisis erroneously seen as rideable
Rather than a rising tide set to swamp.
.
The swimmers so far stamped upon by standers, yet,
Littering the sand, shall pile up like plastic:
Become numbers on an ever longer set of statistics,
Of deaths, in the desert resulting from our
Immoral immigration legislation, letting
.
Famine fell far more than the virus, multiples
Of anything we’ve seen over the millennia
Of Mongols and Huns and Hitler’s gas and guns.
.
The lessons of History seem serving only to
Prepare some for the suffering to come:
Send us into the trees yet green to gather up
The tiny glories all around us while we can;
Create a wealth of memories with one another which
Might help us weather better our dour destiny,
Hoping we’re able to die a natural death
From mere bad health before it all dissolves.
.
And if there’s a third wish left upon the table,
Let it be this: that my children stay off such lists,
And choose to spread ideas instead of seed:
Leave poems, not progeny, for words
Do not suffer such as sentient beings shall.
July 2022.
I haven’t even finished reading the book…
This is the page I am on now – coincidentally in a chapter on the Spanish Civil War….
I read this headline today in my local newspaper. It translates to “the Navarra shop owners are against Sanchez’s measures to save energy. Some foresee insecurity if the shop windows have no lights after ten pm.”
The photo caption reads “Complaints about the heat in the market.”
This photo here is some storm clouds gathering over the dry dry (and, as you know, quite extensively burnt) landscape I stare out over every evening as I sit and write.
I’ve posted this photo because there is a fucking storm brewing. The actual storms come stronger than ever, and they do little to help the thirsty land compared to the rain we used to have in Spain.
But also, it’s very beautiful.
And soon enough we might only see beauty up above the landscape, because the landscape will cease to be beautiful by itself.
That newspaper headline tells us how quickly that might happen…
We can not even turn down the AC. We can’t even agree to turn off the lights, the ones that aren’t even being used… (I wrote a poem about that, actually, which I must post some time.)
And that’s to just lower energy use by 15% so we can help the rest of Europe, which will have a colder winter than we will in Spain.
In a war.
How can we hope to avoid the worst of Climate Change in light of this kind of stupidity?
I, as you can see from the poem, fail to have much hope at all.
Landscape Poems
In the Mist
.
Calling cranes cross overhead like ghosts in the gloom,
Bells echo down the hillsides from hidden forest horses
Like shots across the valley, voices and dog barks below
Reveal others on the path as invisible to us as we to them
Knowing surrounds only by memory and sounds in the
Silence, the mist expands our senses out like landscape,
Until the sun lifts the veil and sends down into our pocket
Of the earth, a gentle caress of golden warmth and sets
The sky blue brightness shining off mountain cloud
Shimmering across imagined land beneath silver shroud.
.
The Same Scene a Thousand Times
A painter can select one scene,
One view, from a certain lookout,
Turn it into their subject: treat
It a thousand ways, in varying lights.
But can a poet? Write a thousand times
Of one mountain range and valley?
Of all the many shadows and scudding
Clouds along its sides, and all
Aspects of the mists across its sky.
A painter can settle in one spot,
A cottage on a cliff:
Paint through the window.
A poet may install himself
In the same place,
But can he use words more than once
To illustrate the landscape?
Or once used, need he seek new views
To inspire new vocabularies?
It seems the answer lies in the
Lines, led along by eyes, looking
In ever-finer focus always finds
The mind inspired to write.
.
I have no photos of the scenes that inspired the first poem, but the second poem was inspired by sunset in the same spot I watch sunset most Sunday evenings, and each time it’s inspiring, but can I write of the same valley for the rest of my life? Possibly. It depends less on the inspiration and more on my ability I suppose!
Cloud Impressions
Thoughts on Clouds.
There are many useful words
To describe pre-precipitation atmospheric condensation
Or as we call them, clouds.
Precise nomenclature of
Scientific phenomena,
Predicting what weather to expect:
Stratoculnimbus, cumulocolumbus, cirronimbulus,
No matter what construction,
None suffice
To describe
A scene
Of scudding shades of purple and blue and white,
Whorls and wisps and fluffy tufts,
Grey layering over the landscape like heavy cream,
High, hazy hovering, herringbone brush strokes:
Thus do poetic panderings, pattering,
Find themselves equally insufficient.
Nor would a photo, nor even painting
Do any justice .
Nothing works as well as our unspoken
Constructions, sometimes,
So we simply suffice with stopping,
To stand, and stare, and smile.
Haikus and other short poems.
Here are some more short poems and haikus that I said I’d post.
I will add them to the poetry page, too.
I haven’t posted recently becuase I’ve been away at home in Ireland, where I don’t get much of a chance to write, or read.
Mostly, I drink tea and beer and chat.
And that’s great.
Of course, afterwards it would be nice to be able to have a holiday alone and catch up on stuff. But summer with the children is on the cards, so only a few hours a day to myself and my pen will be my lot.
I will get a few poems and some chapters of my work in progress, done, though. I swear!
Snowdrop
Early Snowdrop
Still Bows
To the braver bee
Speed
Cyclist careening down
Mountain, crouching under wind
Ignoring the sky.
Daisy
Dark lawn lays an extensive frame
For a tiny dot of pink:
First brave daisy bursting forth
To herald the blooming March of spring.
Drifting
April afternoon
Aspen seeds
Drifting.
Bedtime
Ignored, strangers sight excite –
Wife’s sleeping form,
Pulls powerfully, still.
Saved by Death
High on the corner of a Midwestern cornfield
A family cemetery stands firm, the last
Testament to a town wiped from memory,
Like the soil that once stood below it.
Spring Park, Pamplona
The hinds abide,
While the cockerels cry,
Drowned out by the peacocks.
Encapsulated
Narrow country road,
Hedgerow arches over,
Birdsong encloses.
The Birds of Summer
Swifts have disappeared,
Swallows are soon to follow;
Cuckoos long silent.
Rooks
Caged,
Crows’ calls
Echo
Open fields.
Sea Greeting
Surging up the sand,
Touching toes:
Gentle hello.
Original Sin
Originally,
Maybe our sin was seeing
Shame in nakedness.
On a Hilltop
Across silent landscape
Sounds
Reveal their source.
David JM O'Brien 