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A Few Seconds of Eternity
A few Seconds of Eternity
A hubbub surrounds several idling cars:
Kids running between house and driveway
As the gang gets ready to leave on Sunday,
Carrying bags and banging shutters closed.
.
Asking, “Have we left anything behind?”
“Well, here it stays till next weekend,” replied,
For we’ve baths and dinners to have this evening
If we ever get on the road home.
.
Eventually, the door locked and all packed in,
Bar me, standing in the garden as the cars
Reverse out, waiting to close the gate, taking in
The scene surrounding us as every evening:
.
Silence settling o’er the vale as the breeze
Slows to swing round from afternoon heat
On the southern plains beyond the hills,
Set in scarlet, under clouds tinged pink.
.
The sparrows have ceased squabbling
In the hedges for roosting spots, chirping
Softly as crickets; the sky turquoise east,
Glowing golden west; the oaks go on growing
.
Under Saturn and early stars starting to shine,
As they have for eons, breathing in, quietly,
As the gate squeaks shut; all is mine,
For a few seconds, immersed in an eternity.
Often ‘Tis the little moments that make this life wonderful.
The Last Cabaret
Final Fiesta
.
Marching bands and ballerinas
Parade the street, pulling public,
Producing impromptu dances
Around pushchairs and infants
Held aloft; cheering and chants
And stampings, stampeding
Children screaming gleefully
Gobbling up potato chips, fried
Calamari, scampi and such snacks
.
Washed with beer and wine,
Vermouth and gin and an ever-
Growing list of sin, resisted
Until the wee hours under stars,
Revelling unrelenting. Renewed
As sunlight reveals debris and
Blinkered vision revolves to
Another village, a different festival,
.
Of a reencountered countryside
Ready for recreation after a year
Of restraint and restriction. See
A need for sun burning, but
.
Another urge underneath fuels
This seeming endless summer:
A sense of a September looming
Despite peaceful scenes.
.
Heat will resist yet, bringing
Only waves of pain. Winter comes
Indeed, but carries no snow,
Nor silent ice-glazed stasis,
Only storms. The wars await,
Worse than after a former August
.
And this is our last cabaret,
Held under a hammer cocked,
A trigger primed, and all
Staggering at the tipping-point.
We were finishing up the festival of San Fermin Txikito, or little San Fermin, last weekend, which was kind of the last festival of the summer – one which had the youths going to as many festivals in as many villages round Pamplona as they could get to, after the two years they missed out on because of the Covid restrictions. And I just said to myself – good luck to them. They’ll have shit shovelled out in front of them soon enough. We have had a terrible summer in terms of exacerbated “natural” disasters, but as the weather gets cooler, we can only look forward to a winter, if not of discontent, then of a realisation of how bad things are going to get (in the privileged west where it hasn’t actually started yet unlike many other places) on our current global trajectory. We just have to turn down the thermostat here, and shorten the shower times, while in other places they’re kinda sorta fucked, as it were.
After I’d written this poem, someone on twitter, commenting on the current fiasco in the UK compared it to Weimar economics, and look how that ended up – suggesting we have a final cabaret.
So it’s not just me, of course…
I have few photos to illustrate this poem for obvious reasons…. who wants their photo on the internet with a pile of beer bottles etc. round them? I wouldn’t! But no judgement if you’re enjoying yourself – a drink before the war, as Sinéad sang…
Sun Set Sun Day
Happy Summer!
Though I’m Irish, and for me Summer started in May, making this MidSummer’s Day, logically, it seems that the astronomers around me disagree. Whatever.
Here’s a short poem I thought of a couple of Sundays ago, to make you think of the joy of these short nights.
Sunday Sunset
Other days we rush inside
From the porch, to prepare
Dinner, drinks and sit upon
Sofa to see a movie or TV; or
Drive to the city for dusk, but
.
Sunday is when we want to stay
Watching sunset and slipping
Off to bed when the bats and
Owls calling have taken over
From twilight blackbirds and
Nightingales, the last rays of
Sun replaced by moonbeams,
The gleam of glow worms when
Cicadas are silent to let crickets
Sing, as peace settles like aspen
Cotton in the stillness between
Breezes. Then sleep suggests itself
Until we rise again to catch the dawn.
Another Spring
I took a trip to the river some days ago and sat down and thought of how different this spring is – much drier or course, but simply because we can go outside and see it the way we weren’t able to last year.
.
Another Spring
.
The soil thirsts for showers, but still
Seeds sprout green and buds flower.
Warblers and mistle thrushes whistle
Busily from the bramble bushes.
Upon thermals, raptors stall, surveying
Below, from distant forests, cuckoos call.
.
I sit upon a stone wall, watching
Wagtails bobbing below a waterfall,
Remembering, last year, the view
Of a robin, a tree, we then held dear,
And our feelings thence unfree
Behind our self-made fence
As we waited to leave impatiently,
Even as news came to grieve.
.
A brace of ducks take flight as slowly
Afternoon descends to night,
Slapping away the tiny silence, sweetly;
The air is filled with blossom scent,
And as the ducks take wing, I swear,
I shall never miss another spring.
.
the small picture view – how wonderful it is just to see this instead of concrete or our own bare walls inside. Long may we leave our houses and be greeted with life.
Peace on Earth
Peace on Earth; at least This Part.
Sun rises over the mountains Christmas morn,
Shreds lingering mist strings off the oak slopes.
Starlings sing across vale from barn and shed,
Sparrows flit back and forth on tree and hedge.
Windmills steady, cows still not lowing, nor
Dinging. Dew dries, roof drips, while kite
Shifts on bough, readying to take to clear skies.
Robin skips in goodwill, trilling to a lone soul
Soaking silence embracing peace on Earth;
This piece, yet in the absence of men.
Wrote this on Christmas morning, sitting in that sun – it’s a remarkably relaxed time in Amatriain, where mass was the day before, and, dinner was very late, and lunch has usually been taken care of already (and doesn’t consist of turkey).
Hope everyone has had a nice holiday season and that we will have some peace in 2017.
I’m about to start edits of Silver Nights Part 2, Leading the Pack…. almost as excited as a kid at Christmas!
January poems
These were written mainly over the last couple of weeks and seemed appropriate for
the weather and the midpoint of the month…
Lived or not
If we don’t stop to watch the sunset,
How do we know we’ve really lived that day?
Listening to the Birds and Bees
Perhaps people no longer
Stop to listen to the birdsong
Because they’ve taken all the birds away
And only sparrows in the traffic stay.
They Doth Protest Too Much
Pensioners protest;
They did their bit and are owed.
What have they left us?
Tea Leaves
Tea, thinking each leaf
Left China for Ireland, then
Here, I use bags twice.
On the Death of Bowie
For some, no matter how old they go,
They’re gone too young, too soon.
And all we have left to hold is a song
That we can’t help but sing out of tune.
Peace on Earth
Happy new Year everyone!
2014 was a great year for me – started this blog, had two novels published… – and I hope that 2015 will be just as good if not better. Thanks to all who liked and followed this, and read the books.
To start off the year here’s a poem I wrote on Xmas day, looking over the fields of northern Spain during a short walk alone, thinking of my own peace and the peace that is so ephemeral and yet so pursued by the world, and especially remembered on the 100 year anniversary of England and German troops having a spontaneous ceasefire. However, after listening to the new Spanish king talk bollox the previous night in his first xmas address to the nation, the only bit I got was our “competitivity in a global world.” When we have Germany making laws against the Europeans who they asked us to join a union with, as they turn turn the screws on other European countries (and now suggest that Greece should shuffle off and die an economic death rather than hold true to the bullshite they sold us about European Unity) it’s clear that the only way out of this shite is to pay everyone in the world the same wage. Then we won’t bother to immigrate, or buy shite just because it’s cheap… but the kings of this world don’t want us to do that.
Peace on Earth
This is peace on earth, solitary and silent;
Only the swish of the windmills on sunlit hills.
And the war they ceased a century past shows
Each man merely wishes to have his life go on,
To return here. Still our kings tell us today how it’s
Us against them: horse shit best left to fertilise
Their graves. For it’s them against us, and
Together is just them first, till we shed the march
Of history we’re cursed to continue entrenched.
For what differs between me and a Mongolian?
Only that I earn more than he knows and can
Buy what he makes while be barely buys clothes
But what makes me happy is the mere chance to
Visit his hillsides in the silence of sunshine or snow.
David JM O'Brien 