Macdara Woods Poems

In the village street a stained-glass artist
Is trawling the shops for Brunswick Black
On a morning when my head is taken up with light
And light effects on silver halides

Or in Russells on a bleary Wednesday
Clients push in chafing and shooting their cuffs
Signalling pints but "spirits out first please"
Such are the limits of a year's horizons

This week brought Paul Durcan' s postcard
With news of Robert Frost and mention of Mt Lafayette
A catalogue of timber in New Hampshire
And yesterday my wife sailed in from Paris

To find me dressed again in campaign summer gear
Which doesn't differ much in truth from winter's
The addition or the stripping of a layer plus decorations
For my regimental Thursdays in the mad house

Being thus torpedoed I must have my story straight
And in my ley-lines find a bill of credence
Pick up on Leeson Street where I was born -
In the Appian Way my bones of childhood mock me

Yet these May mornings toiling to the Nursery
I sense my father's ghost in the wheeling migrant birds
And soon I can accept the electric invitation
Of my amazing son to the breathless world of cherry flowers
...

Quand irons-nous, par delà les grèves et les monts
—Arthur Rimbaud, Une Saison en Enfer
i

Deep in the unknown
empty quarter
of that country

There is a lake
and in the middle of the lake
there is an island

And in the middle
of the island
stands a mountain

And from its top
the oceans of the world
are visible:

We are less different
from each other
than islands from the land

ii

This is how we
came here
like the cormorant

Inhabiting two species
the water and
the stone walls on the mountain

Peruvian marks
of lazy-beds
stretched all across the countryside

Sailing out of Roonagh
a red queen and a white queen
dance across the bay

Coming midday
into harbour
with a thin moon overhead

iii

Strip away words
lesser words
and few

Seeing things
from nearer to the ground
to focus small:

Grains of salt
around the rock-pool
shell

Stone
flat sea and open sky
is vastness

Is silence
sound and vastness
of everything grown in

iv

Like fence-posts we stick up
on the horizon
figures masts and tower

Over and beyond
islands are like lakes inverted
upside down

The sea above
the giant hollow places
far beneath

My father told me
look at mountains paintings
upside down

Over there inside my head
still watching
light and shade on Minaun

v

When you walk around an island
you do not come back
to where you started out

This is the Imram
and the fact:
the day itself has changed

And light and time
the moving measure
of us all moved on

The ritual
of couples landing here
and setting out

At once
on bicycle and foot
to map the edges of this Ark

vi

The tower house is present as
the sea is
always present and the wind

That blows the county flags:
as sheep
as sea gulls up above the wind

And cloud and mountains
blue on grey on blue
all life: and signs of life

A shovel lying on the ground
a coal bag
underneath a bush

Blue clothes-pegs
paint tins
bags of sand cement and stones

vii

Children in the schoolyard
in the sun
girls and boys

With helmets hurleys:
a sliotar in his hand
the teacher

Is explaining
all the expertise
of poc and stance

Above the glittering sea
that stretches out
to Inishturk

And fuschia green and red
is everywhere
all Mayo red and green

viii

Please do not touch
the curraghs . . .
the archetypal care

As Liam Brady heard
a woman say
in Connemara

Half a century ago: a mhac
ná bí
ag briseadh bád

Everything comes here
by hand
by sea and history

One way and another:
Terra
Marique Potens O Maille

ix

In the cloisters
of the monastery of Oliveto
there is

A Signorelli fresco
of the angels visiting in mufti
one woman

Cutting bread
another pouring wine or water
from a jug for them:

The stuff of day to day
unconsciously rehearsed
as this

The scene repeated here
a young girl
pouring tea into a cup

x

Sand in the breaking waves
stones talking
in the flow back undertow

The low-tide rolling talk
of stones
along the beach

And the one-eyed dog
who waits
all afternoon in hope

Of stone or stick
thrown in for him to fetch
clocks off goes home

I see him next day
hard at work
driving sheep down to the boat

xi

I saw that red-gold hair before
in Philip's tomb
in Macedon

Burning red-gold
oak branch diadem and filigree
of twigs and leaves

That living artistry of wind
and chance
that crosses time

Comes down to us
like amber
floating on the Baltic sea:

A woven beehive
and a sea-wise cloth
such wisdom Ariadne brought

xii

Standing at the end of Europe
by Grace O'Malley's grave
in the Atlantic

The sea-light
seeping through the stone and windows
the fading painted figures

On the walls and ceiling
reaffirm
the unseen acts of reverence repeated

That we apply
the sanctity we bring to things
are what survive:

These damaged boars and stags
still living here
that sleek elastic hound

xiii

Going the road from
sea to sea
where the valley rises up

Between
Knockmore and Knocknaveen
and a woman on her bike

Comes cycling from the sun
none but us both
in that stupendous space

And loneliness:
the simple endless moment
of being there

And nowhere else
and knowing it: and then to leave
a moment so inhabited

xiv

Arrival and departure
all going to and coming from
in the unending

Business
of ferrying
the present to the present:

We land and gravitate a while
disperse
take credit for the weather

The wooden benches
for the passer by
stare out to sea:

A line of great stone heads
we shade our eyes
looking out to where we were

xv

They do not come again
the flashing lines
these glancing

Points of contact
if we don't
quickly press them to the page

The moments when
each frame becomes another
then another:

Making now for Roonagh
one young woman
hands round sweets

The rolling sea is luminous
a young man spends the journey
looking back
...

Last time I walked this bit of road
like this
was Easter five years back
and the Grannies were out
let out after winter
and then

Up the hill with them
shawls flying in the wind
rocketing on sticks
pointing out who lived where
and when - locating all
the marks upon the landscape
yet again:

This little stretch
between the graveyards
the Via Gramsci
taking over
from the Via Sant' Urbano:

Today like then
is beautiful and clean
so focussed clear the air
is like a lens imprinting me
among the hills
and hidden things

As when I leave this road
to come down into Africa
across the fields
that patch I know
of cracked bare winter earth
scratched with the tracks of beasts
recorded time
in muddy prints

Or the man below
who stops hand up
blue coat flapping in the wind
to look at me
shading his eyes from the sun

Or the tall thin shepherd yesterday
beside my house
black beard and crook
who grazed his sheep
just passing by - so quick
no more than half an hour
in the small green fields
on each side of the road

But while it happened
all this little piece
of countryside was full
was loud with bells
the clatter and clang of sheep
and then filled up with absence after
music ended
they were gone

And like this last white rose so white
above my yard
high up beside the gable-light
...

Someone invited them in
and they sat
perched on the backs of chairs on the mantel
on the banisters and landings
hunched like dowagers
or the terrible mad old man on a horse I saw one winter
hunting over the fields
near Oxford:

And they took up residence
settled into
our living space
watching us out of their alien eyes
arranging their feathers
to look like fur
a tang of salt and diesel
in the air
as they hopped from room to room
heads cocked
picking up scraps
of household talk:

All that winter
their hooded shapes
absorbed the daylight
shrouded
like statues in Lenten Churches
they were large
full bodied
unyielding oily and plump
if you bumped against them
on the stairs in the dark:

And the house filled up
with the weight
of moisture in the atmosphere
mould grew on the phone
and nobody answered
when we rang
the neighbours couldn't remember
our names:

Everything heavy
with forgetfulness
but for the birds
forever diving
through gaps in the conversation
bringing up words
that had slipped from the page
and colours that slid
off the wall
to fall through the cracks in the floor
or come to rest
with the spoons and forks
in the kitchen drawers:

Till again it was spring
and suddenly
some of the gobbets of thought
the birds dredged up
took shape
on the kitchen floor
where the sun shines in

twisting around until
the birds were named -
our own familiar selves
identified too late:

In the drawer of the desk
the family
of knives and forks
and spoons and spools
of words and thread
and paper bags
and broken things
were meaningless:
were what they were
the soul's detritus
oil-stains on the water
a raft from the Medusa
...

After all the heads have rolled
and the young insurgents put up against the wall
by the firing squads
when the puppet masters
have taken their seats in the boardroom
and the bombardiers are sipping drinks
with the chiefs of police
when the journalists change sides again
and the commentators
redefine what they meant in the first place
and the judges sell their shares
in revolutionary understanding
and the clergy decide
that forgiveness was always forgiven
and educators rediscover
the meaning behind the meaningless
when poets grow tired
of too long battling futility
when arrogant financiers
have poisoned all the blood banks
and the drug companies
have rendered us venomous
unfit for social consumption
when we see that things have returned again to how they are
we want to believe
that the ruthless men in the big black cars
are lonely as sin
behind their bullet proof glass
and that it means something
that they may have doubts
in the middle of the night like we have
only worse
we pray
because maybe they can do something about it
before the eagle
stoops and tears their liver out
...