A bit of the old in the new

Awakened from the dream of life

Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep
He hath awakened from the dream of life
‘Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep
With phantoms an unprofitable strife,
And in mad trance, strike with our spirit’s knife
Invulnerable nothings. — We decay
Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief
Convulse us and consume us day by day,
And cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.

 

The One remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven’s light forever shines, Earth’s shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments. — Die,
If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!
Follow where all is fled! — Rome’s azure sky,
Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are weak
The glory they transfuse with fitting truth to speak.

~ Adonaïs

~P. Shelly

the gift

we all have the choice to focus on the horror or the redemption.

 

 

the gift is to focus on the redemption.

 

Éirigh mo Dhúiche le Dia

Caithfidh fir Éireann uile

o haicme go haonduine…

gliec na timcheall no tuitim

Creideamh Chríost le creideamh Lúiteir…

ladgadh gris i sneachta sud

Ag so an cogadh do chriochnaigh Éire

s do chuir na milte ag iarri dearca…

Do rith plaig is gorta in aonacht

Le execution bhíos súil an cheidir

costas buinte na chuine ag an ndeanach

Transport transplant, mo mheabhair ar Bhéarla

A tory, hack him, hang him, a rebel,

a rogue, a thief a priest, a papist

“You Popish rogue”, ni leomhaid a labhairt sinn

acht “Cromwellian dog” is focal faire againn

no ” cia sud thall” go teann gan eagla

“Mise Tadhg” geadh teinn an t-agallamh

Séamus an cháca, a chaill Éireann,

lena leathbhróg ghallda is a leathbhróg Ghaelach

~Pádraigín Haicéad

The Young Man’s Song

I whispered, "I am too young,"  
And then, "I am old enough";   
Wherefore I threw a penny   
To find out if I might love.   
"Go and love, go and love, young man,
If the lady be young and fair,"   
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,   
I am looped in the loops of her hair.   

Oh, love is the crooked thing,   
There is nobody wise enough
To find out all that is in it,   
For he would be thinking of love   
Till the stars had run away,   
And the shadows eaten the moon.   
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
One cannot begin it too soon.

~W.B. Yeats

My breathing shakes the bluet like a breeze

The Vantage Point

If tires of trees I seek again mankind,
Well I know where to hie me–in the dawn,
To a slope where the cattle keep the lawn.
There amid loggin juniper reclined,
Myself unseen, I see in white defined
Far off the homes of men, and farther still,
The graves of men on an opposing hill,
Living or dead, whichever are to mind.

And if by noon I have too much of these,
I have but to turn on my arm, and lo,
The sun-burned hillside sets my face aglow,
My breathing shakes the bluet like a breeze,
I smell the earth, I smell the bruisèd plant,
I look into the crater of the ant.

 

Wax and wane

Seasons of life wax and wane

mimicking the moon

the light of life

extinguished much too soon

i couldn’t say what changed

what made me this way

but i assure you most ardently

of my fierce fight against fate

i never wanted it to end as such

the cooling of sun

with dejection i walk away

and concede that all is done

Blinders

It’s an unnerving feeling

Not knowing who you are

Blinders taken off

Life no longer guarded

Seeing reality for the first time

A nauseous feeling rolling about

Gripping my midsection

Trying to steadily walk

A topsy-turvy surface

Walls appearing

And demolishing

Simultaneously

The setting sun

Dusk hiding all my mistakes

It ends as it all does

With the dying of the day

And because Love battles

And because love battles
not only in its burning agricultures
but also in the mouth of men and women,
I will finish off by taking the path away
to those who between my chest and your fragrance
want to interpose their obscure plant.

About me, nothing worse
they will tell you, my love,
than what I told you.

I lived in the prairies
before I got to know you
and I did not wait love but I was
laying in wait for and I jumped on the rose.

What more can they tell you?
I am neither good nor bad but a man,
and they will then associate the danger
of my life, which you know
and which with your passion you shared.

And good, this danger
is danger of love, of complete love
for all life,
for all lives,
and if this love brings us
the death and the prisons,
I am sure that your big eyes,
as when I kiss them,
will then close with pride,
into double pride, love,
with your pride and my pride.

But to my ears they will come before
to wear down the tour
of the sweet and hard love which binds us,
and they will say: “The one
you love,
is not a woman for you,
Why do you love her? I think
you could find one more beautiful,
more serious, more deep,
more other, you understand me, look how she’s light,
and what a head she has,
and look at how she dresses,
and etcetera and etcetera”.

And I in these lines say:
Like this I want you, love,
love, Like this I love you,
as you dress
and how your hair lifts up
and how your mouth smiles,
light as the water
of the spring upon the pure stones,
Like this I love you, beloved.

To bread I do not ask to teach me
but only not to lack during every day of life.
I don’t know anything about light, from where
it comes nor where it goes,
I only want the light to light up,
I do not ask to the night
explanations,
I wait for it and it envelops me,
And so you, bread and light
And shadow are.

You came to my life
with what you were bringing,
made
of light and bread and shadow I expected you,
and Like this I need you,
Like this I love you,
and to those who want to hear tomorrow
that which I will not tell them, let them read it here,
and let them back off today because it is early
for these arguments.

Tomorrow we will only give them
a leaf of the tree of our love, a leaf
which will fall on the earth
like if it had been made by our lips
like a kiss which falls
from our invincible heights
to show the fire and the tenderness
of a true love.

Pablo Neruda

A Dream Pang

I had withdrawn in forest, and my song Was swallowed up in leaves that blew alway; And to the forest edge you came one day (This was my dream) and looked and pondered long, But did not enter, though the wish was strong: You shook your pensive head as who should say, ‘I dare not—too far in his footsteps stray— He must seek me would he undo the wrong.

Not far, but near, I stood and saw it all
Behind low boughs the trees let down outside;
And the sweet pang it cost me not to call
And tell you that I saw does still abide.
But ’tis not true that thus I dwelt aloof,
For the wood wakes, and you are here for proof.

~Robert Frost