While the Wind Howls on a Winter's Night

While the Wind Howls on a Winter’s Night: a Collection of Twenty-First Century Irish Poems, by Maolsheachlann O Ceallaigh

Published by Snowglobe Books, Dublin, 2015. Republication in Whole or in Part is Positively Encouraged. Please Feel Free to Make Improvements.

  

All of these poems are dedicated to my beloved wife Michelle.

Where Life Has Been

On a battered Monopoly board;

On a dog-eared deck of cards;

In football boots that have scored

Four thousand goals; on yards

Where generations have played and passed, like changing guards.

In a chipped Coronation mug

In a letter-filled biscuit tin;

In the teddy you used to hug

And the bed that you slept in

When life was a drama waiting to begin.

In the pounded, muddy path

That the cows come home along;

In a battle’s aftermath

Or ruin, and tale, and song;

In a run-down dancehall dreaming of its scattered throng.

In an old, old story spoken

By a low fire’s dying light—

Of promises made and broken

Or old wrongs put to right;

That hushes the room, while the wind howls on a winter’s night.

A Christmas Bauble

Gaze into the flickering flame

Of a homely hearth

Gaze through the world-creating frame

Of any window on the Earth.

Gaze in a grey or a hazel eye;

Gaze all night at the spangled sky;

But gaze at last, for a greater joy,

In the glow of a Christmas bauble.

This is the very mirror of mirth;

A light to proclaim

A winter's tale of a Virgin Birth

Making the world a fantastic game.

God is the giddiest thought of all,

Says the tinsel hanging on the wall

And the twinkling of that happy ball

The glow of a Christmas bauble.

The season that bears the Holy Name

Is sending forth

The tidings we were born to proclaim;

The infinite worth

Of the soul of man, and the world of things;

The wild delight of all carollings

But the homeliest hymn to the King of Kings

Is the glow of a Christmas bauble.

Bandstand

There is no such thing as emptiness.

Twenty-six years of songs sleep in these boards—

Songs only superficially banal.

But silence, with its fingertip caress,

Has stroked them most of all. And silence lords

This little space, nigh-on perpetual.

But there are words that only can be spoken

Where words are seldom used. The full of heart

Seek out this hollow with a timeless urge.

Its workday silence cries out to broken

By lovers trying not to drift apart

And friends with decades-old regrets to purge

And memories as frail as autumn leaves.

Seventeen years ago five schoolgirls wrote

Their names into the floor. Today they seem

Like carvings on a tomb where no-one grieves

Nor has for centuries.

Time does not gloat;

Not in this place. Although it reigns supreme

Its rule is mild. Nothing seems small from here.

Dreams make up life, and seconds make the year

Whispers the bandstand. Sounds, this far away—

The purr of traffic, distance-muffled cries—

Seem more important.

All souls will confess

Their secrets to thin air, and all will pray

Where nothing stirs. Stand here and realise

What galaxies abound in emptiness.

 A Ballade of TV

I’ve grown quite tired of Kant’s philosophy

I do not feel a deep urge to recite

Icelandic sagas to my coterie.

I feel no very ardent need to write

A gloss upon the Areopagite.

And, although Maud invited me to see

A Noh play at her cousin’s place tonight

I’m going to stay at home and watch TV.

There’s a free lecture on Gallipoli

In the Polytech. East Timor’s sorry plight

Is the subject of a talk—admission free—

In the parish hall. An ancient Mayan rite

Is reconstructed for our town’s delight

In the Rovers clubhouse (there’ll be cakes and tea).

But all these cherries I refuse to bite;

I’m going to stay at home and watch TV.

Although I’m wild about astronomy

And Gemini is going to be more bright

Than any time since 44 AD

This evening, I’m indifferent to the sight.

And though I’m well aware it’s not polite

To snub my agéd mother’s desperate plea,

“Come watch your father being made a Knight”

I’m going to stay at home and watch TV.

  

 Envoi

 Prince, you have lost all prospect of respite;

The mob howl for your blood relentlessly.

Now is the hour for all true men to fight;

I’m going to stay at home and watch TV.

The Unrepentant Nostalgist

I'm tired of invoking Edmund Burke
And tired of the shuttlecock of debate.
I really don't care if the new ways work,
I'm always up for the out-of-date.
I'll always root for the long-in-the-tooth
Though the new be better a thousandfold.
No more shall I hide the terrible truth;
I like old things because they are old.

I like old things because they are slower
And cruder and leave us a chance to laugh.
Give me a scythe, not a new lawn-mower;
A daguerreotype, not a photograph.
I like old ways because they wander
I like them because they don't make sense.
I can't add seven and six, but I'm fonder
Of shillings and farthings than pounds and pence.

 I like old things because the dust
Of custom and habit have fallen on them.
I like them because they've been blessed and cussed
And joked about since the time of Shem.
I'm all for cooked-up and fake traditions;
There's not quaint fiction I won't uphold.
Let Christmas be laden with new additions;
I like new things that pretend to be old.

I thirst for cobwebs and rust and dog-ears
By ivy and lichen I take my stand.
I am not pleased when nostalgia's fog clears
And leaves us standing in no-man's-land.
I like a verse more the more it's recited;
I like a tale more the more it's told.
So call me backwards, blockish, benighted;
I like old things because they are old.

You tell me my sort have been moaning and mourning
Since someone rubbed sticks and discovered fire;
That mankind lives in an endless dawning
From tin to typeface to telephone wire.
You say that the past is doomed, you sages,
And tramp on its deathbed to prove you're bold;
By God, I don't think you so very courageous;
I like old things because they are old.

At the Petrol Station

The flies were buzzing

In the thick June air

And the Head of Sales was twenty miles

From anywhere.

His wife had stopped for petrol

And something cold to drink.

The Head of Sales lay back in his seat

Trying not to think.

Outside, by the old market cross

There stood three boys.

Three boys that looked too young for girls

Too old for toys.

And they stood lollylagging

So solemnly—

As solemn as only boys that age

Can ever be.

They didn’t look towards the car—

They were alone.

The Head of Sales had the kind of stare

That turns to stone

The man on the up and up

And the man on the down and down.

Grown men went cold all over

At his frown.

But the things that terrify grown men

Don’t bother boys.

They are too very worldly

To be worldly-wise.

They spoke about school and soccer—

The abiding things.

The sickest stories that they knew

And the Lord of the Rings—

The colour of blood inside the vein,

Whether insects feel

And whether dying inside your dream

Is dying for real.

The Head of Sales burned to step outside

Of his metal box

To unlive a thousand meetings

And forget about stocks—

Forget about shares and selling points

And the taste of power

And lollylag under the useless sun

For a useless hour.

He wanted to bang on the window and yell

“Hey! Look at me!

I knew a whole lot less than you

And I’m forty-three—

“I lost the wisdom of ignorance

Somewhere between

Meeting my guidance counsellor

At seventeen

“And telling my first professional lie.

It’s true, it seems—

You really do die in real life

If you die in your dreams.”

But his wife was walking back to the car

And the group of boys

Fell silent as she passed them by.

Outside, the flies

Exulted in the balmy air

Feckless and free

Like gods for a summer evening’s

Immortality.

Green flat fields

This is the pale green part of the map;

Brown leaves tumble onto the grass’s lap

Nobody crunches them underfoot.

All of this place is a gap.

The speeding train mocks the stilly scene

Or is it mocked by the languid green?

Our days fly by, the world stays put;

Beauty is in between.

Beauty is somewhere along the way;

Somewhere we never get to stay.

Something we saw out the window pane

On a winter’s day.

Like the clean smooth fields that lie outside

The city, the village, the whole world wide;

A field lying fallow, an empty lane

Aloof without pride. 

You Should Never Throw These People Off the Bus

(The first verse is a Dublin childrens’ rhyme. All the others are my variations on it. This is just some silliness I indulged in on Facebook. Other people joined in but I haven’t felt justified in filching their contributions.)

You should never throw your granny off the bus
You should never throw your granny off the bus.
You should never throw your granny
'Cos she's your mammy's mammy
You should never throw your granny off the bus.

You should never throw Darth Vader off the bus
You should never throw Darth Vader off the bus
You should never throw Darth Vader
'Cos he'll just get you later
You should never throw Darth Vader off the bus.

You should never throw Dick Cavett off the bus
You should never throw Dick Cavett off the bus
You should never throw Dick Cavett
'Cos people just won't have it
You should never throw Dick Cavett off the bus.

You should never throw Obama off the bus
You should never throw Obama off the bus
You should never throw Obama
'Cos there'll be too much drama
You should never throw Obama off the bus.

You should never throw Will Wheaton off the bus
You should never throw Will Wheaton off the bus
You should never throw Will Wheaton
Cos he might just have eaten
You should never throw Will Wheaton off the bus.

You should never throw Don Cheney off the bus
You should never throw Don Cheney off the bus
You should never throw Don Cheney
Cos things would just get zany
You should never throw Don Cheney off the bus.

You should never throw Bert Russell off the bus
You should never throw Bert Russell off the bus
You should never throw Bert Russell
Cos he'll just come back with Husserl
You should never throw Bert Russell of the bus.

You should never throw Neil Diamond off the bus
You should never throw Neil Diamond off the bus
You should never throw Neil Diamond
Cos he's likely to get violent
You should never throw Neil Diamond off the bus.

Looking

In the wind and the sleet

Laura moves through the street

Her coat pulled tight

Against the cruel night

Like a tramp in a storm

Looking for somewhere warm.

She comes to a stop

At shop after shop

Staring through the glass at

Some dress, or some hat

For a moment she seems

Like a woman who dreams.

The she suddenly wakes

And either she shakes

Her head, or she sighs

And the light in her eyes

Is as hard and as keen

As a razor-blade’s sheen.

The shops start to close

But Laura still goes

From boutique to boutiqe

As she has for a week

But no shop ever sold

The fairy-gold

That she’s itching to find

With a restless mind.

That ache in her heart

That she yearns to impart;

What fabric, what gem

What wine-glass’s stem

Can hope to convey

What no words can say?

In one of these racks

She might find what she lacks—

Some symbol to show

The heart’s overflow.

Surely gift-wrap might hold

What can never be told?

I Will Never Write Anything Clever Again

I want to be one of the children of God

A lover of sunlight, a man amongst men.

Beauty is nothing hidden or odd;

I will never write anything clever again.

The ballad that my great-grandfather sung,

The proverb that pleases now as then;

Only the ancient is endlessly young.

I will never write anything clever again.

The Youngest Regiment

They rarely have a tombstone of their own;

Their names are graven with their parents, those

Who purchased them the little life they have.

Nothing is sad

Compared with these, these ranks of never-grown;

These thousands buried in their baby-clothes.

 

None of our windy statements about Man

Apply to these. No history has room

For them. Art holds no mirror to their tale.

Words fail

For those who knew no words. The mind can span

Millennia, but blanks before their doom.

Oh you who would praise life, oh celebrant,

How can your songs of thanksgiving be true

If you can find no rhapsody for these?

Who sees

A glory in this youngest regiment

Buried beneath the names they never knew?

 Elsewhere

When dawn was breaking I lay in the embrace

Of duvets and pillows. The whole world was a place

Of warmth and softness and the dregs of dreams.

That was today. How far away it seems!

When morning came I stood in the chilly street

And dreamed of softness and enveloping heat

And watched for a bus. The sky was all-aglow.

That was today. It seems so long ago.

When day was fully-grown, I knelt in prayer

As the priest’s familiar words brazened the air

At the lunch-time Mass. Only the house of God

Seemed real then. Already it seems odd.

Wherever I go, this thought hangs over me;

Nothing exists except what I hear and see

That very moment. Beyond yonder wall

Is nothing to be seen; nothing at all;

As though the world was simply scenery

Changed by invisible hands we cannot see

As act follows act. Oh, what mind can embrace

The weird plurality of time and space?

Jacob and the Angel

Jay pulls his boots off and slumps down

In front of the widescreen TV.

He flicks the switch. A killer clown

Leers out in sordid sympathy

With all the fury in Jay’s soul.

The world’s too much for his control;

You might see murder in his frown.

I will not let you go until you bless me.

Night closes on him like a noose;

The grinning faces on the screen

Are so intolerably obtuse;

Even their happiness so mean

He sometimes thinks a nuclear bomb

Might be a liberation from

The crassness of the nightly news.

I will not let you go until you bless me.

He reaches out to switch it off

But then he stops. A ginger cat

Is licking her kittens. Somewhere, love

Is struggling to survive. At that,

He sits back and a look more mild—

The hungry wonder of a child—

Comes on him. It might be enough.

I will not let you go until you bless me.

Ode to Advertisements

Pictures of people being happy

Are everywhere, and should be everywhere.

Life is as warm as a steaming cup of coffee

And happiness as common as the air

According to the billboards and the flyers.

God bless them all. We have enough despair.

The family around the game of Scrabble

Are everything the human race should be.

They are not lost, or shame-faced, or in trouble.

They have no need for pride or dignity

And pay no heed to those seductive liars;

Disdain, and scorn, and withering ennui.

Oh, woman with the dazzling smile and headset

How can I ever give you praise enough?

Nothing that any poet’s ever said yet

Is deeper than your smile, flashed to sell stuff.

Count me, count me, count me amongst the buyers

Of your unsullied dream of life and love.

The Street

Today I will take to the street, the mighty street,

Where life is happening now and constantly.

Today I will lose myself in the restless street

And add my feet to the thousands of other feet

That move along it, indifferent to me.

Today I am tired of voices filling a room

And the little hollows bound by wall and wall.

Today my spirit is restless for more room

And the highest roof would still seem like a tomb

And all I can hear are the public places’ call.

Today I’ll go out without a past or a name

Or anything else that makes me who I am.

I will search the street for something I can’t quite name

That draws my steps and fills my heart with a flame

And calls to me from a crowd or a traffic jam.

Today I want life in the raw, life caught by surprise;

Life happening all at once, life foaming over.

I’ve almost forgotten the world is a vast surprise

And I stand in awful danger of growing wise

And losing the startled ecstasy of the lover.

Today I will glory in litter that blows on the breeze

And street corner preachers and little unvisited lanes

That run off the bustling streets, so that only the breeze

Passes through them. Today I want worldly melodies;

The rumble of traffic, the gurgle of water in drains.

A Millionaire of Dreams

She’s the Empress of the small hours

The Queen of three a.m.

A monarch with no need of powers

Or throne or diadem.

Her kingdom is just hours away;

Where the horizon gleams.

She reigns over the coming day,

A millionaire of dreams.

But when the postman passes by

And cars pull out of drives

And the voice on the radio starts to ply

Its news of other lives

She doesn’t hear. Her eyes are shut.

Exhausted from her schemes,

She sleeps. A nurse on night shifts, but

A millionaire of dreams.

The Day after the Wedding

Today was the first day she didn’t feel strange

Turning the knob of her own front door.

The Welcome mat didn’t symbolise Change

The way it still had the day before;

The new-smelling air didn’t say, Who’s this?

Who comes to disturb my infant sleep?

The wallpaper wasn’t a promise of bliss

And the kitchen table was hers to keep.

And if something was lost—and it was, of course—

Then something was gained, the second time round.

Wonder’s a wife that we have to divorce

And you can’t build houses on holy ground;

The first true kiss is an absent kiss

And history starts where legends give up.

But listening to the kettle’s hiss

And washing out the wedding-gift cup

Without the thought she was playing a part--

That moment the fairy-gold melted way

And a warmer-than-wonder glow gripped her heart

And Creation was better, the second day.

The Magic Box

Nobody loves the box in the corner

Even though it’s always there for us.

It gives and gives. It never makes a fuss.

Clicking a button makes the whole world warmer.

It’s a modest monster. It scorns itself.

Nobody on TV watches TV.

It loves the walk on the beach, the boy in the tree.

It pleads with us to take the book from the shelf.

It looks through a thousand different eyes.

It follows the waif and the millionaire.

It has love for everyone—love to spare—

And blinks at the world in ever-fresh surprise;

Even the ads that flog us beer and cars

Care less about the product than the dream.

This box made the world gleam;

The glow of its screen is older than the stars.

 On an Old Photograph of Irish Men Waiting for the Pub to Open

You can tell from the light, and the squinting eyes

That the day was hot. But they’re all decked out

In their jackets and caps. They stand like boys

Waiting outside the headmaster’s door.

And though the caption should leave no doubt

I’m not sure what they were waiting for.

When the bar was opened, and drinks were served

Did that air of expectancy leave their faces?

They stand like schoolboys, sweetly unnerved

By the camera lens that they stare into

With the patient air of all conquered races;

The grimace of the surviving Sioux.

The frame of the picture pens them in

Like their stiff good clothes and their shining boots

And the hours of service. Sin is sin

And a shilling’s a shilling, and life is tough.

But, though they shuffle in Sunday suits,

And slouch their shoulders, this seems enough;

Their grey-tinted world is a world entire;

They smirk at the ground, at themselves, at fate

And shade their eyes from the far-away fire

Of the summer sun. Beyond the border

Of the picture’s edge, what wonders wait..?
But that doesn’t matter. They wait to order.

  

Ode to a Gable Wall

Nothing is more beautiful than a gable wall.
For all the whirling splendour of a waterfall
Or a kaleidoscope, or dust motes dancing in air,
There is a splendour, too, in the sublimely bare;
The chastely, simply, humbly, gloriously bare.

What lies behind a gable wall? Life lies behind;
Life happening over and over and over, time out of mind;
Too many tales for the telling, in kitchen and bedroom and hall.
Oh somehow, I cannot say how, I hear life's jubilant call
Never more clearly than when I look at a gable wall.

 “When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope. Yet we know that winter is just another step in the cycle of life. But standing here among the people of Punxsutawney and basking in the warmth of their hearths and hearts, I couldn't imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter.” Billy Murray in Groundhog Day.

 When the Christmas Tree Comes Down

The time is past for tinsel

The holly’s out of date

The clockwork Santa’s lost the will

To celebrate.

The workday world is rousing;

It hates a paper crown.

What’s left of the carousing

When the Christmas tree comes down?

Nothing in life is sadder

Than the simple word “goodbye”.

What does love or pleasure matter

When we die?

The three wise men are heading home

And Santa has left town.

All roads lead far from Rome

When the Christmas tree comes down.

  

Fiddle Dee Diddle Dee Dee

Oh, I remember when sliced bread hit the shops
I said, "This will be something nothing ever tops".
Old, old, I feel so old
Fiddle-dee diddle-dee dee.

Oh I remember the bubonic plague
I was already in my middle age.
Old, old, I feel so old,
Fiddle dee diddle dee dee.

Oh, I remember the building of Stonehenge
I said, "My, my, how architecture has changed."
Old, old, I feel so old
Fiddle dee diddle dee dee.

Oh, I remember the pyramids being built
I said, "They're like the old ziggurats with a tilt".
Old, old, I feel so old
Fiddle dee diddle dee dee.

Oh, I remember the dinosaurs dying off
I said, "I predicted this, and how they did scoff"
Old, old, I feel so old
Fiddle dee diddle dee dee.

Oh, I remember the start of sexual reproduction.
I said, "I'm telling you, this will cause some ructions."
Old, old, I feel so old
Fiddle dee diddle dee dee.

Oh, I remember that ole Big Bang
I said, "This is exactly how the last one began."
Old, old, I feel so old
Fiddle dee diddle dee dee.

Never Enough

It is not enough to say

“We had our day”.

It is not enough to agree

We passed our time agreeably.

It is not even enough

To lavish love

On every single second

Of which our lives are reckoned.

It is not for us to assert

Life’s worth;

As though a mortal could

Declare that life is good.

It is our part to adore;

To humble ourselves before

A daisy, to declare

Ourselves unworthy of the air.

It is our part to applaud;

To be overawed

And utterly swept away

Like a child on Christmas Day.

And to petition Heaven

One day to be given

The unimaginable power

To truly appreciate a flower.

 The Shining City

The grand old Mormon Brigham Young

Stared at an empty space

As if a bell inside him rung

And said, This is the place.

He saw a city, he saw a city,

He saw a city fair;

A citadel of sanctity

He saw before him there.

Dick Whittington saw street of gold

Aenas, a new Troy.

And a country lad of ten years old

Sees towers that scrape the sky.

There is a city that never sleeps;

It lives inside the heart.

A man may sow there all reaps

And real life will start.

Amongst those crowds the heart’s desires

Are waiting to be found;

Far, far away from ancient spires

And far from holy ground;

For here, in this metropolis,

All things have been made new.

All history was seeking this;

To reach Fifth Avenue.

But New York is a little thing

Beside that Babylon

That comes to life, all shimmering

When the TV is turned on;

The city of late-night repeats;

Oh, I would rather be

A hot dog vendor in those streets

Than king of Italy.

Against the Global Village

There has to be somewhere out of reach

Or the heart of man can hardly stand it.

When flying to Brisbane’s a trip to the beach

And faraway shores are a dollar each

The heart of man can hardly stand it.

Foreigners have to be funny to us

Or something is missing that seems essential.

There needs to be jokes and idylls and fuss

And scope for all sorts of prejudice

Or something is missing that seems essential.

If there isn’t a there, then bang goes here,

And home is everywhere—that means vanished.

We must have a faraway that’s queer

And a non-metaphorical frontier

Or home becomes everywhere—that means vanished.

In the Shadows

You think the dark is frightening

And shudder when the light goes off

And the noose of night is tightening

Around your bed, and you find no

Comfort in your teddy’s love.

You dread the lonely walk upstairs—

What might be waiting at the top?

What listens to you say your prayers

And calmly waits for you to go

Asleep, so it can chew you up?

Beneath the duvets of your mind

There lurks a deeper, darker fear;

The night is dumb, the dark is blind

The demons are inside your head

And when those demons disappear

The loneliness is worst of all;

Night stretches to infinity.

Your teddy-bear is just a doll

And when you climb the stairs to bed

No monster keeps you company.

  

A Hypocrite’s Prayer, by a Hypocrite

Lord, let me crave prayer
As I crave the air.
Lord, let me seek the glory of Your throne
As now I seek my own.
Lord, let me look Yourself to please
As now I look for ease.

The Colour White

(I am rarely this obscure. In this instance, I think I was trying to emulate ‘The Emperor of Ice Cream’ by Wallace Stevens. This is an attempt to celebrate the ordinary.

Have you been drunk on the free fresh air?

Have you witnessed the mystery play

Of a girl by a window brushing her hair?

Have you heard someone with nothing to say

Conjuring words from nowhere at all?

Look in the mirror and say, I am blessed.

Read the words on the bare white wall;

White is a colour like all the rest.

The twentieth day after Christmas Day

Celebrates the cat on the wall

And the kettle’s whistle, and the way

Books are piled up on a market stall.

The man on the Clapham Omnibus

Is a monster. Peek at life undressed;

Its nakedness is glorious.

White is a colour like all the rest.