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Sunday, November 17, 2019

FIVE POEMS BY DONALL DEMPSEY

Donall Dempsey was Ireland's first Poet in Residence in a Secondary School. He has appeared on Irish radio and television. He has been translated into Spanish and Italian and Urdu. Donall has read at festivals in France and India and Ireland He organises a monthly spoken word event in Guildford as well as being editor with his wife janice of Dempsey and Windle Publishing. He is a Reuel International Prize ecertificate winner and appeared in The Significant League's Significant Anthology.

None of these poems can be republished without written permission from him as this blog is under legal copyright or without legal repercussions if used without his permission. All rights belong to him.



"...IN FORGETFUL SNOW..."

Flake by flake
Heaven falls

until its whiteness
covers all.

Angels guard
their dead.

All is quiet.
All is light.

Even marble flesh
feels the cold.

The dead have forgotten
Christmas.

A Christmas the angels
have never known.

A forgotten bicycle
half there-half not

looking like an art
installation

until it too succumbs
to the snow's will.

The silence slowly
erasing the world.

A raven perches
upon an angel's wing.

She pays it
no mind

gazing with sightless eyes
as land and sky become one.

Even the horizon is
being filled in.

The raven's
harsh voice.

***


THE DUSK FOX

the fox acknowledges
with an imperceptible  nod
the arrival of dusk

dusk and the fox
becoming one
entering the world of humans

the fox is busy
being a fox
stops: paw raised

the fox goes
in and out of
time

appearing now
disappearing as if
it had stepped out of the world

the dusk no longer
exists
night falls with my footfall

as if on cue
synchronised to time
and light

the fox stares  at me
beyond me...I am
a walking shadow

the yellow street light
stains us for a moment
we vanish from each other

tomorrow sees
dusk and fox
keep the same appointment

only I
am absent
. . .

***

HORSE OF A DIFFERENT COLOUR

Auden & Isherwood
strolling in China

trying to soak up
The War

by the process of
osmosis

staining it
with words

observe
(at first what seems)  

green horses

but turns out to be
only white horses

painted green
for camouflage purposes.

That evening in Canton
also offering them

the futility of two men

trying to put a rat
into a bottle

a woman who lived
in a beehive

pouring water
into a sieve.

War knocks
over the inkwell

spills
into men’s lives

covers the white pages
of their wishes

makes the idea of Hell
...all   too   real.

The spilt ink eating
the words of men

who send letters home
and die in pain

never to return

only in other’s memories
& useless dreams

marble memorials

while green horses
champ the grasses

the bridles & the bits
clanking & glinting

in the hot sun
of Now.

as this last lost evening
dies.

***


SILENCE IS FASTER GOING BACKWARDS

He stepped outside
of himself.

Closed the door
of reality

behind him
with a sharp short click.

"Where had the time gone?"
he asked of a mirror.

"There is no time here!"
answered the reflection.

"So this is...eternity?"
he heard his thought say.

He took another step
left behind this world of flesh.

Here, where
not even memory

...persists.

***

NO MOON AT ALL

She cries because
there is no moon

in her window.

And can she sleep
with you and mummy

because....
there is a moon

in your window.

She drifts to sleep
in the harbour of our arms.

The moon asks
"Can I go now?"

I nod a yes.
Watch it tiptoe away.

Careful not to
wake her.

***

Future posts include Lopa Banerjee, Kashiana Singh, Santosh Bakaya, Don Yorty, Daipayan Nair ( a feature on Tideling poems), and many others.

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