Woman Alone by Geraldine Mitchell

When she wakes

darkness

five strokes

of a church bell

close-by the      room still

conceals its contours,

the narrow bed its thin quilt.

The brick floor grits underfoot

like blown sand

as she moves to the window,

pushes open shutters on air

smooth with the promise of heat.

The wake of the ringing

washes the walls of the cobbled street

and above furrowed rooftops

                                                 stars

waver like sparks,

lustre the air with lost notes.

She leans on the sill, feels

the mystery of sound emerging

from silence, returning into it, of being

in time, then out of it,

                          the thinning night,

how her day has been changed before it’s begun

and no-one to know it but her.

I AM THAT I AM by Louis MacNeice

In the beginning and in the end the only decent
Definition is tautology: man is man,
Woman woman, and tree tree, and world world,
Slippery, self-contained; catch as catch can.

Which when caught between the beginning and end
Turn other than themselves, their entities unfurled,
Flapping and overlapping -a tree becomes
A talking tower, and a woman becomes world.

Catch them in nets, but either the thread is thin
Or the mesh too big or, thirdly, the fish die
And man from false communion dwindles back
Into a mere man under a mere sky.

But dream was dream and love was love and what
Happened happened -even if the judge said
It should have been otherwise -and glitter glitters
And I am I although the dead are dead.

Child by Jean O’Brien

They went, those children
into dark places, not of the soul
but into the cold earth and all the while
the lean wind stripped their bones.

Down, down they went
in tens, in dozens, like poppets or shadow dolls.
The ragged scrim that wrapped them
frayed in the hungry wind.

The unforgiving sky is full of stars
the dome of dank earth
is full of missing children.

Hush, we know you are lost child
we will find you.

This Poem by Vona Groarke

This is the poem that won’t open
no matter where you press.

This is the poem that cries on street corners
and plays at being lost.

This is the poem arranged at a tilt
so all the words slide off.

This is the poem with lacquered roses
closing in on themselves after dark.

This is the poem that plays itself out
in dives in the small hours.

This poem likes to fool around
in other people’s cars.

This poem gives away small coins
and winks at strangers’ kids.

This is the poem that understands
what it is to be a dog.

This is the poem with a teensy tattoo
you’ll never get to see.

This poem has no big plans for you,
which is something, as poems go.

Moon Street by Pat Boran

It’s a minute to, a minute past,
but always the night of the sky,
the waxing or waning or full moon
here on Moon Street,

where every key fits every lock,
every heart is open or broken,
and posters of missing household pets
turn the railway station into a gallery

of loss. What’s there to lose?
Come on, there’s a party tonight.
Music waits to be released.
The windows are large enough to view

whole sweeps of sky, whole dusty
constellations too long swept aside.
Birds are singing when you arrive,
dancing, or exhausted, in Moon Street.

2.

In Moon Street when you meet she cries,
not on seeing you, but on not seeing
herself, as if a cloud had passed over
some taken-for-granted sphere, leaving

an inexplicable absence in the cosmos,
a strange wavering of otherwise perfect orbits.
But always you can feel that pull,
like the sensation of crossing someone’s grave.
Moon Street. Could have called it
Ex-Girlfriend Street, but didn’t.
Who could live there were there not
at least some small respite from ghostly visits?

3.

To give oneself completely
isn’t wise. But wisdom isn’t in it.
More footsteps have taken you to Moon Street
than dreams have shown you moons,

because you get there not by dreaming
but by walking in the wind or cold, or calm,
sometimes having washed, more often than not
ragged, worn and tired. You never realise

where you are going until you get there,
where nothing is planned, nothing is known,
and you’re drawn back into the heart’s old orbits,
tiny as a grain, massive as a moon.

When all this is over…by Macdara Woods

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

A Blessing For One Who Is Exhausted by John O’Donohue

When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,
Time takes on the strain until it breaks;
Then all the unattended stress falls in
On the mind like an endless, increasing weight,

The light in the mind becomes dim.
Things you could take in your stride before
Now become laborsome events of will.

Weariness invades your spirit.
Gravity begins falling inside you,
Dragging down every bone.

The tide you never valued has gone out.
And you are marooned on unsure ground.
Something within you has closed down;
And you cannot push yourself back to life.

You have been forced to enter empty time.
The desire that drove you has relinquished.
There is nothing else to do now but rest
And patiently learn to receive the self
You have forsaken for the race of days.

At first your thinking will darken
And sadness take over like listless weather.
The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.

You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.

Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.
Learn to linger around someone of ease
Who feels they have all the time in the world.

Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time.

When you are Old by W.B. Yeats

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

A Wave of the Sea by Joseph Mary Plunkett

I am a wave of the sea
And the foam of the wave
And the wind of the foam
And the wings of the wind.

My soul’s in the salt of the sea
In the weight of the wave
In the bubbles of foam
In the ways of the wind.

My gift is the depth of the sea
The strength of the wave
The lightness of foam
The speed of the wind.

The Old Woman by Joseph Campbell

As a white candle
In a holy place,
So is the beauty
Of an aged face.

As the spent radience
Of the winter sun,
So is a woman
With her travail done.

Her brood gone from her,
And her thoughts as still
As the waters
Under a ruined mill.