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WELCOME TO THE POETRY MILL!

The Poetry Mill is a free service of The Western Writers' Centre, Galway, Rep. of Ireland, Tel: (091) 533595, e-mail: writersgalway@eircom.net

The Poetry Mill is about posting good poetry and letting it be seen. Your poems, long, short, elegaic, contemplative, experimental, traditional, will find a home here which other lovers of contemporary poet will visit. We welcome your poetry and hope that the work displayed here attracts people to your work in general. Welcome to The Poetry Mill.

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MARY C. O’MALLEY

The Baker's Daughter

(Ophelia: They say the owl was a

baker's daughter. Lord,

we know what we are,

but not what we may be.

- Hamlet IV. V. 41-42)

I was once the baker's daughter,

burned fingers singed hair, the early rise at dark

hot red bricks yelling for me to leave. Yeast

and its smell making me sick intermixing

with my father's sweat. How I hated

the rows of kuchen, lines of strudel

displayed on our wooden shelves.

The flour clung to my hair and skirt. I

could never get rid of it. Every day was

the same. Sunday only brought hours

of standing and praying in church.

At night before I fell asleep, I would look

up at my Black Forest sky, hear music of wind

caressing leaves, bathe myself in the silver

white moonlight. I prayed to Athene in her grove

of sacred linden trees. I wished to leave this place,

this town with out the gift of a wedding gown.

And one night last autumn surrounded by

sweet scent of dropped leaves, they rose

up with winds embracing me in a column

of red and yellow. Inside, my skin grew taupe

feathers, my eyes began to glow. I became

Athene's owl. And I fly and swoop at night.

My wings touch tips of trees. I catch rats, voles

at home in a world of night, dreams, and death.
.....................................................................................
(Mary C. O’Malley is an MFA graduate and mother

of two sets of twins. She has relatives who hail from

Curran, in Co. Mayo.)

*******************************

SONJA BRODERICK

I Didn't Forget

I’ve been keeping count, my love.
Every day you’ve entered the fray
Through the Mekong
And the monks’ long mass of dongs
Through a noon vigil,
You’re never far away.
I lie under a mosquito net
Smelling the mysteries of a country
Still new to a stretch
Of the West’s vast need for imposition
As you lie on my lips,
Your life so full with races and braces,
And damned from my arms.
You charm the scent of lotus leaves
In the long sun.
Racing cockroaches check the waking hours
And ghekkos grace the flowers
That visit your kiss
On my sea-toned skin.
The lights have dimmed.
While bedtime stories still
Skim the shores of fantasy
There is no room for me.
Kismet sets another course
And our molecules will
Merely meet briefly.

.....................................

(Sonja Broderick's collection of poems, 'The Things You Left Me With,' is published by Lapwing Press, Belfast, 2004. Having done stints in acting and related writing, she features in the VoicesNet International Anthology 2005)

*****************************************

NORMAN DARLINGTON

Balkan Dawn 1978

1978. I board the train in Trieste, Italy. We approach the border with Tito's Yugoslavia - the Iron Curtain - in the dead of night. The train whines to a halt in no-man's land. One ragged peasant appears, suddenly transformed in a smart grey uniform; his bearing newly authoritative, he enters the small compartment and points to me. Two colourfully dressed women open my rucksack and stuff several pairs of denim jeans inside. The other passengers look pointedly away. The uniformed man signals me to keep silent, indicating the alternative by drawing a finger across his throat. Some time later, the Border Police approach along the corridor. I feign sleep but my heart is shaking the window. The first passenger is slow to open his bag and receives a slap across the face. As the police examine each one's papers, he must open his luggage for them.

flitting from bloom to bloom

a bee misses

the richest nectar

Later the women retrieve the jeans from my bag and the train stops with a screech in the middle of nowhere. In the half-light I can make out figures carrying huge sacks racing across the fields, police in pursuit.

band of gypsies

music falls silent

in the Balkan dawn

...............................

(Norman Darlington lives in Bunclody, Co. Wexford.

The piece above is an example of a Japanese 'haibun',

or 'haiku-prose' piece. It is not simply a piece of prose.

http://xaiku.com )

**************************************

DUDLEY LAUFMAN - three poems

The Chorus

Sunday evening traffic jam,
farmer bringing in his cows to milk
middle of Ennis city.
Found John Reid's cement house.
Greeted by a little black girl.
Is it himself you'd be wanting?
as John appeared behnd her.
Big man, blond,
more Scandi looking than Irish,
saying This is my adopted daughter, Sara.

After tea in the front parlor
under pictures of Kennedy and Christ,
we entered his study.
A collection of uillean pipes,
Fiddles, melodeons, tin whistles,
Sheet music, field event results,
(no hurling or football).
Some LPs, one of them Tulla Celi Band.
I have that I says, my favorite,
where I got Cooley's Reel.
John said, That's my band,
that's me at piano.
Say now, you Yanks
have a chune, Chorus Jig.
We have it here
only we call it The Chorus.
It's a reel, you know that.
But we do have a Chorus Jig,
that is truly a jig,
I can't bring it to mind just this moment.

Later, saying goodnight
under the lamp in the mist,
he took my hand,
swung it back and forth
in the old Irish custom,
Diddled a tune,
deedle dum dee dum, deedle dum dee dum,
that's it, the Chorus Jig, that's the one.

_________________________________

Hands Behind

When I want to be a gentleman,
I walk with my
hands behind my back,
the left hand
grasping the other wrist
or just holding that hand.
This is not meant for walking fast.
A leisurely pace suits it.
Allows time to stop,
hands still behind back
to study a sapling
growing out of a banking,
wondering if it would
make a walking stick.
Or to talk with a companion
walking with me.

Carrying a walking stick
does present a problem.
I can walk with one hand
behind my back
or I can give the stick a rest
by holding it across my rump
with both hands on it.

One leans forward
when walking hands clasped behind.
Gives the impression
one has someplace to go
even slowly.
It also makes one
pull in ones gut,
makes one feel slim.

___________________

The Crois

Gardens were built on open rock slabs
with a mix of sand, manure and seaweed,
protected by stone walls six feet high
to keep them from blowing away.
Like putting a garden on a cement sidewalk.
Wind blows so hard here
hens lay the same egg twice.
I pulled a weed, asked Mr. Mullen
was it ragweed, and he said with a wink,
Yer after pulling up one of me sugar beets
dear god save us.

Mrs. Mullen was weaving an
orange, yellow and green crois
from the back of a chair.
She said You don't have to
empty the chamber pot you know
we can take care of that for you.
You say you have one at home?
Go away, I don't believe ye,
yer a Yank, ye have two cars
in yer blacktop drive way
and three bathrooms I'm sure of it,
outhouse my petticoat.
And please leave the windows open dear
for the fresh sea breezes don't ye know.
And you said you wanted to see a peat fire?
Well I've built one for ye, hope yer satisfied.

End of the week there was no invoice.
Just the new crois wrapped in butcher's paper
with a note saying,
Keep yer pants up with this and think of us.
Thanks for dumping yer own chamber pot
and harvesting our sugar beets.
God bless.

....................

(Dudley Laufman is 73 and lives with his partner in Canterbury,

New Hampshire, USA. A recipient in 2001 of the Governor's

Award in the Arts Lifetime Achievement Folk Heritage Awards.

He has published several collections of poems

('An Orchard Garden,' 'Smokescreen.' 'Mouth Music')

and his work has appeared widely in literary journals in the US.

laufman@totalnetnh.net and www.laufman.org )

*******************************

LUCY BRENNAN

extract from 'The Tellings'

But each man has a story of his own

and now I will tell you something of the fisherman's story,

which he told to his blind friend and me

on quiet summer evenings

on the edge of the water.

For the fisherman's life had been rough and tough and lean,

but he had lived and loved and been loved

and for what more could anyone ask, he said,

when the last nets are cast and drawn up

and dried and folded away.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

THE FISHERMAN'S STORY

The sea where I lived was powerful

for it governed the lives of all the people of the town.

Oh, yes, the mayor and the aldermen

and so many others liked to think

they held the reins;

but the sea with its mists and storms

laughed at their schemes and their plans

and oftentimes with its mischief wreaked havoc on them.

.............................................

When I was a boy I went out nights

with my father and the fishing fleet

and I fell in love with the sky and the sea

and the stillness of moonlight.

After that I was always restless on land,

but when my feet touched the deck of a trawler

and the houses of my village

showed only as specks of light through the dark,

I waded deep into myself.

..............................................

By day at the harbour pier

I would lean on the wall

and skim on the flight of seabirds.

I knew every cove

and where to watch the seals

dive and resurface and where

I could creep close up to a seal pup

that its mother left for a while

to go fishing for food.

I knew a swamp where all manner of waterfowl

shared happily, though not quietly,

the gifts the tide brought in.

I knew what a sea urchin was

and I gathered cockles and periwinkles,

mussels and clams and sea moss.

............................................................

But at night through the dark

I grew to know

what the silences of each hour contained:

the speed of a wave by its crest,

the quality of light, the pitch of blackness,

whether a whisper of wind would grow stronger,

or its roar wear itself out.

............................................................

When I grew long and lanky

and my father grew short and less sturdy,

I took over the trawler and had children of my own.

Years went by until a time came

when day by day the catch thinned out,

and day by day we men lingered into the dawn

waiting for shoal that never came.

............................................................

Our faces grew longer

and bones stood out on these lean, long faces

and smiles became less frequent

and sometimes lost all humour.

By then my children had grown

and left for the cities and the towns.

They knew little of sea lore or craft

for they had taught themselves to forget.

One day I sold my father's trawler

to the highest bidder, and I also left.

.................................................................

It is too late for me to work under a cover

and a lifetime in the brawny arms of the ocean

shapes a man into a hard rock,

too rough-edged for a garden city.

..............................................................

..............................................................

And women also have their own stories

and see a side of life

that the menfolk don't

and this is how the mother of the fisherman's children

told the story as she saw it

when they lived on the coast:

...............................................

...............................................

THE STORY OF THE FISHERMAN'S WIFE

Night's part gone,

the fire's almost out,

the children are in bed.

That light is swaying

out there on the dark water

It's better when I can see it,

and know that he's safe;

then I will sleep soundly.

When all is black cloud

and the wind comes up

suddenly in gusts

I twist and turn in the bed,

listen for the breakers

and ask why I married

a man already wed to the sea:

you only get a half share of him

and wonder in what way

does the ocean hold a body to it.

..........................................................

When he comes home in the dawn,

if he's not worn through by the wind,

he's wide awake and quiet

and hardly sees me.

It takes one of the children

to bring him back.

Where has he been?

Searching for something to tell

the smallest? School

is drawing the others away. They

will not balance their lives

on the backs of sea horses.

................................................

But they'll not dream like him either

and their talk will not rise

above the day that's in it.

The old stories will skip their minding

but, maybe, their children will remember,

calling them out of a hoarding

below the known.

................................

Seeing the fish have gone,

we too will have to move,

as soon as the youngest is grown.

How then will I fall asleep

without the steady pulsing of the sea?

...................................................................

Lucy Brennan lives in Whitby, Ontario, Canada.

'The Tellings' was put on CD format.

***************************************

ANGELA KREUZ - On the Way to Black Fort

A stony path
goes up the hill to the cliffs.
my bicycle leaps like a wild horse –
not much time left
to catch the 12 o´clock ferry to Rossaveel.
the wind sees me to the cliffs.
looking down into the depth
makes me shiver,
watching the breakers
a gate made of rocks
– like huge dominos –
reminds me of
not yet being
ready to die.

_________

(Angela Kreuz is a poet from Regensburg, Germany, and a member of the German Union of Writers; her website is at www.angelakreuzinfo.de She recently visited Ireland.)

***************************

DOMINIC TAYLOR - The Sixties

Like a gleam of light
It descended
Through a slit in the fabric of space and time
We caught it
Transformed it
Into music
Into art
Into life
Our minds opened
It was the dawn of something strange
It was the dawn of love
Although it manifested itself
In the exterior as sex
The inward journey had begun
And things would never be the same again
The spark that would raise consciousness
To its divine destiny
Had been struck
And all the forces of darkness
Could not stop it
Becoming a flame
Becoming a fire
Becoming an inferno
As the old ways and ideas
Were stripped away
New energy entered the maelstrom
Of human existence
Like a gigantic cosmic breath
And with the first exhalation
Blew away the old day
It was as if the Sabbath was over
God had rested enough
Life was being made ready
For a new octave of existence
Where everyone is called
To inner freedom.

We called it the Sixties.
_____________________
(Dominic Taylor is connected to the White House Poetry Revival

in Limerick and has produced two CDs of work, 'Sarsfield's Children'

and 'Songs from the Ashes.')

**************************

ELLEN WADE BEALS - Deerstruck

Lately I’ve been seeking out deer
going to the forest preserves at dusk,
driving slowly down Lagoon Drive,
always on the lookout.

Do deer have any other expression
besides startled? Does a deer

like a dog, smile with its tail?

Joyful flicker, bunny-hop, pom-pom trick.

It cavorts.

No wonder it’s called a hind.

Which animals are most Buddhist?
Is the deer serene in manic alertness
or is it a sloth who understands best
that life is suffering?

What about deer so intrigues me?
The long stare reaching,
reaching out like the toll of a bell?
Those bones branching from their heads
or the velveteen buds for them?

What of the child raised by deer—
mute as a mushroom,
alert as the tick-tock of a watch,
the child whose stare never wavered,
the skittish kid who’d rather run?
There probably is no such a story
though up in Lapland some child
may dream of running with the herd.

Me? I’m just a woman collecting
deer like beads on a necklace,
racking up each glimpse.

Their wariness is precious.
I want to wear that heightened sense,
pocket their endless stares,
like how I want to remember

the first time I caught your eye.

_______________________

(Ellen Wade Beals hails from Chicago. She has won anthology prizes and the Frieda Stein Contest, sponsored by www.chicagopoetry.com She is an Irish citizen by descendancy and began work on a novel while staying at Annaghmakerrig-The Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Co. Monaghan, Ireland.)

***************************

MEGAN BUCKLEY – She Defines Desire

I tell him
I want to rip the fig-
leaf of distance from his
hips, leave those miles

by the side of the road,

leaving us shamelessly near.
Yes, I try to couch it in

metaphor, until there is

no metaphor left save

my swelling belly, its curve
a waxing moon over and

across an ocean, pressing

itself out into roundness,

as sharp stars prick sweetly

at its rim.

__________________

(Megan Buckley hails from New York and

currently is engaged in an MA

Writing Course at NUI, Galway.

She has published two culinary books.

meganebuckley@msn.com)

**************************

MAUREEN GALLAGHER - Five Poems

Charles Haughey’s On the Mediterranean

Charles Haughey’s on the Mediterranean, yachting,
recovering from his life.

Back here, it’s summer and there’s a buzz.
Docks splash rust on meadows,
seeds bursting, ready to pop.
The orange blossom is a perfumery
in Castlelawn Heights.
The faithful throng Athenry
to touch the Therese relic on tour,
reassured the arm that wrote the diary
is back in the basilica in Lisieux.
The weather is balmy and ‘blessed’,
unusual for the West, locals say,
why bother going away
when you have the weather?
The city is alive as thousands arrive
for festivals, craic, and the races at Ballybrit:
tourists camauflaging a graveyard of ambition,
while Charles Haughey’s adrift on the Mediterranean,
recovering from his life.

_______________________
Menage-A-Trois

They found the skeletons side by side
in one grave: lover, woman
and cuckolded husband;

she in the middle, her arm linked
to the main man, face to him;
he with his shame pressed to the earth.

The other turned towards her,
his hand on her mound, caressing,
a stake driven through his groin;

a knife between her thighs,
point upwards. The whole
a tableaux of Neolithic taboo.

Knowing one’s offspring
an imperative for men:
no question of a cuckoo
were the genders reversed.
_________________________
Shame

- Shannon, 2003 -

‘Bertie Pimps For Oil Bosses And Bush’
gets all the attention. Cameras click:
journalists eager for both sides of the argument.

Susanne slings her placard across her back.
like Jesus on the road to Golgotha,
on the march by the perimeter fence.

What’s the difference between
an Alsation and a German shepherd?
A youngster hungry for information.

The sun glances off riot shields, reflecting
heat; scorching tempers expose the
powder chain from re-fuelling to war.

___________________________________
Portadown

- i.m. Robert Hamill -

Two young couples
out on the town
looking for fun.

Out of the darkness
black shadows stalk
looking for Taigs.

The town square gasps
as fear, too late for flight,
is ambushed.

A landrover stands idling by.

Two minutes flat
is all it takes
to boot a man to death.

In The Whole Hog
adrenaline scoffs
to yells & cheers.

The investigation is undertaken
by the force that stands idly by.

_____________________________
November

- Afghanistan, post 9/11 -

Lace doy’lies hang, suspended on
hawthorn hedges in Castlelawn,
discharged overnight with a touch so light
they do local industry proud.

We lost an hour this month.
We can be grateful
we won’t lose lives
as the temperature drops.

Christmas closes in like the
Northern Alliance on Kanduz,
a Christian feast hijacking
the season of dark nights.

Reports of a massacre near Mazar-i-Sharif
won’t impinge on life in Ireland
where there’s work to attend:
letters to post, parties to plan.

Christmas is coming; the government
is spinning: an election budget
promises everything to all. The war
has toppled to the bottom of the news.

___________________________________
(Maureen Gallagher is a poet and writer who lives in

Galway, Rep. of Ireland. Her work has appeared in numerous

poetry publications.She is a special needs resource teacher,

and was a prizewinner in the New Writer competition; her work

was broadcast on RTE radio's arts programme, 'Rattlebag'.

iwg@iol.ie)

**********************************

LIAM AUNGIER - The Aqueduct

Call it a miracle: the only landmark in
An unmarked landscape – a stone bridge to bear
The dark waters of the Grand Canal
Above a limpid stream.
Once,
Surprised by the passion of a summer storm,
We sheltered there. I remember
The sky’s furious cascade and how
We crouched together under the dripping arch,
So close I could feel your frightened breath
Warm against my face.
Afterwards
The earth smelled of rain. For safety
You held my arm as we side-stepped from
Under our limestone roof, a little dishevelled,
Into a quiet and glistening world.

_______________________________

(Liam Aungier is a poet and lives in Naas,

Co. Kildare, Rep. of Ireland. laungier@pobail.ie )

***********************************

P.J. KELLY - RSVP

In this tundra of thought
my pen does not make me an alchemist
the ink has no laconic low drawl
no joie de vivre, nothing that inoculates
this page has no bromide or nuance
just coercion between a saunter and a stagger
another orchestrated kerfuffle
so what if you stop me here
so what if everything is temporary given enough time
so this is the something that tweaks your own malignancy
this is your very own poisoned chalice
a salute to whimsical mnemonics
the recognition of your heart’s Doppler effect
but this is not just grit, telepathic grit
not just gnashing of teeth
things you don’t bother to taste
as you claim a head-cold hinders you
this may be your attention deficit
these are things you fail to hear
and what of my attention deficit
at you listening to my chameleon conversation

_______________________________

(P.J. Kelly hails from Galway, Rep. of Ireland.

e-address: pj.kelly@abbott.com )

*************************************

ELFI HARTENSTEIN -

EARLY SUMMER ON CRIMEA

1.

There are dogs roving on the stony beach
and these very thin white cows in the plains
and there are caves of a man´s height in the enclosing rocks
once residence, now
reminding of stories prior to our own history –
a cross cut into stone, some trough-shaped fireplace or
sacrificial altar could fill volumes - -
you go on climbing up further, broom and thorns
scratching your calfs and knees
here, you say, they lay in wait
over there they built their guns
see that plateau, and all above
in the afternoon sky
little clouds like milk becoming sour
and now: imagine
the sea wheeling at us.



2.

There are minarettes peaking the sky delicately
whose blue is so incredible that it makes you
start doubting the tiling-roofs´ red.
And with all of this there is this story on Pushkin
poet subsequently sanctified
his poem, they say, written in honour of that tears-fountain
which also is there in the Khan´s Palace
did save from Stalinist destruction
palace and minarettes -
But what isn´t there
is the past effortless gotten unveiled.
Take these rocks for instance, look at them:
levels of stone thoroughly put in layers
you have to draw the arch
from the caves to the now re-animated
monastery carved into rocks
up to
the herbs selling woman over there on your way:
Lavender-infusion, she says, in case history
comes all over you with nightmares
as soon as you start comprehending what you cannot see.



3.

There are delicately limbed crows circulating
above the plateau and whitewashed
snail´s shells underneath your feet
and winds as soft as evening´s chocolate puddings
enticing you to spread your arms
as if they were wings.
Float off, you think, all over the gorge and up to
the tableland coming
still
it takes but one pebble to make you stumble and now
your shoe´s pinching.
What kind of shoes did the Kara-їms wear
forced by the Khan´s order to return
up here to Tshufut-Kalé before dusk?
You can see their church over there
archways built in stone for eternity - -
and
what kind of shoes those
who three plateaus away from here
took position
in nineteenhundredforty-one?



4.

There are poppy-fields in the valleys
and this shining white church on the rock above the sea
and there are children barefootedly begging
and Roma-women with wretched teeth and pearls in their hair.
Kill-joy you ´d be passing by without engaging
in their ever-fitting interpretation of your hands´ lines.
Petroglyphes you want to decode
with your finger wandering up and down
the rock´s pictogrammas
until you see them in front of you:
very old men, arid and shrunk
sitting on the fountain´s edge
wearing their sunday-suits enameled with
manycoloured orders
which they put on for May 8th
to make us remember.



5.

There are scabby cats timidly flighting away from you
and donkey-carts in front of building plots
in this new Tatarian village.
There is no shadow
draw-wells later on maybe
for men and yellowy rocking fields of sunflowers
for maize and melones.
There are other things we already lived out, they say
and you while scratching dust from your skin
look at the hills over there - -
how many nights and days
how many waggons
how many children, women and men
how many lives - -
lukewarm Coke pasting up your mouth
and the flickering horizon gives birth to a gnat
that hums closer and closer
rattles, roars.
Tickets you may buy at the driver´s.



6.

There is this huge mountain-ridge
called “Abu Dag”, the Sleeping Bear
and you can see him lying on the coast
head between paws
wearing on his back thousands of years.
In these times they had to fight their way through the bushes
now
roads bending daringly lead across.
You breatheing mixtures from motors and eukalyptus
start peeling off skin from your shoulders.
Later on you´ll realize in the opposite light
just in front of Koktebel´s
the arched rock towering out of the sea
as black profile of poet Maksimilian Voloshin
who adored Hermann Hesse –
the ghosts from Monte Verita
from Bloomsbury and Worpswede
came into and went from his house as long
as there was time for them to do so - -
Be aware, he wrote to Alexandra Petrowa
be aware of the rye at night whispering
secrets of return and revenge.


7.

There are parachutists speckling the blue sky
and some noisy Disney-World
all along the venerable promenade.
There is Lenin´s arm admonishingly
pointing out to the West from behind some Coca-Cola parasols -
and there also are
stalagmites grown to mushrooms
of more than a man´s height during millions of years
clear and icy cave-lakes and cursed labyrinths of stone.
Maybe, you think, maybe if they had known
how many empires of thousand years´ duration
it takes
to grow one single millimeter - -
and you put on your sweater. It is cold down here.
Maria Stepanovna Voloshina
accused of
having forced upon the black rock at the end of the bay
her poet-husband´s profile
was hiding partisans.
Sitting on the smiling lion´s back
in front of the Voronzov Palace
you wait for some friendly breeze out there in the sea
to shift little toy-ships.



8.

There are decayed stables and fallow land
paths leading directly into nowhere
telegraph-poles no more connected by wires
flocks of pigeons as if nothing had happened.
Your hand gently rubs rosmary-bushes
in front of Nikitskij Sad
- Botanical gardens at the village Nikita
where Nikita Chruschtschew was born –
damn, you think, history whereever you put your foot.
Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin at Livadija´s round table
which was not known by anyone in the TV-show lately
but what
do you yourself know
about what happened
some months prior to that
February nineteenhundredforty-five
in early summer then
to Armenians, Bulgarians, Greek and Tatarian people?
In the restaurant just on the other side of the road
you order
Cebureki and red wine.



9.

There are biscuits sticky from honey
and crowds of wasps all over
there are pigs´ heads laid on tables
and still living ducks and geese.
There are besoms made from straw
and enameled table-ware
beer freshly draught, bundles of basil and mint.
You exchange gestures and looks
collecting words into your basket
laughing with the market-women –
not more than that was needed
to let their mothers
be denounced collaborators
the ones as well as the others
Potemkinian villages
the immortal shadow of Ekaterina
lovegames of power
in theatre
it was a nameless cloakroom-attendant who
shortly before German retreat
made heads fall
in order to save her own life.
The victims´ photographs can be looked at
on the entrace-hall´s walls.
This night
moon hides like some trashed dog.
Just draw your curtains, put away that stone.



10.

There are cranes gathering at the shore
and dolphins far out in the sea.
There are seals domesticated in aquarions
rejoicing audiences
you rather
stick to the old men in the park over there
to watch them moving their huge chess-men
on the square properly designed at the floor
without a single word saying - -
here and now at least
men do not get sacrified
but only with a heavy heart.
There is bed-linen stiff as a board
in night-trains
and hot tea out of a samovar in the morning –
the Genuese fortress right in your back
moles of salt in front of you
and the neck of land coming closer
you say to yourself:
there is no “it always has been …”
but maybe
perception long since bubbles and sputters from
the Salgir´s spring
making me and you and all of us
follow the traces of Maksimilian Voloshin
blacksmith of persevering words
to pass through the world like children do
to love reedgrasses murmur
past times´ harshness
and the juice of caustic knowledge.

________________________

(Elfi Hartenstein lives in Regensburg,

Germany. This poem was worked on at

Annaghmakerrig, the Tyrone Guthrie House,

Co. Monaghan, Rep. of Ireland.

www.elfi-hartenstein.de)

{"Many thanks to Charley O`Neill for advice & assistance at

searching for some English expressions suitable to a

different cultural space while trying to get some writing-work

done in Annaghmakerrig, May 2004."}

***********************************

NOEL DUFFY - On Broken Hill

My bones the bare evidence
of remote life,

named after this place

which was once nameless.

And no trace there
in the starched bones
of the precise weight
of memory, experience, loss;

of those final moments
on the hillside watching
the antelope by the water’s edge,
with eyes that you would recognise

as your own as the red sun dropped
out of the red sky.

And I had neither the strength
nor desire to take life,

my darkened brain ablaze
with as many points of fire
as the river of stars
emerging overhead.

________________________

(NOEL DUFFY's work is appearing here

for the first time with us.

Broken Hill in Zimbabwe is the site of the

discovered remains of an archaic Homo

Sapiens male, dating from 120,000 years.

noeljduffy2@eircom.net)

*******************************************

SEAN GIBBONS - Slow Turn

Windswept world of falling leaves,

The hard world makes tough skins of us all,

Autumnal augeries despatch consolations,

Peeling away to our inner selves,

Wispish cloudy worlds sweep through to

Clot our minds.

Heavy premonitions make us wary,

Bogged down

& clogged up in a veritable fright,

Needing to be shielded somehow,

Dark whorl & spacious plug,

This piecemeal existence.

The sluggish slow turn of planet

& galaxy,

These hardly swift revolutions,

Of bodies,

Are an echo of each other,

& warn me not to expect a return

To me from you.

Thuogh your wingspan is huge,

You could easily surmount

The vast distances involved,

That separate each from the other,

The ripe fruit

From each eager plucker,

That you are so far way,

Makes you more dissolved somehow,

Yet worse again still,

Begets inside of me

A slow dredging kind of vacuous

forgetfulness.

____________________

Sean Gibbons is a Galway, Ireland, writer

with a National Diploma in video/film

from GFC/GMIT (specialising in scriptwriting,

editing) A play, 'Mecca of the Celt' was

shortlisted in the Lady Gregory Award

and was then subsequently produced by

N.U.I.G. (Galway Univesity) dramasoc.)

****************************

MICHEAL DILLON - Mine

Flat today and I can see
The very thing I needed,
So gradually, slip away.

Humour unfed like the northern mine is left,
Potential unused.
This bottomless pit is closed to me,
The darkest thing that brings the light,
To shine on me,
Expose the love and hide the fear.

Don’t let it disappear.
For, when all these things have gone,
I stand alone, half naked,
Deluded king of solitude.

__________________

Micheal Dillon was born in Ballinasloe, Co. Galway,

Ireland, in 1970. Though he now teaches English and

History, his emigration to work in England in the '80s

informs much of his work.

****************************

****************************
COLIN O SULLIVAN - Yellow

The mirror needs dusting
but it still reflects
the daffodil
you brought across the city.

It sits there
without defects
that flower,
soaking it all up.

And to think
you could’ve brought
mud, a sample from the Liffey
or a tree, some bark.

But you didn’t
you brought your favorite yellow
across the streets
careful not to squash

in the back seat
of the taxi
As the driver talked again
about rain.

It sits here.
A peeping periscope
surveying
the action all around

surprising otherwise gloom
with alacrity.

When next will there
be courage to brightness burst?

++++++++++++++

COUSINS
(in memory of Samuel Beckett)

If on a railroad
in Germany
a bus in Kassel

you thought of us
more than just
kissing,

I would have shed
my greatcoat
to the spring.
______________

Colin O Sullivan is an Irish writer

living and working in Japan.

His poetry has been published in his

homeland and abroad in various magazines,

in The Shop, The Mermaid's Purse,

The Stony Thursday Book,

The Brobdingnagian Times, Podium 2,

Cork Women's Poetry Circle,

Understanding (Edinburgh),

Snakeskin, Poems Niederngasse; and he

represented Trinity College Dublin as

a young poet in 1996. He has written

several radio pieces for RTE radio (Ireland),

some of which have been published in

A Living Word, an anthology of

prose featuring Irish writers.
In 1999 he moved to Japan to work as

a teacher and began to write short stories.
Recently some of his stories have been

publishedin England, in Staple New Writing,

Crystal and in Southword (Ireland), in

Carve Magazine (USA), The Taj Mahal

Review and two of his new stories are to

appear in Invisible Insurrection in 2005.
He is a member of Fia Rua Writers'Group

in his native Killarney, Ireland. He now

lives in Kure, Hiroshima, with his wife,Yuki.

**********************************************