I would be mistaken
I would be mistaken if I thought
With age came courage and sound wisdom
For so often the reverse appears
As we clutch onto things and moments
That we must yield so very soon.
The generous teenage years will yield
Sometimes to desperate clutching
Of what we sacrificed when young
The years and money that we gave
For adolescent hopes and dreams.
The challenge in our seventies
To mine and find the seam of good
So that our failing days may shine
With the glow of golden goodness
The key to true enchantment.
Lest we be found alone and cold
In our vault of useless gold
Starved of love bereft, untold
The stories that transform our lives
For only good and love survive.
Sacrifice
A forgotten virtue if truth be told
When young men gave their lives
Forsaking wives and children
For kingdom, God and country.
Now we feel betrayed by churches,
By leaders and by politicians
Who knows where truth lies anymore?
The well’s run empty as is the store.
And what of us when young
Who gave our all to serve a God unseen?
What now when old to give for climate change
So sadly near and very real?
Do we feel we’ve paid our dues?
And now it’s time for others?
To sacrifice as once we did
Half a century earlier?
Do we feel our job is done?
That we can spend while the young
Will have a future less secure
As we run down the family’s funds?
Or do feel our time has come
To show the mettle when we were young?
Cut back consumption and our vices,
To follow through our old advices?
Christina McDonagh
Christina the baby, one of thirteen,
Reared in the Dairy numbered twenty
On old Castle Street, in dear Sligo town
Beside the bookmaker Kilmartins.
Impossibly exotic to a fellow of five
Impressed by the hair up in a bouffant
Shapely high heels and ruby red lipstick
The height of high style in the black and white fifties.
Playing golf in Strandhill, cycling to swim
Going on far cruises, she never stayed in
She escaped to the office to tot up the sums
She was ever full of devilment and fun.
I remember the fifties when she worked round the corner
The Austin Princess for glamorous weddings
When big cars were big and impossibly plush
In a decade severe and so simple.
Josie and Teenie bought their house
High on the hill on the road to the Point
Alas Josie never managed the move
From quiet town Centre to wild ocean road.
Christina carried on riding her bike
Cycling each day to the sea
A figure bent over the bars
A character that lasted the years.
Active and free like the wind
Until old age reeled her in,
But still a familiar sight
In a Sunday hotel in Bundoran.
Her days in the nursing home busy
Reading the paper each morning.
Never a complaint from her lips
Everything ‘grand’ was her motto.
The last to arrive, now the last to take leave
The end of a story that began last century
In police barracks back in Glenties
In the turbulent year of nineteen fifteen.
The end of an era in Sligo
With descendants all over the land
We mourn for Christina the baby
And for each of the other thirteen.
Awake
I wake, I check, I’m not dead yet.
I think I might sleep on but instead
I’ll celebrate the day with coffee
Then I might walk to fair Dun Leary.
Or perhaps I’ll wander down to Dalkey town,
Have a swim at White Rock while soaking up the sun
Return to Country Bake for a scrummy currant cake
Pop into the church for a moment of reflection.
It’s a civilized old life we lead, retired and without needs
And if we had them, who would heed?
The class of sixty-nine with silver heads
The baby booming golden generation.
Dalkey is so civilized, the perfect combination
A melting pot of rich and poor, old and young,
Artisan dwellings and lofty mansions
Stately piles and gleaming new structures.
Sensible mostly not to take itself seriously
Enough wags and wits to teach us humility
Home to past stars, to Binchy and Newman,
And newer folk too, lured by its beauty.
The Angelus Bells
The Angelus bells ring out across the sleepy suburbs
And whisper all is well to devout believers
While unbelievers take comfort too
From forgotten childhood prayers.
When the world was safe and the future better
The hopeful fifties promised bright progress
From the troubled forties our parents once endured
And God was in his Heaven.
The Angelus bells sound clear for rich and poor
A democratic chime for this time and free to all
A chime of hope and innocence when all around
Dark shadows threaten and war cries sound.
The silence has returned to our unbelieving parish
A midday peace slips down our garden wall
For we will savour what God gives in August
Peace is warmly welcomed in sun drenched lawns.
Eyes look out
Eyes look out from photos
Unblinking, full of life and hope
Now witness to the holocaust
That took their lives and futures
But could not take their memory.
Eyes that connect with mine
Across the years and beyond the grave
Their gazes unaware of horrors
Encountered in their final hours
We shall remember and revere them.
What man can do to fellow man
What executioners can justify
Now repeated as we crucify
Our precious world whose innocence
Offers no protection from the mindless.
Innocent eyes stare out unaware
Of what lay ahead as they fall
Their noses could not yet smell the gas
That would claim them naked
In the killing rooms of extermination halls.
Standing in the tragic gap
Between man’s love and hatred
Holding two truths in our hands
Unwilling to succumb to baseless hope
Nor equally to helpless grief.
We will take another step upon our journey
That invites all pilgrims in the morning
Heading West with faith intact
Walking cheerfully with happy feet,
Raising hope in all we meet.
The hill
The hill I walk each day
Will reveal new discoveries
As the habitual lays bare
New secrets on the way.
Every day a new adventure
A shaft of light through trees
Never seen before but revealing
Novel shadows on the steps
That lead up to the summit
Where all is changing on the hour
The sky, the sea, the Wicklow Hills
That invite the hopeful traveller.
Today the wind is whistling gently
In the summer trees that shed some leaves
Upon a path of dappled sunshine
Beneath a mellow sky.
This moment is all mine
I must surrender to the now
Exile the transient,
The petty troubles of the hour.
The ferns are leaning
As in prayer and bend
To gentle breezes
Rustling in the midday sun.
A leaf comes gently
Floating to the forest floor
I stroke a noble oak
All this is now enough
Satisfied, we need no more.
What kind of God
What kind of God have we just created
That somehow would require our prayers
To remind him of his tender mercies?
What kind of God would need reminding
Of war and cancer, of death and grieving?
Surely not a God who’s deserving.
Our prayers to God are framed by men
For God has done his bit long time ago
All help already here or not at all.
For not all help is clearly seen
There are many things Horatio
Not dreamt of in our philosophies.
A God who hides in coincidences
Who does not respond to commands
But will appear when least expected.
God is heard when noise abates
God is seen when the lights turn down
At births and deaths and in between.
Hurry my lover
Hurry my lover and gather the music
That captures our bodies and souls
And run to our cave in the mountains
Far away from the crowds and the noise of the city.
The world will not miss us for after a week
People return to their normal survival
And the world will not stumble or fall
It really won’t miss us at all.
But still we shall flourish away from the crowds
Who can wage their own wars without us.
The world will spin on and travel through space
Ten million miles in the course of a day.
We shall be spared the worries and anguish
Of predictions and warnings that never take place
On the world rolls while we curl closer together
Unaware of the markets or the price of old
gold.
At our front door we leave our shoes and our worries
For inside is a temple to sacred endeavour
To quiet reflection and long solemn silences
To dance and to fun, to music and song.
We shall dance through the evening
And twirl through the night
Gripping waist, arms and shoulders
Letting go, bringing in, holding tight.
Skipping for joy and laughing for love
Enjoying a heaven that’s always been present
Unlocking a paradise hiding inside
Patiently awaiting our time and our effort.
Quiet moments
These are the quiet moments
Before the last storm breaks
This is the solemn evening
Before the air’s sucked out.
Clouds are passing overhead untroubled
It’s an August afternoon like any other
Before the thunder shakes the ground
And lightning strikes chapel towers.
For nothing’s safe or sacred now
No God above or Lord below
Can intervene to save a land
Overcome by climate change.
It’s true the storm had gathered
It became our next-door neighbour
So familiar that it didn’t trouble us
Except for mad and anxious types.
Now it’s here, no going back
The ice berg’s come and gone
No turning back the icy clock
Time to repent is truly spent.
Oh give us back our time again!
We could only use it better
But our pleas fall on deaf ears
Drowned by the waves with no one here.
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