my river

my river was slow and wide
we swam in it then
largely ignored by
a town of hucksters
that turned its back
chasing shillings
visited by dockers,
working-women and us
boys fishing for salmon
catching eels
bamboo canes from Boyd's
and gut from Nestor's
made us hunters
ever hopeful. seldom lucky
women
the dark subject of gossip
and work-less dockers
longing for ships
of shallow draft
that would clear the silt.
Twice a day she chased
the ocean pushing back
rising, falling
limestone skirts
rusty ladders
old mills watching,
now blasted and gone
over the years
she took our shit.
Dirtied.
'till only the very tired
go in.

doubting soul

I have no difficulty with

the senseless

stupidity of soul

there are many

simple things

not understood.

Take this stone
piece of  

the earth
in darkness

'til Caesar
slashed her 

to pipe shit

beneath a river.

Welling-up I remember

the damp dark night

I climbed in a hole

to save this stone

it has travelled with me
eight hours around the globe
to this land where
blacker stones were hid
i love it's silence and in it see
my grandfathers face,
his blind eyes
eyes he told me Black and Tans
dripped with candle grease
to help him speak of guns

limestone of

the Shannon

simple rock
of my childhood,

grey and hard and sharp

stuff of David's sling

stuff of railway-beds and
schools and churches,
garden-walls and
Georgian homes,
soldiers-barracks, police-stations
nut-houses, cow-sheds prisons
where patriots were shot
and markers for the dead
the grey and cold

to this grey matter
Add life

Mobility

Consciousness

Danger

Daring

and

Willing.

Something wyrd

is happening

before your eyes

the most famous cat in ireland

the most famous cat in ireland is a fella be the name of pangur,,,,we have been talking about him now for over a thousand years... an pangur ban ..pronounced "on pangoor baan".. he turns up first in the margin of a holy book in a monastery in central europe about 800 years after the death of christ or around the same time that the norsemen were givin the rest of us a primer course in rapin and pilligin...an activity they called viking ...young men going on a trip with the intention of bringing back presents ....anyway back to the cat; this well travelled cat is the object and subject of a monkish poem on the creative search.... and i would translate it for you here and now but seamus heaney has already done a fair to middlin job that you can find on google or by following the links below.... if it interests you you might also search out his notes.... seamus's that is, it is not known if the cat ever left a note... and as for the mouse....well...
  and the poem http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/177882 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poemcomment/177882