<![CDATA[Padraig O'Morain's Poetry Place

<![CDATA[Padraig O'Morain's Poetry Place - Home Blog Posts]]>Sun, 08 Mar 2020 15:46:04 +0000Weebly<![CDATA[The new calf]]>Thu, 05 Jan 2017 11:22:26 GMThttp://www.theblueguitar.net/home-blog-posts/the-new-calfMy father knots a rope behind the calf's hooves
- only the hooves have come out so far - tells me: Pull!
The cow jumps and bellows, the calf seems to resist,
my arms are hurting. It's no use, my father cries
but I strain at the rope until my hands burn.
A nose appears: the cow could do all this herself,
the ears are out but my father calls keep pulling.
At last the glistening calf drops onto the dung.
My father unties the knot, slaps him into life.
The cow inclines her head and licks until he kicks.
Not a bother on him, my father appraises.
I drag across the yard to my room and my homework
Julius Caesar, the Gallic Wars, in a dead language.
The calf sways and digs at the udder for milk.

Published in The Blue Guitar (Salmon Poetry 2011) You've Been Great (Smith/Doorstop 2008)
]]><![CDATA[Achilles in the farmyard]]>Sat, 19 Nov 2016 09:20:28 GMThttp://www.theblueguitar.net/home-blog-posts/achilles-in-the-farmyardHe set down a round of ash
with exact concentric rings,
quickened his mind, swung the axe
and cleft the wood so cleanly the halves
stepped apart like dancers.

He'd rather timber that put up a struggle,
gnarls and knots that refused the steel,
made it glance like a sword off a shield.
Once he fancied himself Achilles
in battle sending heroes to the underworld

as he turned the stubborn wood this way
and that, split off the edges that fell easily,
cutting closer to the implacable core.
The block, gripping the axe, rose up.
He crashed it down in a rage.

He crashed it down again. It would not break.
He tugged until the blade was free,
then kicked the block aside and, fretting,
left the yard, like Achilles
having met a thing that would not yield.

Published in The Blue Guitar (Salmon Poetry 2011) and Glimmer, Cinnamon Anthology (2010)

]]><![CDATA[Ancestors]]>Sat, 19 Nov 2016 09:19:53 GMThttp://www.theblueguitar.net/home-blog-posts/ancestorsWe seldom speak of you in this house
where you stabled your plough horses.
You are that silence between sounds we rarely note.

Are these hedges compositions from your hands?
Did you grunt in these ditches,
dragging out weeds from sucking mud?

We changed what you thought might last
past your time of horses and scythes
- they crumbled, there is neither bone nor rust left -
we sliced off one river bank,
weeds dance in your ditches;
a motorway storms through your High Field.

There are still apple trees, chestnuts, a few primroses.
We carry you in our blood into the fog..

Published in The Blue Guitar (Salmon Poetry 2011), You've Been Great (Smith/Doorstop 2008) and Ropes (2000)

]]><![CDATA[Another dreamer]]>Sat, 19 Nov 2016 09:19:18 GMThttp://www.theblueguitar.net/home-blog-posts/another-dreamerThe grocer sits and smokes behind his counter
- pock-marked lino top with tobacco burns -
explains to any listening idler
how to get rich, run a country, rear children.

As he speaks he flicks
tiny tobacco flakes off his lips.
Customers seldom come in:
there is little to want on his hungry shelves.
He addresses the few with certainty.
His yellowed fingers weave the air.
His navy suit, thin as tissue paper,
dances on his shoulders.
He confounds his listeners
with big-money cant
conned from the business pages
which turn yellow
while the light dulls
to the cold of three decades
and the dark moves in
thick as the walls of Fort Knox
with all America's gold
locked up behind them.

Published in ROPES (NUI Galway) 2001

]]><![CDATA[The barn door]]>Sat, 19 Nov 2016 09:18:50 GMThttp://www.theblueguitar.net/home-blog-posts/the-barn-doorI shove the barn door. Half off its hinges, it pushes back.
Its face is implacable, like the face of an old Sioux chieftain
contemplating endurance, loss, my inadequacy.

As I harden my purpose, put my shoulder to the wood
the door lurches toward me or away from me
- the direction cannot be predicted - drags against stone
and stops dead like a stubborn dog or a man done
with the effort of it all, the scraping back and forth.
I lift firmly with one hand, guide with the other,
curse until it yields me a begrudged space to get through,
the imagined Sioux's eyes hard as tomahawks like the picture
of an ancestor that leaves you with a subtle feeling
of uneasiness, of having done the thing wrong
of having tried again and failed to measure up again.

Published in Census, The Third Seven Towers Anthology (Seven Towers Agency, 2012)

]]><![CDATA[The blue guitar]]>Sat, 19 Nov 2016 09:17:45 GMThttp://www.theblueguitar.net/home-blog-posts/the-blue-guitarWhen the blue guitar came
your dolls had already
become strangers to your hands
slipping without complaint
into the lost corners of childhood.

You picked out the first sounds
and I recalled suddenly
your blue dress catching the sun
as you skipped and sang in a gaggle
of small girls in the playground.

Soon you will skip out of this street,
the blue guitar on your back,
humming your own melody,
looking for your new address.
I will turn and catch the dolls staring.

Published in The Blue Guitar (Salmon Poetry 2009) and The Rialto (2007)

]]><![CDATA[Bodies in the machine]]>Sat, 19 Nov 2016 09:17:09 GMThttp://www.theblueguitar.net/home-blog-posts/bodies-in-the-machineHe must have put in his nights in this chair
in front of the Bakelite wireless and smoked
while nettles clustered in his front porch
like eager visitors denied admission
though a young ash had sprung up brazenly
in his bedroom, waving out the window
even while he snored, here, out for the count.

Do you want to see his bedroom? No?
Well, the bed sags in the middle,
no sheets smelling of the wash, no woman's touch,
his cap, the pattern grimed, waits on the headboard.
In a blotched photograph his parents
worry. They wonder, perhaps, what a tree
is doing in their strange boy's bedroom.

Sit in the chair in front of the radio.
Its fabric, white the day he bought it,
looks brown as a fingernail from nicotine
Surely it can't still work? Turn the knob.
A little shock as music gushes out on long wave,
Jazz from Marseilles to make young men and women
dance until wine smelling mouths collide.

This was where he went while the damp ate the walls
nettles crowded impertinently in the porch
and ogled warm breathings, close kisses,
while he drank Powers whiskey and smoked, eyes closed,
his closest company the cattle in Moore's field,
until he slumped to sleep in Marseilles lulled
by soft bodies embracing in the machine.

Published in The Blue Guitar (Salmon Poetry, 2011) and Glimmer (Cinnamon Press, 2010)

]]><![CDATA[Dog Latin]]>Sat, 19 Nov 2016 09:16:29 GMThttp://www.theblueguitar.net/home-blog-posts/dog-latinCanis lupus familiaris. That’s dog
in Latin, he’d brag. Too bloody familiar,
she always threw back, resenting his mongrels
who mocked her in their dog thoughts, she suspected,
trailing her as she stomped around finding fault.

They see you as head bitch my darling, he sneered.
Well, someone appreciates me, she’d mutter,
softening for a moment. Then at it again:
When we married I married your bloody dogs.
The barking stopped for weeks after a black fog
stole her spirit, puzzled them into silence.
I have never got anything I wanted
in my life, she cried then. He sniggered. They sighed.
After a month she lifted up her head, smiled:
Well, it should be canis lupus vulgaris.
Tails began to wag. Tongues lolled. Dog breath wafted.

Published in the Dogs Singing anthology (Salmon Poetry 2010).

]]><![CDATA[The hairdresser pauses]]>Sat, 19 Nov 2016 09:15:58 GMThttp://www.theblueguitar.net/home-blog-posts/the-hairdresser-pausesThe hairdresser stands behind me,
her hands flowing over my hair.
We could be under water
in a glass tank, an exhibition
of absorption or of peace,
like the breathing of an accordion
before the first note is played.

On the worktop creams, scissors,
the steriliser hums to itself.
The hairdresser pauses, comb poised.
What are you thinking? I inquire.
She stands in stillness for a time,
then: At the moment I am thinking
of going out for a cigarette
when I am done with yourself.
She makes a last pass with the scissors
and I picture smoke wandering
from her lips up to heaven.

Published in (Salmon Poetry 2011) and Snakeskin (internet)

]]><![CDATA[The infant Jesus to his mother]]>Sat, 19 Nov 2016 09:15:26 GMThttp://www.theblueguitar.net/home-blog-posts/the-infant-jesus-to-his-motherI watched you pick up a feather
out the back, beyond the shed.
You smiled at it then hid it
in your pocket with the others.

You touch their smoothness under cover.
You think i do not notice.
My father says your stillness scares him
when you seem to turn to stone
and sit staring at the air.
He wants to ask what's wrong with you
but you are lost to your imagining,
not hearing him but listening
for Heaven's whisper at your ear,
a thunder of wings in the room.

Published in Even the Daybreak - 35 years of Salmon poetry (Salmon Poetry 2016)

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