The Web Poetry Corner

Dvorak's New World Symphony

by

Hay Machine


(A dawning of modern America - He writes it while still in the half-sleep)

Antonin Dvorak
gentle father of modernity in music
now like an infant sleeps
propped soundly on his soft creations

He hears the dawn
warmed by its sunrise
his heart thinks to leave the slumber
knowing in retrospect
greatness is the sum of simple things
with his Bohemian heart
and thoughts of home
he draws for us a morning lullaby

I am here to witness
not to paint it otherwise he writes
depicting love of life
in one short whispered symphony
the storyline
life short life
its melody
life-long hope
expressed all
in a short daydream

Beal Na mBlath 1999

by

Hay Machine

(For Billy Noonan)

I went to the place where they shot Michael Collins
seventy seven years after the event
to the day
it was raining

The country was bright and sun-filled
all the way from Dublin down
in a contrast stark
Bandon was full of edge at noon and dark
and here it was on a black cast-iron road sign
Sean Hales Street
shuttered terraces and dark doors
God only knows
why this rain still pours

Out the road that Collins took his final day
it rains and rains quite heavily
it must have been pouring and raining and pouring
these seventy seven years without a stop
stuff of pipers grim and mayoral office holders
a stream there now and lush the vegetation
and afterwards a middle-of-the-road oration
and one old soldier

Half-hooded ones respectful and funereal
their bawneen wives and ford cortinas parked
darkly shouldering each other in the downpour
and a grand-niece many times removed
says her platitudes and gratitudes
on behalf of the family
corking as it were
this gloomy cider

The myth of Irish Civil War
of Dev and Collins and of more
the way we wrote our history
and they who wrote our history
could not storytell as well they might
and tell of Carson and of Londonderry
Churchill Birkenhead of Moya and of Hazel Lavery
how the matter as one author said
was settled back in eighteen ninety eight instead
and as Carson diaried sweetly
followers of Collins and the Dane Coll conveniently
at each other’s throats

God only knows
what dynamic and deception of the self
what cocktail of emotion and stupidity
of heartfelt love of country and rigidity
what strained conscience
which path in the common good
was taken and by whom
and what was common good
and who the judge
God only knows

What is it in the Irish heart
or missing
that’s so selective when it comes to look upon its face
what Fancis Hackett called an allergy to truth and facts
could it be the soul whose child is guilt
the Irish people or at least the nation that they built
its own foundations filled by a million corpses
wretched and starved at first
by a property-owning native stock

This act of passive treachery
was acted out again this century
I have a video at home
wherein some fifty thousand natives dispossessed
in shirts of opel-green with their innocent eyes
filled the Yankee Stadium
whereas no other European state
could field supporters at more than just the tourist rate

Recent Irish history more easy and complete
up Adultery Avenue and around by Parnell’s Street
at the Municipal Gallery where Yeats later visits
all his images around
Hazel’s Irish collection records therein
the spirit and the spirits of the time he found
(all in the basement now alas)
as though some ballad singer had sung it all

If history is important
it is important not to lie
nor lazily leave the page unturned
allowing truth to die

The Boogie Man

by

Hay Machine


(for Everyone)

Inner voice and mischief maker
battery source and spark of laughter
companion to the cemetery gate
inner friend and well-formed conscience
quick-witted and objective like a mirror
sometimes confused you hear him whisper
like the carnival image from a warped mirror gallery

The Boogie-Man an earthly guardian
inner angel moral guide and constant friend
will I or won’t I
go on he might reply
should I or shouldn’t I
you shouldn’t
says this little inner conscience guy

And do women have a Boogie Woman
or are The Boogie people male and female mixed
they have no genitalia no need
they do not eat nor procreate
voyeuristic though
they enjoy our pleasures
and thrive materially
in parallel with our earthly fortunes

My Boogie Man and I
he was the only one listening in class
he thought of toil before I did
and though he did not pray
he listened to the sermon at mass
he who can afford to be courageous
has no nervous system and is beyond all pinching pain
he can however suffer in his heart of hearts
when we to whom he sends a message plain
ignore and act against an honest vein
he feels and stores the likes of this reflected hurt
in his conscience-like capacities

For those afraid of Boogie Men at night lurking
question the experience of others
few files in the coroner’s drawer
point to the evidence of Boogie stalkers
clubbing or gagging from behind
in the night-shade of the country road
the rustle in the ditch
the movement in the chestnut canopy
the sleeping tramp that groans behind the hedge
in fact it is the Boogie Man who fears the most
he starts the fearing with the question of what image lies ahead
or answers less than confidently some personal dreamed-of dread
no the Boogie Man is poor company at night
he tends to bed-down early motivated not by weariness
instead he nests fearful for himself and for his host
waiting waking for some vague anticipated fright

Psychology has measured how our outer shells connect
only eight per cent of words we say are listened to attentively
whereas what some call body-language tone and context make
full ninety two percent of everything we say and all the news we seek to break
now this is Boogie-talk and Boogie Men at play
saying things in cryptic form which really in a simple way
paint for us a portrait of the Boogie Man
the Boogie Man we need
whom we cannot live without
know him or not
he pulls the strings
he plants the dreams
he drives the car
he lets us love
allows us hate
and leaves us to the chores
of milking cow and killing pig
of thinking small or thinking big
who can
the Boogie Man can

Anglo Irish

by

Hay Machine

If the ice cap and geology
had not secreted us
where and when they did
England would have invented us
somewhere else

High art and literature predicted
and was an agent of all change
Ireland invented by its exiles
flushed from a starving land
unwanted where they went
passing as they walked
crutch'd impaled upon each other
to the despondent sea
the store-high larders
of a silent native middle class

In Praise of the Mosquito

by

Hay Machine


In Praise of the Mosquito

(for Danny)

Ounce for ounce he’s my superior
Eyes smaller than tiny
Heart smaller than my thoughts
He singles me out and takes me on
Head to head and one to one

He waits and his strategies outweigh my culture
He flies and his flying is fluent
Picks his time looking at me in the eye
And spills and drinks my blood
As every good mosquito should

Now and then I steal upon his waiting game
The mixed emotion of all friendship struck
I take some pleasure in his broken state
The love the conflict and the selfish hate

They Don't Wear No Tops to their Dresses at All

by

Hay Machine



On the Beaches at St. Rahpael

(for Rachel and Jack)

Dark driftwood
Knarled and knotted strewn
Basted in the high sun’s glare
Developing their tortoise shells
To carry them further

The hot seas slurp and soothe
Wetting the eye-lidded eye
Making the journey on elbows down
In seal-bellying shininess
Under the sun

The Saintly Cote D'Azur

by

Hay Machine



(A War Memorial)

Between the shovel and the deep blue sea
On the mackerel crowded beaches
Impaled on a dream of Heavenly Hell
Where it burns and it browns and it bleaches

They died in their hundreds of millions in wars
Sworded and ripped for a lie
Now they are stranded as many again
better forever to live than to die

Is there higher a common a dream to inspire
a fallback position forever
the Laurier pink-white defences to weld
the art and the history the human endeavour

Post Card from France

by

Hay Machine



(for Fiona)

I am going home to Ireland in a day and a half from now
To the dreariness of the wet brown bricks
And the pace of the sullen cow

I am leaving a sun-hot haven on the saintly Cote D’Azur
With its cooling terracotta
And the lavender purple pure

I would like to take a gift with me
My Norman blood has dreamed
The promise of our history
In paintings artist-gleaned

The Birdman of Agay

by

Hay Machine



(for Dodie)

I lived in a loft
Swift swallows swept
I spoke to them with my heart
They answered with their comely plume
Neat as a vellum dart

I asked a swallow to grant a wish
His answer is in my heart
And he keeps on reassuring me
My silhouette of art

Elvis Lives in Levis

by

Hay Machine



I walked in my calfskin Levis shoes
By a shore that was home to my dreams
Three gulls were loitering on the sea
Another one seemed to be following me
The sinking sand was firm and flat
The water breathing still
The sand behind me told the world
What the bird was screeching loud and shrill

He had read inverted left and right
The Levis logo firm and tight
Dyslexic bird that is absurd
The King is deep in Memphis
No said the bird he never died
The mourners mourned
But the corpse never cried

Elvis lives on in the air that we breathe
His spirit that feeds upon dreams
He drinks and eats memories lost and forgotten
And rests in the shallows I see him there often

The Water at the Weir

by

Hay Machine

(For Mona Golabeck)

The black river hanging like syrup at the weir
rushing and sweeping down the buttress wall
this living ancient artery loiters here
a black hissing mirror where
a willow leans out dipping dripping weeping

That was forty years ago and still this night
if I walked through the wet grass and the brambles
I would hear the same washing sluice
the soaked clay clinging in the darkness
the scurry of rats and the water hens

Black full with the seeping of grave-seep
carrying our worst fears to the sea
flushing the land while its bank hobbits
sleep under damp eaves
guardians of the water world

When it rains the circles and their circles ring
and open out from their dropping drips
and sing across the river skin
another song the river sings
kissing the black water this side of the weir

The grey ribcage of a rowing boat
carpeted in moss and rot half sunk
the paint can lying half full
and ready for bailing
all tied with wet string to the night

The Big Picture

by

Hay Machine



The only infinite ingredient of earthly life
great watercoloured dome
tailored to the edge of everything
palette of the oceans and the plains
filter of the heavens’ offerings
the very womb of all space
painting every planetary scene
illuminating by day blanketing by night
quiet canvas

This is not to preach about another blindness of our age
another negligence or unspiritual paganry
but simply this
canvas of the dawns since the sun’s first dawn
deserves a mention now and then
for once to be admired naked for its own sake
without peering and drooling over its bloody genitalia

Our vertical attitude restrains us
from enjoying more habitually the overarching skies
on the summer grass the child lies on his back
and grows familiar with the endless landscape of the air
cloud and insect light and swift
his space is not dimensional and without any urgency
or prejudice he lets his eye and mind-eye roam
imagination grazing on its succulence

The older the invertebrate
the more his margins concentrate
his world a tight and lonely raft
moored to hope with fear

The landscape painter half his canvas graced
with all the lightest air we breathe
the colour and the cloud his artist-licensed taste
what is it in the vastness of the dome of every blue
that we so pressed for marvel shun
to value more our trinkets than the ones we love
frightened as it were by the uncertainty of all the skies above

Kerry

by

Hay Machine



The dune sand cold as the sea and still
settled tight to the stemmed grasses
night cold

Once this silver gold was soft
sea pepper hushed by the evening shore
my heart’s wanting burrowed dune deep
and you in my arms



Ballymoney

by

Hay Machine



(for Anne McCarthy)

Dearest wooden cabin home
under your red tin roof
once some poor-man’s ruby
he loved and this his proof

His stove with logs and larder full
rose rugs on bed and floor
reinforced with fuschia
wild briar ’round the door

Your fern-bank sloping to the beach
filling the air with musk
pitch-pine frame and apron
horseshoe nailed for luck

Moths in the curtained window
light from the gas lamp glows
heat from the tin roof warming
where memory easily goes

Wash of the ocean’s heartbeat
wave on the evening sand
slippers the day for its slumber
taking us by the hand

Dollymount Strand

by

Hay Machine



Out to the sand bar in Dublin bay
passing in pairs by the porthole way
the painted lighthouse walled motif
stolen from Butlins by some civic thief
promising outlooks pale pink and green
silver-squeezed by in a chromium dream
the eye of the child and the trim of the Victor
mirrors its passing this cordaline splendour

Over the wooden sleepers
flooring the wooden bridge
standing up in the rumble
out to the sandy ridge

Miles and miles of dune stretched sand
oasis place in a care less land

Plasticine

by

Hay Machine


(In praise of making do)

In an Oxo box of red rolled tin
six spools of thread no thread within
Maguire and Patterson’s patent cases
emptied of all their sulphate graces
nine silver tin-sharp tin-box coins
and a rough brown ball
with red-yellow loins

This post-war ration of scholarly treasure
therapeutically harmful by anyone’s measure
small wonder we all expect little from life
trained without kindness by misery’s wife
the scrapings of tin and the packets of empty
a far cry from this Montessori-filled plenty

The grant from the government must have been paid
or the sales rep from Folens relented
but without any notice the brown ball was gone
in its place draped in cellophane fresh furrows presented

Strips of virgin brown and green
ploughed with pin-striped drills between
corrugated blue and white
in a week and a half it was back to the shite

Sorrow

by

Hay Machine

(from De Profundis)

The sweet discord of Chopin’s funeral march
the roll and lurch of his steel-rimmed gun carriage
the reach for joy from the deeps of loss
breath and heartbeat pulling against each other
postponing the endless moment
for as long as possible to defer
the pain
the eternal void
the truth
that all life and all its joy
is painted on the canvas of sorrow

Sorrow blankets us from birth
little wonder that the world seeks happiness and mirth
denying the blinding certainties
of dying
of death
and of ridicule
as though to place such knowledge to the rear
could spare us the worst excesses
of the bleak horror of being

Lilac

by

Hay Machine



Once upon a time
he walked behind the downy air of Lilac
a bunch of cuttings hand-held out
trophy and offering
carried to school for the May altar

Now he reaches out and into the watercoloured bloom
flowering with memories of ordinary things
pulling the branch gently to touch its cheeks with his
burying his eyes in the purple mist
the two leaning on each other
like old friends at a funeral

Between the Wars

by

Hay Machine



In duffel coat of ivory brown
they brought their sons to London town
Football trains to take them there
between the wars
before despair

The terrace stood united plain
and shoulder’d children in the rain
rounded rousing innocent eyes
where everyone wins
and nobody dies

Bakers busmen foremen miners
together nineteen thirty niners
no one sees the future come
the slaughter
and the beating drum

Death of the All Union Ustinskaya Silk Twisting Factory

by

Hay Machine



Vladimir Matviev a chieftan without a selfish inclination
he had a gentle way about him and it showed
Semeonov his deputy a gentle creature too
the pair trapped under the dead weight
of Moscow’s silk twisting conglomerate

The Uzbec silkworm excreting all that glint
where Stalin’s collective madness raged
and begat five silk twisting plants in Moscow
where they spun thread
returned again for weaving to beyond the Aral Sea

Once in a Georgian basement enclave eating garlic bulbs
Matviev talked aloud under gilded murals
and he beamed as though he had discovered something
each of his five mills as big as a town
as hopeless as it gets

He came with Semionov the Indian who had known no change
to see an American denim mill
and they died there and then
when they heard the cost of one cotton mill
thinking of their million miles of silk beyond the Aral Sea

Daydream for Piano

by

Hay Machine



Chopin knew the hollow where we hide our hurt
where waves of feeling
rise and fall
ebb and retire
and break with feeling’s foam
as love sympathy remorse
and all life’s music in between

Chopin wrote our daydreams down
our longings and our lonesome cares
he painted them as fruitful testaments
to the dignity of all creation
his paint the bounty of purest imagination
his liquid art a prelude itself
to what could be
if we listened
if we dreamed

Faery

by

Hay Machine


(the magic of Coole)

Still in Lady Gregory’s enchanted Coole
a faery meadow
runs to the brim of a wide shallow black and mossy vanishing-pool
here a path bends around fallen catalpa and swelling copper beech
to the seat where she rested her poets
here still their great names are carved

Light blanket of Lady Gregory’s Coole
filled in the shade with wisp grasses
where the faery sits weaving fern baskets
dream carriers
for the sleeping needy child

There at Lady Gregory’s Coole
where the sunlight
softened in dew
runs across the southern lawn
to kiss the great windows
and caress the wakening child

There you are in Lady Gregory’s Coole
the slip-faery
long-stemmed and dreamy
white wine fucia
not red nor pink
but positively creamy
watching over the saplings

The National Gallery Re-visited

by

Hay Machine



The chestnut rooms
their sticky images and encrusted ages
peppered with French impression
Caravaggio and his followers
Dutch letter-writing
take it or leave it
stagnant and uninviting

In the Yeats room
all their images around
deep-rooted pencil paint and pen
I found
very different sons and daughters there
father-fed his light artistic and retiring air

(An image out of Valesquez in the common room)
an Irish collection and a Treaty signed
a nation swimming drowning saved and re-designed
when I recall with covered eyes a first encounter there
I thought of vague imaginings
Queen Maeve and her daughter
an Ireland the poets had imagined

Alas what happened in that studio
all but eighty years ago
a few remade the broken urn
and brought it home with written guarantee
the family dispute that raged the urn unwrapped
all torn and in the vessel left to burn
the best that they could do
five people just
in the artist’s studio

The Sum of Simple Things

by

Hay Machine



Sweep of sand and shale
home to the heaving sea
invites the endless curve to kiss
the likes of you and me

I never met a great man
one hears that they exist
time and place make greatness
from scattered broken bits

Nuts and bolts embrace and hold
support the footbridge rusting
a feather dipped in seagull blood
the sentiment disgusting

Bertrand Russell wouldn’t die
for what he deep believed in
in case he wasn’t right but wrong
that logic might deceive him

I really don’t know anything
though logic seems to anchor
the little things that feed our beaks
and stir our precious anger

Of all the endless things to say
this is my last little grumble
life is more about ham and cheese
than the trivia in this rumble

Ireland

by

Hay Machine



(1880 - 1939)

What spirit flamed in that less innocent age
that stirred the painter and the writer to create
a dream of living short lives out
rooted in the past
fed in a fresh modernity
our blooms opening up to the light of heavens

Their works are here to measure word by word
all that they envisaged all that they willed
armed only with the mist of art
to knock the walls of a tired tyranny
firing as they went
a generation with self-worth and high ideals

The spirit may as much exist to-day as then
but cannot flower without the stems to hold
the poet-planted fruits and revolutionary seams
all choked instead
by the bad imagery
of empty drunken dreams

Sirens in the Night

by

Hay Machine


(Texture of an Irish town)

Over the rooftops
roosting sky
blue as an ink blot
still not dry
two stone church spires
pierce the night
rain-mist shimmering
the glimmering light

Up on the mountain
homesteads nestle
turf fires boiling
the steaming kettle
handsome lanes and streets below
boldly cut in stone
reaching out to hinterlands
under the windmill’s groan

On the western shore
under mountain high
reaches of sea cliff
meet the sky
all this heaven
is carved in two
badly divided
but what can you do

At night the sticky pubs are full
the hearths and kitchens empty
drinking gains of unearned rent
the sadly whiskered plenty

In the black blue nights
of screaming fights
the endless glass crescendo
with cuts and bleeds
it howling pleads
for someone to call an end to
the walking buried graveyard dressed
the hell they were living sent to

Love in a Purple Circus Tent

by

Hay Machine


(for and about the loved ones I live with)

When you are joyous joyful or contented
I am full to the brim of spilling
resigned and heartfully rested
when the brew of passion in my veins simmers
pulling tight all the wet ropes of wanting

The pool of music in the hollows of my head
the laughter in the seams
all the foolishness
and other seasonings
ripen when you ease

Under the canopy of tied patchwork
flapping wet with windy rains
we work and play together there
climb uncertain steps
and feel each other’s strains

Hammock’d in July
buffered from the year’s mines
the daisy lawn and the sun’s heat remind me
they are relentless symbols of you
all I desire

When I sink into the half-life of half-sleep
to play again and again the mantra of the day
this dreamed world is veiled in purple
Heaven’s in-between colour
of you

Toys for Rags

by

Hay Machine



Over the cobbled limestone sets
the buckboard made its way
a ragman’s reins were loosely draped
on the brass-worn loops
of his chestnut dray

The boneman’s horse his ancient friend
with blinkered bulging eye
draws along a way bygone
by the river wall
to his place to die

The oily straps the ragman nursed
were yanked with frightful strain
the heaving flanks
of noble line
dropped dead in a kerbstone drain

The halfshaft cracked and pierced all hope
it broke the boneman’s heart
white plumes of ankle flax lay still
at the twisted bend
on Mountpellier hill

All Dublin knew the horseshoe sound
the patient pace and drill
the loving clap of ragmen’s strap
his saintly cult
and will

Their passing time as good as gone
their memory almost ended
the stable straw is saved no more
the oats
no longer blended

Ride out ride out the ragmen dead
you haunt my moments empty
the galloping years are homeward bound
resigned
yet full of plenty

Knock International Airport

by

Hay Machine


(a tribute poem for Cathal Duffy)

I was there once or twice on the hilltop
with him and without
distracted by all the luxury of this raised bogland
with its wide skirts of countryside around
bathing in a shower of grey and purple light
feeling what others must have felt before
the saintly art of making something out of make-believe
while he dreams practically of the future
rooted in the past with deep intent

The good quarter master general he is
the store of treasures in and on the hillside are untouchable
this watchful guardian has many other senses too
and the jaws of an old swamp crocodile
snapping at everything that moves
all stand well back from the waterside
thirsting to swim but knowing better
I have seen great jets roar off his shoulder
diving into the sun and I never heard him say
they were going to meet at the other end
the old enemy

One morning his mother sent a messenger
from her teaching post
a message to the sleeping one
to drive a neighbour’s cattle to another grazing field
the bank manager pulled his grey Wolseley into the side
didn’t know you had cattle
come down and see me sometime
and he did
tied his lunch to a string
and never looked back

The qualities of kindness and quiet concern
blended with the chieftain will
walking the reluctant confessor around to soap the rope
(so help me Bob)
just as the hazel berry needs a hazel rod and thread
to catch the silver trout
the airport feeds upon
joking apart
all the extravagance and the fury in his Celtic heart

What They Don't Tell You in Graduate School

by

Hay Machine



His cheeks were flushed with innocence and the claret of youth
the new suit cut coarsely
his beating heart sucked on the plump of his ripe humanity
that first day in the office

His short short life dulled and tied by monotony’s chains
institutionalised by every grind of the thoughtless way
heart blackened by the spills of his cold cup of outlook
staring out the wet window of a commuter train

His crystal decanter dulled with dust and never once fulfilled
all over in a senseless grey dream
dead from the dark plight of the tulip bulb unplanted dry
destined never to know his own bloom

The Cherry Orchard

by

Hay Machine



for Ballyfermot

Part I --- The Dawning of a Nation

Gogarty and Tim Healy standing in a window of the Vice Regal Lodge
looking out over the deer herd to old Chapelizod and the Liffey valley
Arthur Griffith’s seconder and Parnell’s persecutor
talking about geraniums
after the fighting had died down

Gogarty could think in three dimensions and when he wanted to could fly
he rode like a mad thing across Sandymount strand while all of little Dublin slept
his the first swans on the Liffey
to thank the gods for delivering him from the fanatics
and when he dreamed his imaginings were veiled in the colour of cherry blossom

Gogarty and Tim Healy in the window talking about geraniums
their thoughts were worlds apart
Healy playing at his old endgame
Gogarty thinking about the future
of the pastures running to the hills

What difference he wondered would the Trojan horse of Independence make
what would the town hall rougies do
now that Michael Collins was dead
and what about the plight of Dublin’s tenement poor
the sap of a thousand years all that honey-rich liquor

Revival was in the creamy air
hope breaking out in budding sprouts
wooden handcarts were pushed with a new vigour
their small steel bearing wheels roaring
their wooden handles held high

Talk of clearing the red-curtained nitetown and the kips
damp green-grey bricks moss blossoming an orange furze
grand Georgian square-paned windows bare
coughing children cold to the bone in the permanent shade
praying for deliverance without knowing it by name

When finally the plans for Ballyfermot saw the light of day
maternity decided on the reluctant move
matriarchal orders to roll the bedclothes up
to fill the van with dark plywood and the waxed lampshade
youngsters thrilled with high hopes to be piled upon the lot

Mile after mile of silver pebbledash
the neat hall door the luxury of so many rooms
the garden gate the rubble in the tiny field
the plastered band of ribbon tied around the waist
the privacy the running tap the gas supply the space

The splendid curve of school and church
the phoenix park to dream in
fruits of independence flowering in white-rich pink
the never dreamed-of gentility
of the Cherry Orchard

Long after Gogarty’s and Tim Healy’s bones were stilled
I awoke to see the plum streaked sky of a Ballyfermot dawn
the ice cream ripple bleeding into the frosted cloud
drenching the hills beyond
setting alight the promise of the Cherry Orchard

Out in Ballyfermot village as it were
the mid-morning weave of comings and goings
the pneumatic hammer and the bread delivery van
crossing the road two of those early pioneers
the rounded slow progress of a woman and a man

Their sons and daughters never grew to know the towering damp
the black toll of tuberculosis and the hunger of the strike
they lived instead to build upon the honourable start
they painted pink and brown the gutters and the downpipe down
the plastered cummerbund the ribbon line its crown

Grandchildren born and fed lovingly with this jam and buttered bread
dry warm clothes the knitted gansies and sheets upon the bed
somehow loving ways were hardened and the line of passion stemmed
something breached the thousand years
and drained its honey’d blend

Part II --- The Wild West

The great expanse of greenery to the Californian hills
inspired the rugged innocents to ponyride for thrills
the piebald flanks the bareback mount the stirrups standing high
all in the pink-soft evening light of the Cherry Orchard sky

The ghosts of St John Gogarty and Healy stand and stare
out their regal windows at the mountains through the glare
the pylons drape their pipelines high the gloom of wonder grows
the setting Cherry Blossom sun on the rooftops warmly glows

The ghosts are not convinced but know from battles lost and won
you cannot win your heart’s desire at the end of the finest gun
and all their comrades dead and lost their wonders ripe or rotten
while Cherry Orchard trees still bloom their work is not forgotten

The Heart's Determined Hand

by

Hay Machine



Hazel Lavery (1880-1935)

Her art without her strategy a cloud upon the sky
the crystal form of useless shape to stimulate the eye
framed instead its purest form a weapon of the gods
it moved the oceans of unthinking man
beyond his earthly possibilities

Imagination knows no limit to the power of willing art
it will not cut the harvest rye nor throw the straightest dart
but it can feed the magic swarm and turn the teeming shoal
create a place for souls to stand
right in the midst of angels

Last Chance

by

Hay Machine



Stirring slowly the second sachet of sugar into the cold coffee
an anvil weight dragging on his pierced heart

The refuse sacks are piled upon the pavements
shutters are going up

A wet dog meanders
his nose out in search of the putrid

Almost beyond salvation
not knowing what comes next

The wet door opens purposefully
its weatherboard scraping the floor

A messenger presents a crumpled pink paper note
it finds a knowing hand and is impaled upon its turn

Then nothing

She came through the door at mid-morning in a soft wool jacket
and sat into the booth

Fresh coffee and her combed hair
easing as though her feet were now in under the anvil

I am sorry he said but could not look her in the eye

I have to go to work she said I’m late
she left a five pound note and slid out of the booth

The end

Circus in Booterstown

by

Hay Machine



The circus tent was old and worn
the canvas thick and dirty
the horse was real the poles were strong
the acrobat was thirty

She came without a cape and called
the stallion to his duty
he circled round the mud-dried ring
and stopped beside his beauty

She caught him by his flaxen hair
he never moved a sinew
she knelt upon his arching back
and stirred a want within you

The cantering horse went round the ring
and standing high she pointed
with fingers fanned her pointed hand
the circus crowd anointed

Once more around and round again
with pink and purple feather
then out and through the tented blue
into the Irish weather

The damp applause the organ played
they raked the wooden shavings
she reappeared and centre stage
received their muted ravings

She turned and walking up and down
her limping hip and shoulder
the organ played the last parade
and all were that much older

Unwritten Poems

by

Hay Machine


(What if Augusta Gregory had stayed in Egypt)

Everything that ever was that is or ever will be
a poem each and everything
and different completely

If everyone sat writing down upon the one theme simply
each and every poem would be
different completely

And only some with granted luck or sympathiser sweetly
sits and writes the basic thing
though different completely

To free the heart and live the life of king or queen discretely
all must sit and write the lines
all different completely

The vulgar markets of the world the shelves of bookshops meekly
tell the poet what to write
though ever so discretely

But everyone must rise and write and pass the children neatly
considered lines and heartfelt sights
all different completely

Here's Your Bus

by

Hay Machine



Getsemany has a dreadful reputation
the horror of waiting
leave by the front gate now
because for now there is laughter of the sweetest kind
weighing down the boughs those marked with blossom
there is a harvest to be plucked
which left alone will fall
and bruised
seep into the clay

Have some laughter now
and squeeze its Autumn juice
pour from the funnel of living joy
into a thousand cups and more if let
and bless the loose thrill of speculation
the abandon of the thrilling duel
upon the way with swinging sharpened sword
slash headless the grim game of waiting

You have done it all before and more
toying with the long determined needle
finding the vein and letting the serum flow
into a living way into the brainchild of make-believe
for goodness sake
harness your every motivation
to pluck apples ripe for eating
the more sweet for being homegrown

If you must you must slap situations with a paddle in the face
to bring them to their senses as it were
but if you do
prepare to feel the other paddle-end with equal slap
and this is fair like nature’s perfect balance
the symmetry of every natural thing
the oak’s parabola
life and death

Arise and go now
and feel it deep in the heart’s core

Sonnet No. 1

by

Hay Machine



Thou art more fruitful than the strawberry
more dimpled on the cheeks from smiling through
my half-lit rose my fresh orchard cherry
soft churn-ripe fruit rich purple and dark blue
I picked a long Summer’s day stooping down
loving finger-touching your blue-soft eye
piling the baskets deep with harvest’s round
feeding the evening air its moth and fly
O hear my sugar’d courtship call and wait
breathe easy still your heart and call my name
wait when the moon rides up and by the gate
dressed with the silver light upon your mane
and let the ribbon tie your hair but loose
and softly eat this fruit and drink this juice

The Radiogram

by

Hay Machine



In 1958
the radiogram
its polished dark veneer
and round speaker
tight to the glistening marmalade
a golden strip of inlaid sash
dark dial from the dashboard of an airship
its two bakelite knobs with dual functions
pirating the wonders

Underneath its polished lid
a three-speed gramophone slept
two gilded pockets by its side contained
eleven LP’s a French lesson and a four seventy-eights
The King and I
such marvel

In 1985
the radiogram
its polished dark veneer
scratched with clawmarks
a yellow wear and tear
its sash chipped
all vanished into the thin air of memory

Buckets of Art

by

Hay Machine



The swill of music
the crumbs of rhyme
the surge of dance
the written line

This trifle set
in sherried sponge
the cream on top
where gluttons lunge

Once in a while
the artists smile
a line is perfect wrote
the silver string
is loving strung
away the heart afloat

Navigators

by

Hay Machine

[Brendan Martin at Fifty]

The pilgrim soul
your father out in Africa
a traveller
parking his caravan
on the edge of Irish wilderness
the far side of Malahide estuary
and you here
still travelling in his tow

What was he thinking of in Galway
at fifty
give or take a year
with dinner guests in the car park

He wasn’t thinking
that’s just it
he was sowing seeds in your heart
filling you with experience
piercing you with his ways
being himself
what fathers do
when they are fifty
give or take a year
clumsy with care
knowing but not kneeling to despair

Out on the rim of time
you can sit with him in thought
speak to him
and say the things you ought
at fifty now
give or take a year
your halting site
your woman
and your urchins dear

Two Ghosts Meet on Raglan Road

by

Hay Machine


For Bernard Daly

That boyish face
its bearded lace
his curls festooning wonder
the eyes of Alexander set
veiled in his throaty thunder

The banjo plucked
its first refrain
on Raglan road he’s dreaming
his eye is shut and heart adrift
he sees another gleaming

The long and tweeded poet makes
his way along enchanted
two ghosts embrace
and fill the place
in Autumn light decanted

The banjo lifted up its pace
the honeyed bridge of Troon
and walking
arm in Autumn arm
the poem filled its rousing tune

And he said
with a shake of his ginger mane
with his coal grey voice resigning
let grief said he be a falling leaf
for the living and not for the dying

And he said let grief
be a falling leaf
the song a gift of his mind
two ghosts went walking along the edge
dropping their dreams behind

Signe Toksvig and Francis Hackett Leave Ireland For Good

by

Hay Machine



Signe Toksvig kept a diary
frilled with vivid observations
glorious first impressions
her insightful brutal caring pen
scribbling thoughts
recording intimate public things
sitting on the rim of Irish history

She loved her Kiladreenan
Newtownmountkennedy
cushioned with Rhododendron
herself and Francis Hackett
playacting

Her discerning eye for the human spirit
seeking out the flaming hearts
writing it down so that it remains fresh
unblurred by memory’s frailty

She sailed to Denmark
to escape the loutish air
the peasant negativity
the glazed affronted look
whose imbecilic eye
she never once mistook
for passion

Hackett writing little pieces
his light touch
as though he wrote
with the soft end of the quill

Lament for Tom Foolery

by

Hay Machine



I felt it in my giblets first
the dream of doom it say
the world is full of puff and fear
the night-time of the day

Away and hide your silly head
and throw your ink-filled pen
forget the raging gulf below
and drink ‘till I say when

You sing discordant tunes about
and say the simplest things
all said all heard it all before
and repetition stings

Lie back lie back afloat and hear
the rhythm of the world
straighten out your ruffled thoughts
put straight what you have curled

The fool within your cheating heart
the liar in your talk
may be erased with one true word
it spoke or writ with chalk

And if a man has things to do
affairs to put in order
if honesty will pave the way
his march will know no border

The Artist's Studio (1913) by John Lavery

by

Hay Machine



(The most important painting in all Anglo-Irish-American history)

A mid afternoon luscious canvas light
September grapes are served to wet the sitter’s lips
the sweet peace of London’s innocent pre-war year
images of empire fading into their own shade
a gold impression of this loving moment
Hazel Lavery before she was Queen of Ireland
approaching the pinnacle of her silken promise

In all its casual splendour it reveals
confident and deliberate passions
scarlet tipped the toe the hem raised heels
the Moorish maid distracted by Eileen’s pilgrim look
filling his invention of himself
the important women in John Lavery’s life
and in the mirror just himself
younger than his years and just the two of them
the patient painter
and his turban’d purple wife

How many strokes of brush and twist of oily paint
drawn from the heart of this trying household tell
the true story of preparation toil and triumph won
and not for themselves alone
their art is there for everyone
and as it slowly hangs and slowly tells its tale
their romance blooming its own timeless poem
wrapped in all its purple all its chestnut might
that we could love forever
these pale lineaments caught in a pool of mellow light

Hazel artist hostess muse and diplomat
made herself that dress she wears with regal feather’d hat
the Moorish maid is dressed as Moorish maids are not
daughter and step-daughter in delicate threads
he touches them with her red and purple seam
one placed another displaced to make way for Hazel

Alice alone their story told before she had to go
as best she could how history came and nested in this studio
determined enemies Dukes Earls and Excellencies
moved within five Winter weeks from hate mistrust and war
to a deed of peace with rebels they had hunted only days before
it was not by spy nor accident nor after bullied fight
but the arm’s length kiss of an artist’s brush
his stroke of rich delight

On water draped a world away these images dream sublime
where the soft caress of her silken dress are the oars of a hopeful time
we are judged by this paint and compared to its gift challenged by every hue
its passion will carry you over the weir its art and its history through
the rapids will tell of their fury’d hearts in gullies of power surging past
the desire and the magic that drove them
the artist has painted to last

Shane MacGowan

by

Hay Machine



Wild wild throaty Irish briar
rooted in your own fairytale
blooming one rose after another
that magic head rocking
your sad singing eyes

Singing old songs with wonder
new songs and symphonies
so we can wade out
into your deep dark pools
your sad singing eyes

Lament for a Salesman

by

Hay Machine



The words of a thousand people
a thousand times and more
the millions of waves of the breathing sea
washed up on the sloping shore

Answers more like questions
questions almost dry
millions of opportunities
drowned in the doubting eye

Rarely alight with wonder
starched with a stubborn streak
painting with poems of make-believe
poems he dare not speak

Is anyone able to listen
to the heart’s astounding cry
the whisper of truth in the moment
relentlessly passing by

Apart from the loved ones near him
and the deep receding sea
who cares if he sinks and gurgles
was it ever supposed to be

When he cries the white-cold tear and weeps
for all of eternity when
he misses his loved ones and craves their touch
think of him then amen

Secrets From Under The Stone

by

Hay Machine



The whispering river
telling the living
spilling and wishing
hushing and urging
washing
softening the air they breathe
nursing them
consoling them
blessing their sleep
they the undead
dangling their feet
in the black coldness
soaking their clothes
crotch-wet cold to the waist
gathering up their skirts
as the black syrup
parts and slurps
rolling on
flushing
wanting the night
the black coldness sucking on all life’s heat
swelling the dead grasses
pushing the chaff and twig
around and on
and on and on
into the black beyond
where the serpent slips
into the sea’s tomb
down onto its salty floor
grain upon grain
salt stain upon stain
making by degrees
the mountains from the seas

It gives and takes
and will this night
seize another and another by the leg
under
down onto its cold silt-bed
smothering
swallowing
floating
bloating
tumbling
rolling
logging
headbutting
on and on and on
then fucked sideways
into the sedimentary sea

Dundela Daisies

by

Hay Machine



Out of a succulant bed stems topped in white velvet reach
bright as springs across the Summer grass
as they kiss and fill the eye these neat buttons of light
growing in thimbles of dark
souldered in clover

Painted in the sun’s likeness curling at evening for sleep
collars-up as they nestle alone in the night’s wet wind
dawning washed alight and sure
one soft blanket of gaeity awake to its own music
dancing

Dream of Love

by

Hay Machine



I call your name in my dreams sometimes
where you come by the dreaming wonder
the show of your cheek and your simple hair
and my heart thumps oh asunder

What colour or drape or poem conveyed
the honey your magic makes certain
the wine of your music the heat of your heart
raising the dreaming curtain

Teaching Reaching

by

Hay Machine



Not one fine sign
of an artist here
but a din with a dollar toll
the rush to read
what the writer wrote
for another notch on an endless roll

The thrilling lift
of the truth revealed
of a pinch of wonder captured
the leap of life
that the dreamer framed
it at least himself enraptured

The Municipal Gallery
tells a tale
it keeps it in the basement
the best of Yeats
by Lavery waits
for another Roger Casement

Abandon the doubt
the weight of this waste
the sadness of this yearning
oh to teach a few
to taste the dew
for reaching is not for turning

The Goddess of the Moon

by

Hay Machine



When in my dreams I meet her
the Goddess of the Moon
it breathes that the life of beauty
lives on in a world of its own

With her long dawning cheek still smiling
her eye a hanging dew
a part of every love duet
for ever appearing through

I will find the tradesman’s entrance
to a secret place of dreams
where we often wide awaken
aflushed by our worried themes

And bless you when you answer
my heart afire like June
the thrilling touch of your shoulder
my Goddess of the Moon

The Garden Prayer

by

Hay Machine



The afternoon was over
alight with yellow pears
the garden was awash with love
full drained of earthly cares

The grassey sound of children’s play
of wine decanted slowly
the syrup of life collecting there
abloom with care and holy

And now and then through the window pane
I hear your voice cry gently
to help me over the stile as it were
but it’s hard to leave this plenty

As God is our Judge

by

Hay Machine


for Willy and Gypsy and Roger

Under an infinite Minnesota sky
he taught his son to sing a song of earthly praise
to lift his heart
to brand his soul with love of country
and thank the gods
for the harvest of the maize

God Bless America
the infant son upraised his cry
our Home Sweet Home his Haleluia
and who could ever under Heaven question
even his existence now his pledged allegiance
As God is their witness this is their loving alibi

Congressman Sabo hear the loving singing echo still
soaring on the sweet mournful and magical Minnesota air
Willy Chaplin's son has heard the swallow's call to flight
but he cannot spread his wings without your care
it seems when Frederic Chopin wrote the Etude number ten
he must have known how Willy Chaplin's son felt then
the love of country the composer painted true
expresses also in a heartfelt way for all your effort undertaken here
what Willy Chaplin and his family sincerely feel for you

Ireland.com

by

Hay Machine



A song of sixpence

The world I walk upon
its juices dripping from the trees
it sizzles with a swirling mix
of fruits and grim disease

The swirling mix of everything
that makes the sun feel warm
the magic of the swallow’s dive
the duty of the thorn

And all I ask is a pathway
down to the glistening sea
over the brow of a cart-track
how promising this can be

Mannanan's Revenge

by

Hay Machine



He is foaming on the high seas
drawn by the galloping waves
on fire with a savage extravagance
plundering those he saves

His curls of sunset golden light
on shoulders of the moon
a picture for the feeble frames
on whose shores he’s landing soon

The threat of the coming judgement
the idleness-fed guilt
hides in a lie abandoning
the house they left half-built

The decades spent preparing
maturing deeds to do
sqandered in a lonely hole
old jargon strained anew

He roars this God chamelion
his thunderous beating tones
what have you done with your talents here
unearth those buried bones

His chariot nears the islands
where simpler lives are led
hunting birds at nightfall
to eat alone in bed

Go up the mountains if you can
to higher ground to hide
from the surging waters carrying
its vengence on the tide

The salt winds from the polar cold
are stripping flesh from bone
eating the silken plumage
to feed its cold alone

The faith we knew abandoned
the honey left to dry
our sorrow flooded valleys
a grave in which to lie

He flares his whip embroidered
from all the northern winds
and roars his galloping horses on
to purge omission’s sins

Roses in the City

by

Hay Machine



All roads lead to London like the briar’s root
down to the feather-lines the postman walks
to knock on the peeling paint in Achill

Until the unseen pliared hand
lops off a stem of Winter thorns
so that the promise of the Summer
makes its way quietly
with cardboard case in hand
to bloom against a wall in Kilburn

In the dark there are no flowers
nor is the light imagined
until the postman walks the fine vein
up to the shrinking door with a blue envelope
to break the news

Chopin's Butterfly Symphony

by

Hay Machine


Waltz No. 6 in D flat major Op. 64, No.1, "Minute"
for Dodie

The hovering butterfly’s white fleeting
shouldering the lily
flapping the wing-tipping sunlight
brilliant as the sunshine
confident as eternity
loving all this finite bliss
leaning to the flowers to kiss
a million times
and each touch alights
another intake of breath
urgently appealing
squealing with delight
Summer snowflake
white puppet of the finest will

But I can only feel this love
this love I hold in my heart for you
I can only feel this love
willowing

This dance my love will never end
simply for ever
you have been my friend
my one and true
my own
my love
if ever so
if ever so
fleetingly

Leaning to the flowers to kiss
a million times
and each touch alights
another intake of breath
urgently appealing
squealing with delight
Summer snowflake
singing the look in a young girl's eye
weeping with joy
the fleeting life
you cannot hold
this gentle flight
this ballet of the day and night
white puppet of the finest will
silver ringlet in my heart
wriggle if you will
and still
away
but forever
in my heart
fly on

Hazel and Alice

by

Hay Machine



Mother and Child (detail) Sir John Lavery (1856-1941)
[Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin]

The curtain of December’s clouds are drawn awide
when Venus stands in the southern sky and brighter than the Moon beside
with all the pinhole light of every burning star
pricking the ink-blue canvas of the Christmas night
although they fire the intellect with wonders this despite
they pale whereas this painting purrs
while it makes love to the thumping soul

The light of Venus shadowed dare we see much more than we could bear
upon the Hazel eyes that sweetly rest above the twilight glare
draped in her furs diagonally warming
leaning on Alice her very independent daughter

A look more lovely would disrupt the coming Spring
distract the Angels from their chores and all the peace they bring
there is a limit to the earthly power of everything but art
all this palette with its greens and simple earrings gold
cheeks blushed with youthful health
she slips to one side a pose
her dress and furs unfold
the artist hand is guided by a god

This canvas prayer repeats its lines without monotony
forever hanging there
with loved and loving eyes

The Ballad of the Dead and Borneo

by

Hay Machine



The honest eye presents a lie
the silent thunders still-oh
another nail is hammered through
the option of free will-oh

The spokesman said you’ll be a long time dead
no longer than unborn-oh
the difference is that journey yet
has a turnstile yet to turn-oh

I remember the peace of the flowering yeast
of the floating black before-oh
the river of truth that flowed along
the banks of the oily shore-oh

And the breathing land its heaving sand
the seas retreating slowly-oh
the tides returning in and out
alive and cold and holy-oh

And I ask eternity how to live
a life so short and passing-oh
the few I love I want to hold
and this is why I’m asking-oh

Eternity says you’ll be a long time dead
no longer than unborn-oh
with two eternities either end
like a briar a rose and a thorn-oh



Lipstick Moment

by

Hay Machine



The blood-red ritual begins
the cool white hand unzips
and slips
into the dark crotch of the bag
and in one fluid slither
the cold plastic
the satin elastic
the bullet case
is clutched
drawn up
unscrewed
screwed
until the tip
penetrates the light
as the lips are puckered
straight at first
then tight
rolling over
and pouting out
painting the oily scent
until the glistening glint
fuses
with the air of expectation
and rolling over
the eye sinks
down with a knowing look
the stiletto sharpened
the soul ready
lips glinting
ready
for a kiss

Birth of a Poem

by

Hay Machine



I am writing this poem from the inside out
beyond a thought before the start
standing like a midwife at the gate
hoping it will thrive and after live a life apart

The seed of life of feeling and of want
breaks open with the warmth of some love astray
pushing a sickly stem with a foetus leaf on top
up through the nothingness into the light of day

There is a birth then of some new living thing
draped in all the debris of its past
to be nurtured fed upon some willing breast
to stand up unassisted and to last

And thus the dreaming poem starts its life
hanging ever after in the gallery of make-believe
another speck of simple beauty born
drip of every human effort every infant form

The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit

by

Hay Machine

A painting
by John Singer Sargent
Bostom Museum of Fine Arts

Dark sweet apron’d blooms
tailored in cotton and wool
four images of their missing mother
arranged naturally between two rooms
four sisters
reversing into adolescent shade
retiring from infancy
secure in their father’s rooms

Four of the ages of flowering
retreating and learning
all that women know
and cannot speak about
but show
in their soupy eyes
the tender surrender
to caring and living

They are left alone with the artist
unsure yet every bit his equal
Mister Singer Sargent is unsure
never quite this tested by his sitters more mature

Mysterious setting
their secretive poise
these trinkets of history
make wonderful noise

Hands of the Silver Clock

by

Hay Machine



The unforgiving ritual
of dusk and end of day
telling the age-old story
that time will have its way

The oceans of a wishing heart
the silver of the sea
shining for an afternoon
that’s all it seems to be

And then a honey’d eye sits down
a hand as soft as dreaming
whispers a word of love aloud
beholding all my meaning

Then all the sky-rich dawns of time
and twilight wonders blooming
do not compare to the silken hair
that my heart is ever grooming

And out across the Winter flats
the frost is dry-eyed waiting
the blackthorn hedge just standing there
the silver dawn abating

The Glasthule Village Schoolmaster

by

Hay Machine



for John McGuire and the Harold Boys School

He set fires for a living
on threepence and the odd shilling
with dry wit and paper
the puffing bellows angled
his short gusts
pounding sums poems and spelling
all delivered with wisdom’s edge
day in and day out
in a relentless shelling
deliberately like a hurler
weaving his way through
setting it all alight
in the hearts of children

He is not retiring now
despite what the whispering breezes say
he can never leave this permanent post
he is rooted here and here to stay
because his contract is with the children
and in their eternal eyes
he will stand always near the chestnuts
watching over his inspired

The red-brick school is empty
Summer stills the halls
the painted tribulations hang
around the window’d walls
but listen to the thrilling swirls
their storming wondrous singing
the oceans of eyes remembering
and lilac bunches bringing

The duster beat against the board
the rumbling prayer is spoken
go on before I change my mind
run out into the open

A Mid-Life Dream

by

Hay Machine



The sun had decided definitely not to appear that overcast Dublin day
a bundled ball in a lean-to stirred
wet to the crotch watchful as a bird
thinking about the price of something
dreaming about something priceless
not a painting really
no
an expensive cat
with large udders
something like that

A whisker’d bleary eye is out of focus first
makes out the early throng of wet outlines
scurrying collars-up to work in Stephen’s Green and Harcourt Street
vulcanised cheap shoes a Christian Brother buys
joyless burdens but they do protect the feet
unfashionable black-laced drearies no living thing could like
a few cars splashing by the kerb
a canopied rider on his bike

Cold in a cardboard box he wakes alone
no bedside lamp no socks no underwear no phone
it isn’t in his heart to bear resentment’s load
no room for baggage now he’s living on the kerbside of the road

Oscar Wilde his De Profundis wrote
his fruit squeezed bone dry
and after Reading Gaol
he searched inside his brilliant head to seek to understand his fall
and found all life and all its joys
were painted on the canvas of sorrow

The dream of genius meeting squarely its demise
the dream of questions yet unborn the heart’s unanswered cries
the opportunity to kiss the great unknown and boldly seek it out
without the fear of failing or of feeling all alone the doubt

The sound of homely rumblings through the morning water noise
curtains straining hot mid-August sun
his mid-life symphony rousing to the second movement’s fuller tone
resurrection by the bedside lamp the socks the underwear the phone

Twenty Years a-Going

by

Hay Machine



The whistle shrill was ringing still
the steam the platform clouding
the dark green train
pulled out again
the sleeping valley shrouding

It pulled along in a coupling song
she would she would she couldn’t
the burning track
no turning back
she would she would she wouldn’t

The steel the sleepers rattling on
she died she died she died there
the creeping crawl
from Annascaul
to the graveyard end of nowhere

Spring in Sandycove

by

Hay Machine



Tight tired arrows of determined will
low to the purple sea
arrived to a fanfare rumbling
and Springtime spoke to me

The migrant birds of history
the wanderers on the sea
all part of the living future
explored as it can be

The passing wonder of their flight
true to their own heart's word
they stole upon my wandering
and won my heart's own bird

And no one will believe me
none to witness there
the thrilling wings of ebony
aglide on the purple air

Home Alone

by

Hay Machine



The scratching effigy
scraping raking the silver whiskers
raising an itch
and quenching it
without enchantment

Drinking tea alone
for the company
the pissing later
a hot pleasure of sorts
something to do
nice work if you can get it
the pleasure
all his

The Deep Well of Time

by

Hay Machine



Down at the lapping lakeshore
cool of the mud and air
the glaze of the light returning
over the sky-black glare

Age-old sounds and hissings
flight of the midge’s wing
rooted the tree and shoreline
bearing the birds that sing

The call of the waters silting
is faint but still it is clear
as ancient as old creation
as real as a bird’s first fear

The lapping of soothing shallows
echo beyond the word
the feeling of older soothings
when the heart was the heart of a bird


Sinead O'Connor

by

Hay Machine



The bees
whose honey dew is sucked
out of the wildest fuschia
distilled in air
where the eternal things
the loving qualities
are song-sources
and these divine bees
love their work
for they know in their tiny hearts
the effort will blossom and flower
like her wings over fields of May

The planets
spinning half in light
half in sleep
know in their spinning hearts
all beating pulled and drawn
these molecules of something greater know
from her purest song
from her singing eye
these specs of promise in the sky
dance
as she sets their lamps aglow
her songs
soft blots of light
along the enchanted way

Patrick Kavanagh
old lover of mischief
one night straying
asked her for a kiss
and later told the listening world
that whilst she demurred
she reached out and smiled
and with an artist’s spell
healed his old longing
flying
one hand on his hat
home to his stony bed
upon her angel’s wings

The Twelfth Secret of Cabra West

by

Hay Machine



The night was stained with emptiness
the drinks were on the table
Peggy Dell in her velvet hell
was shaking every cradle

Come all ye drones of dampness dead
ye full as drunken empties
go drain yer bladders out the back
come back for Peggy’s plenties

And all the treacle of the place
the craven-A’s were staining
the senses thrilled with porter spilled
and some lone voice restraining

Above the din the Gordon’s gin
stood dusty shouldered standing
Peggy get up the lemon’s cut
your public is demanding

No she said I’m nearly dead
my finger’s days are over
come all ye undertaker’s cloaked
and lay me on the clover

The night was rising in the sky
the stars were cold as razors
the Vauxhall Viva parked outside
the silver-buttoned blazers

And we drove like frights at the northern lights
over the Virgin’s Grotto
up on the grass and down again
intent astray and blotto

Of all the cryptic nights afloat
on nightime’s flying carpet
the one with Peggy Dell stands out
but I don’t know where to park it



Voice of Creation

by

Hay Machine



I looked across water singing
blue with a golden trim
it sang of the age-old glory days
in the sun’s reflected hymn

This pool of thunder rumbling
under a frowning sky
it murmured of loss remembered
from the seep of those that die

And I dreamed of answers calling
for questions not yet framed
in unsculpted waters frozen
their prizes yet unclaimed

And out of this formless structure
out of the morning’s wave
came a spirit of whispering wonder
and it broke in the sea cliff’s cave

An Accident of Art

by

Hay Machine



He made his way out of the smokey maze
charred to the eyes
hands outstretched
fingertipping the dark air
feeling his way out into an open space
before the onset of the last despair

In the light and the mist of the fire hoses
he murmured a jittery prayer
relief beyond feeling
trying to speak of the secret picture
burning in his heart
the hot paint peeling

The thirst that only art can quench
is soft and real like a rose
he had the weight of the world upon him
strapped to the cold ambulance
surrendering all
all that old instinct knows

The Flight of the Earls

by

Hay Machine



Rathmullan’s song is a bleak refrain
grey Swilly’s retreating anthem
the long wet reeds that lash the shore
and mock the sailing phantom

The ancient throat so deeply cut
the bleeding wounds surrendered
they fought with spilling hearts at first
and steadfastly defended
but the yellow corpse the birds consumed
and the heart its beating ended

Look if you will to the eye of the bird
for a clue to the Swilly’s sorrows
where the cold north wind unkindly blows
on the banks of the lost tomorrows
where the blackbird works both clay and tree
the moon on the water sheening
the loss of the chieftains holy breath
the wind in the long grass keening

Fifteen

by

Hay Machine



He has the look of a budding twig
stooping in the door
only yesterday he was athletic like a bee
now he is a giraffe
with silk hands
and a magic eye

His days are long and fruity
overflowing with ideas and wonder
bright as a pup
slow like a hanging bloom

He is as lovely as all nature in one place
the noises he makes are songs
his speech citric-true
his dark head groomed like a seal

This budding twig will break out soon
swagger in the Summer currents
and when he leans out into the world
and runs away
he will have love in his heart
and a desire for play



Life Stories

by

Hay Machine


for Bryan Roe

The high gate quietly stands in chains
resigned between two granite piers
bright tufts below catch the sunlight
the cartwheel ruts still carved deep
between a soft mane and the banks

Old flower mounds lie under the trees
by a sweep of private roadway
a path full of dreamed secrets
the stories of a hundred years
each one rooted in the other

This gateway and its sleeping drive behind
speaks in the smoothest tones
of short journeys stepping in and out
of tired returns and homecomings
the high white revelry of two weddings
the pain of the funerals
lovers lost in the hum of the fields
great expectations quietly fulfilled

An architect once looked upon this naked lie of land
he listened with his artist’s eye
and dreamed of what was planned
he spoke in terms of vague response
with the charcoal of his mind
and sketched the outline of this place
before it was designed
he walked the land and listened to
the moth’s determined whirr
and wrestled with the elements
until his scheme drew near
and into a cup of make-believe
he poured his brew of wonder
the house was built with stables close
and it nourished all its thunder

The Cat's Whiskers

by

Hay Machine



for crying out loud

Daniel Abu has a hole in his shoe
the waking theme revealing
nineteen fifty eight presents
a country slowly healing

The formal inelastic grind
of strings plucked slow yet surely
the steady reassuring tones
of waltzing tunes played purely

Before my time an archive rhyme
the poet Yeats is reading
in Innisfree the listeners see
his lakeshore heather bleeding

The flood of sounds from out of bounds
the dancing race reciting
reflects a sober make-believe
the drunken dance despiting

The nineteen sixties lighter sweet
of custard creams and sweepstakes
easing sunlight through the veils
on juicy whiskey fruitcakes

A honeyed accent whips and strips
a charcoal confraternity
and lifts the interests of the young
beyond the old eternity

This listening fuels the hungry mind
and feeds the heart distracted
sews the seeds of learning needs
with dramas re-enacted

And all the music of the years
the art of worlds a-wonder
procured a wider scape of thought
and fuelled its own wild thunder

These dawning days brewed twilight haze
the mists that blind the sighted
the listening hearts were sadly slowed
the crop again was blighted
And Ballydermot lost its way
the country sadly stunted
the talk-show pulled the curtain back
as listeners boldly grunted

Now hear ourselves as others must
complain with whinge and fury
nursed in chamber pots of wash
delivered from the brewery

But still I hear a clarion voice
a crystal spectrum straining
the curlew song’s embroidered touch
and gone the blue complaining

I hear drawn out and played the nocturne
lives unravelled slowly
fresh stems of inspiration strung
and sung by Carrie Crowley

Dr Cannibal Quinn

by

Hay Machine



The grizzly tale was gruesome told
of cannibal Quinn the doctor
who ate his patients one by one
‘till he choked on Agnes Proctor

He ate her with her high-heels on
her stockings and her handbag
her fox-fur coat umbrella and
her poodle and a snotrag

At the autop’sy a plastic sheet
was laid with gutters draining
the yellow corpse was slit with steel
its putrid stinks exclaiming

They found inside five hundred rings
three thousand false teeth mouldings
the gums of a dog and a rifle butt
and the whips from a hundred scoldings

God bless him someone prayed aloud
his healing days are over
he’ll eat no more his lips are black
and ready to root the clover

The room grew still they found a child
and the keys of a Datusn Sunny
a Triang bike and some corset wire
a scissors a torch and sum money

A freephone line was opened up
lost property clues reporting
the wing of a plane and a sewing machine
then a diving team went snorkelling

A member in Miltown he was liked
and very often quoted
through he ate a barmaid and her cat
and cheated when he voted

In University days he held
a record for endurance
for eating groundsmen and their wives
then claiming the insurance

Compassionate to a fault was he
who never worked the bureau
his bedside manner soft as silk
but his breath stank like manure’o

The divers surfaced holding high
a cinema seat and usher
his wife recalling nights he tried
with the family car to crush her

And a knife with an ivory handle carved
the sock of a priest and a folder
a bottle of milk with the cap still tight
and a picture of someone older

The autop’sy drew near to end
a policeman and a toilet
a piece of the Brooklyn bridge a crane
and a poem of sorts to spoil it

The doctor wrapped in oilskins crapped
announced the search completed
he wrote his report to the coroner’s court
but the coroner said delete it

The public interest is not served
by the truth unbridled spoken
the stature of doctors injured by
reports of their peer’s trust broken

A statement read
that he was dead
and so was Agnes Proctor
we all must die
and that’s no lie
if in doubt consult your doctor

Outback Blues

by

Hay Machine



The molecular skies were black that night
the breezes stumbling around the trees without intent
yellow bunting was strung around the makeshift square
and it flapped and flashed
with the red and pearl lights
jangling along the floating wire

Kitty Enwright on her wedding day
was lighter than the dancing air
lost in Billy Wringer’s arms
her first love and her heart’s eternal dream

And the band played Waltzing Matilda
until the brawling ball erupted in the dust
two sharp screams and the breaking glass
knocking the trellace and pulling the canvas down

Kitty Enwright married someone else that day
a farmer by the name of Keeling from out beyond Canonrda Bay
but she drove off with Billy Wringer in his pickup truck
painting with all her heart’s love
a sorry picture

The Cowboy Hat

by

Hay Machine

for Eugene McGale

Dressed in striped pyjama tops
brushed cotton
buttoned to the chin
a black felt cowboy hat
its looped nylon fringe
harnessed to his head with a soft string
a silver sheriff’s badge loosing its veneer

He looked security in the middle of the forehead
and climbed the sweep of stair to the office

Delighted whispers of fright ran like wildfire
his mule tied to the front door of the bank
his distant look
his bare backside

Stuck in Traffic

by

Hay Machine



I’m sitting here for over an hour going nowhere
God am I glad I don’t have to do this every day
how do they do it day in and day out
the sheer waste the vacuum

All the pre-set buttons on the radio add to the torment
whining commercials drilling into the sitting ducks
how do they do it day in and day out
wrinkling fast like their linen jackets

Survey the oncoming stream make model and year
short stories told in Braille the eye can read
how do they do it day in and day out
these solitary figures in the crowd

Clutch shift pedal move fuck this I’m late who cares
phone ahead stuck here whenever go ahead
how do they do it day in and day out
like clockwork

How do they do it day in and day out
God we are moving
second gear third
break clutch shift shit stop



The Wild Flower

by

Hay Machine



for Michelle Howard

The flowers speak with their colours
soft paintings for the heart
living wildly with the birds and butterflies
in raincoats dance their dancing parts

Such patience and sweet charity
wild oceans of yellow white and watery blue
blushing for every winged eye and kiss
each day as it comes the dream come true

This beauty does not tire the heart
nor fill the wanting soul
it washes with its dance and dress
and brings like Easter end to Winter’s roll

Wandering Aengus sang the one true song
a leafy cover on life’s own coloured way
the fire that drives us to the Hazel wood
and steals with love the wants no words can say



The Saucer of Black Gold

by

Hay Machine



The dog pond at Mountjoy Cross with my Father in the Summer of 1962

The mirror of the pond bright black
the trees around the railing
and curse the years receding now
the drifting by the sailing

I had lost my golden ringlet
in the sun-hot fields of youth
and I can’t remember loosing it
if my heart will tell the truth

I ate the golden grain and drank
from the silver water fountain
but my hopes behind the trees had fled
and my dreams paced on the mountain

I slept when the birds were singing
howled when the hedgelings slept
raced when the world was dreaming
laughed when I might have wept

The picture of my childhood lake
with its black and silver coating
and my love still leaking on the years
and my tears away are floating

I found the pond by chance again
black pierced my heart this splendour
when the singing pools of hope recalled
it was easy to remember

Shirley

by

Hay Machine



Wild orchid of New England
watercolored in among the trees
you scent the woods we walk

We are here a while because your heart desired
the passing moments full of love we cannot speak
the language of the forest floor is silent too
but in your daughter’s hearts
love’s endless whisper sings a song for you
wild orchid of New England
watercolored in among the trees
you scent the woods we walk

The maple gives its nectar up in drips
your own easy rhythm
the sum of simple things
this greatness
and the patchwork quilt of all New England’s rust
the canopy that Ralph and Susan spread
this comfort blankets us
with all your precious trust

Wild orchid of New England
watercolored in among the trees
you scent the woods we walk

In Praise of Thomas Bodkin

by

Hay Machine



for Kieran Desmond

As old as stories old and told
with time-blown names and maybes
heroic tales under billowing sails
and love and hate their babies

But honest Bodkin wed to art
with artists eating honey
his Lady painted on the mark
that marks the Irish money

For Bodkin had his way they say
heart’s way with Hazel Lavery
and it hangs in the shade that his money-queen made
while it must hang in his gallery

And when they hang 'Killarney' there
and the lights go out discreetly
the strings that hold the painting high
will sing their love song sweetly

Growing Thoughts in a Mushroom Shed

by

Hay Machine



Once when your eyes were mine
I thought to write a line
about truth and honesty
and ending with the word
tabbernackle

Life is but a Dream....

by

Hay Machine



I live in a little dream
weaving little logics
into bread rolls and small beer
kneading little excretions
into jams and jellies
sucking small musics
from passing minstrels
looking out for little morsels
stroking blind a small world's petals
pushing a wooden box on wheels
up Baggot Street
with little turf pieces
for a Summer hearth

Three Pints of Guinness

by

Hay Machine



The dizzy day was stumbling on
silvery-white and full of the juice of waiting
washed in an unseen mist
the gut that strings pearls
and promises girls
to be confident like a thrush

The day passing more like sailing
blown from swirling angles on
drifting home to some dreamed port
catching a forward motion in pockets
straining soft eyes in their lonely sockets
princely like a thrush

Blotting up the wandering dreams of lust
sat in a solitary pose
dreaming of what the future holds
wondering if the cotton shroud is woven yet
or in the ground the cotton seed is set
upright like the stark thrush

Time to drink pints of black porter
glass upon glass of bitter lush
the creamy analgesic custard
whipped by centuries of yeasty will
to touch seeping to the soul
the wanting gargler

The smoky wood the gritty floor
the pearly window snug to the swinging door
stout pulled up from down below
levered by the hand of experience
the apron’d judge of character
reading the day’s progress in your eye

Three pints and let them spill gently over
to soak the blotting paper mat
to round the collar and the porter’s hat
gripped to sucking down the oily sluice
swallowing nature’s earth and wind and fire
cooled to soothe the heart and fill the soul with all the day’s desire

The Dinnie Whealan Show

by

Hay Machine



The purple wheel its tinsel spinning through the light
a dry brown hair-piece glued to his sweating head
the buttoned nylon suit pale blue trimmed with a black satin line
rolling drum the trumpets high
ladies and gentlemen
all the sevens
itsssss Dinnie Whealan

Introducing the New Word 'Coak'

by

Hay Machine



The barb rolled out in our defence
the negative prerogative
all we cannot do
this undressed is coak
the death-rattle of a good idea
an unecessary end
(pl) coak

Surfing

by

Hay Machine



Every unconscious heartbeat
from the first chorus
set fibrillating with that bang
has urged its blood hot sausage to redeem itself
to breathe its own truth

The mere complexity of all our microscopic heave
the almost inevitable determination of our slimes
these are poem meters all
wave motions
of a living lullaby

The molecular machine of intellect’s own gel
fed from the beating heart’s high reservoir
its pearly lantern light its bloom of love alone
cannot be opened by the surgeon’s knife
it speaks a language from the Angels learned
and will not pay its dividend until that dividend is earned

Waiting for William

by

Hay Machine



A blackbird nesting in our garden
is strutting just like you
his chest is out so far I fear
he may himself undo

For there are sparrows too and starlings here
two pigeons and a thrush
a robin sort of ostracized
upon the fuscia bush
and these must also eat the worm
and steal the hopeful seed
the rush to live the future now
the grit of magpie greed

And nesting time is full of life
the blossoms light the way
such color in the hedgerows rich
to watch is as to pray

Beneath the rafters of the Spring
more seeds and worms are drawn
your waiting time has come again
upon Painewebber's lawn
and since the springtime of the world
this ritual has renewed
the mountains with their flocks and lakes
our hearts with hope imbued

And this is part a trilogy
a sequence one of three
the next will write itself when you
confirm your destiny
and when your urchins celebrate
your whiskers grey are sprout
and take you for a Sunday drive
to drink a glass of stout
and little William lifts his bundle
his little William then
the third will write itself with hope
when blackbirds thrive again

The Trees

by

Hay Machine



Their Majesties the trees
across Westmeath stand in May
strong plumes against the twilight sky
around Goldsmith country
cathedrals all

Around Charlestown in May

by

Hay Machine



Two horses graze together in a hollow on uneven ground
the short stubbles
their boundaries of yellow gorse
the light of summer

If Nuts and Bolts were Sheep and Goats

by

Hay Machine



The easy phrase upon the air
the lift of joy’s own word
a prayer to keep the sleeping child
love whispers pray be cured

The weight of knowing life’s own dread
concealing sorrow’s brow
to speed the sleeping infant to
the heaven here and now

All secrets of the soul are we
of other souls around
with feet that walk the gravel stones
upon the stony ground

The sleeping child awakens
stolen from the stars
to eat the berries of the day
and rest their dreams with ours

The sun that warms the sailor
chilled by the salty sea
is his alone to answer to
and mine is mine for me

The nocturne draws the curtain
night of the day’s design
the sound of the hollows waiting there
decanting the heart’s own wine

Saints and Scholars

by

Hay Machine



We spent a time of unremembered life
familiar as the insects with the floor
a thousand days of crawling by the unlit fire
the worn out weave of sackcloth perished to the twine
underneath the table of a very frugal time

What schools of learning could have taught us less
the empty years the decade of the poor’s poor dress
to look and act the part
glorious failures timid as the birds
angry with the world without recourse to any angry words

And out of books no salesman could afford
lessons first not learned were then ignored
the very want of learning smothered from the start
the natural peace of living simply lost or left behind
extinguished like a candle in the bell-jar of the mind



Anne McCarthy

by

Hay Machine

Ballymoney 1964

The flight of first love’s rapture still
awake within my heart
a lifetime later reasoning
the end of childhood's part

The seaside bank upon the rocks
that rounded bed of ferns
is brambled deep with nettles now
but still the dream returns

In summer moments wandering still
in sandals standing there
I dream your freckled face again
your cotton dress your hair

And love first love’s annointment still
sings to my ageing soul
the dream of another glimpse of you
as long as the white waves roll

Dublin's Horse Chestnuts

by

Hay Machine



The umbrella of rich virgin green is open now
the city’s copper domes are pale
all of leafy Dublin is renewed and lush
and in between these giants of the earth
giant oak and beech and poplars reach for the watery sky

The chestnuts decked with ivory rosettes are
splendid like the elephants
outstanding plumage mountainous around
the red bricks and the gateways dressed
growing up from gardens parks and narrow footpaths on the ground

Nowhere else its character derives
such soft elegance from the chestnut trees
and no one could be poor of heart with these
the day’s thoroughfares lined and sheltered
the mood of evening rounded by their noble stance



The Desert of Despair

by

Hay Machine



Faithful failed pursuit of the imagination’s will
high ambition’s blinding fancy
singing to the fish awash with wonder where
the plate glass panels of the fish tank keep the water in
and blind the wishful thinker with its glare

And ooh the fish are spellbound too
with wide-eyed sucker’s stare
unblinking out upon defeat’s
last desert of despair

Brickfield Lane

by

Hay Machine



William Murphy stooped and turned the handle ‘round a last time
stepped through the door within the door
his builder’s yard his lifeline
where planks and rusting scaffolds lay
their own hollow melodies when walked upon
here neatly strewn by the inner sanctum

Soft cardboard boxes grey were filled with mixed remainders
screws washers pins nails nuts clips and rings
the droppings of a hundred years
roof-ladders sieves twine putty primer brushes
rusting hinges and enamel bolts
paint cans oil cans black rusting billycans
brass fittings hacksaw blades
pliers monkey-wrenches copper pipe
half-spools of wire a kettle and a sea of shavings
a workbench with a bandsaw new
the grit from life’s engravings

Wheelbarrows caked with concrete scabs
hammers picks shovels sticks chisels drill-bits buckets
trowels plumlines flux and glue
the ants upon the window sill
and all of this for you

The makings of an arc to float
his loved-ones o’er the oceans
and felt-tacks for the roofing felt
to roof his life’s devotions