Voices for verses

 Voices for verses

Do you sometimes wonder at our poets’ voices,

When reading verse they change

And sound like William Butler Yeats?

Do you wonder what becomes 

Of normal voices when they read

A few simple lines of poetry?

It just seems we drop a tone, go on and on

Sounding like a walrus or a foghorn

Like a singer with a single note. 

Why this tone as if in schoolrooms

Adult poets wrestle with their larynx

And everything can sound surreal?

Is it the effort of the shy one

Projecting to the back of room? 

Should the poet hide in the corner?

Is it true that poetry now

Is often better read than heard?

Like the small child who’s better seen?

Five different readers, five distinct voices

We each hear in our minds ear,

Like the Mass in Latin liturgy?

Have we become a race of readers?

Is our effort to declaim the verses

Sounding strangely unnatural?

Should we celebrate the voice we hear

In our inner ear, not publicly? 

Retain the veil, protect our privacy?

Odyssey

 Odyssey

Thanks to Google we surf the net

We slip into the water at the Forty Foot

At early dawn when light blinks in the East

We drink our cappuccino at eleven

In a different ocean for we have moved

To Sydney via Hydra and Greek islands

With cottages sparkling white above a sea

That shimmers blue and cerulean. 

Our spirit’s free from time and history

Released from village life and geography 

To mix and mingle with the icons 

That shone so brightly in the sixties 

Gasping as we realize their little lives

Were smaller than our own. 

We sail a sailing boat with plumes

Streeling far behind the memories

Laced with sweet nostalgia 

Drawing shapes as smooth as gossamer 

Far and near, obscure and clear

Capturing the universe and its progeny. 

We’ll celebrate this hourly miracle

That drops the globe right at our feet

We’ll toast the science that allows

Time and space to be contracted 

And viewed upon our four inch screens. 

Deck chairs

 Deck chairs

Every July we went to the outhouse

To fish out the summer ware 

The broad brimmed hats

And the wooden deck chairs 

Whose stripes had faded over time

But they had given some service 

On sultry summer evenings 

When Killiney resembled Naples. 

Even Churchtown inland

With golf at its borders 

Warmed its orchards and parks 

Along the Dodder flowing slowly. 

Tennis with the Hughes’s

Cricket in Charlton’’s field 

Playing cowboys in the Glenside

Our world was complete. 

The fifties proclaimed order 

In a world just recovered 

From a Second World War 

A war like no other.  

Bankers

 Bankers

Spare a thought for the Bankers

Who worked in every town

From lofty Dublin to the Provinces

Whose proud and handsome premises

Conveyed a sense of industry 

In the far flung parishes. 

The pub the church and the Bank

The Guinness sign and the steeple

Signaled all was well

That God still loved his people. 

In times before we had to choose

Whom we liked and who would lose 

The vox pop on the radio

Before resentment did enslave us. 

The Banker lent the money 

As though it was his own 

Maybe all the better for

It found its way back home. 

And then there were the charities

That asked for help each year 

A raffle prize, a golfing trophy

A list of local worthies. 

The branch stood there across the square

For over half a century 

Now it’s sold and in its place

Another fast food franchise. 

Tell me

 Tell me

Tell me friend your life is better

Please don’t share your small complaints 

Tell me that you sat in sunshine

That today you enjoyed the weather. 

Recount how you enjoyed

The game of golf on Telly

Regale me with your favorite meal

Any good news from far or near. 

Learn to lie and tell me how

I’m looking great even though

We both know it isn’t true

For truth is overrated. 

I know it’s normal to give out 

To point out what’s missing

But wouldn’t it be nice somehow

To reflect on all you’re getting?

A pleasant word would make me happy

Make you happy too I suspect

For we become what our words make us

Say words of joy to keep us sane. 

See no evil, hear no evil

But above all this my friend,

Speak no evil and we’ll be rewarded

Feeling happy when we’ve parted. 

Falling

 He fell

He fell beneath the weight

Of a cross and life’s cares

He fell again under a midday sun

With no one there to help him on. 

He fell a third time and it seemed

He could walk no further 

But up he rose and staggered on

With Simon’s help supporting. 

It’s times like this we need a hand

The mercy of a stranger 

We need a helping shoulder

To share the load and the burden. 

Fall we must and fall we will

On life’s uneven boreen, 

Up we rise, time and again

Til we reach our homeland. 

Palm Sunday

 Palm Sunday

Palm Sunday prophet 

Riding a donkey

Your welcome was fulsome

Your entrance applauded. 

Yet a week later

You exit the city

Scorned by the mob

Showing no pity. 

What is the matter

With ordinary people?

At times so adoring

But often so fickle. 

Things haven’t changed

Over the centuries

Today you’re on top

Tomorrow you’re history. 

Today we hold palms

In the palms of our hands

We’ll try to remember 

Our sense and our decency. 

Easter is coming 

The people expecting

A savior to save them

A messiah to lead on

But the path he is leading

Is the one least expected

It’s the road to long service

It’s a highway to save us. 

Language

 Language

Language is not just a way of saying things 

Words are a way of being. 

A different way of seeing

To cease being strange in a foreign land. 

Often we discover in a corner

Hidden traits in our makeup 

A foreign person lurking there

Just waiting to wake up and speak.   

Another me, another you

Our neighbors never knew

And so in traveling abroad 

We embrace a different view. 

There is no feeling we cannot copy

There is no sound that doesn’t echo

We are one cosmic tribe 

Sharing links for one million years. 

Moving forward with de Chardin

In a cosmic arc of grace 

Many words and many nations

Arching in the sweep of heaven. 

One hundred

 One hundred

I am one hundred nations

Speaking one hundred tongues

My DNA is sourced from many lands 

I’m not Irish as much as human. 

In Tenerife I find a place my soul

Had inhabited before the Spaniards

My spirit dropped anchor in the fields

Above the azure sea beneath the cloudless sky. 

In France I found an echo

Of a voice I formed at least

One hundred years ago on a Breton farm

Beside a pink granite shore. 

We are a scattering of cosmic dust

With accents drawn from far and near

Don’t tie me to one village

When I hearken to them all. 

Pilgrim Verses

 Author’s Note ‘Pilgrim Verses’. 

I began writing poetry a decade ago as a coping mechanism to deal with the anxieties that arose when I became increasingly free of the burdens of office life.  

Four decades of discipline engendered by almost a decade of seminarian life and three decades of long-houred professional life had suppressed cosmic curiosity. The result is a ‘cri de coeur’ as words and images burst to the surface. 

While there are constant themes - the joys of nature and a simple life, questions about G/god and a next life there is very little attempt to manage these unruly reflections which were born from yearning, frustration and pure joy too. 

This impulse to publish the verses came from two sources - on one hand the wish to leave a testimony (hopefully there is a poem or a line that may speak to you too) and the other to raise money for a charity that is very close to my heart called Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) which runs weekend experiential workshops mostly in Irish prisons. Although inspired by Quakers it is non denominational and open to all. 

While many of the verses express despair about climate change nevertheless I believe the greatest virtue is HOPE (honestly!) and AVP embodies the hope and belief that we can all turn our lives around even if it be on our last day in a nursing home. The Gospel of the second and forty second chance may be the only Gospel worth following. 

And so it is appropriate that the beautiful design and calligraphy is produced by Vincent Daniau a talented artist who is married to Dorothée our tireless AVP Coordinator and volunteer. 

A big thank you to my wife Lorraine, to my children and friends for your constant love over many years which have helped me survive these highs and lows and for supporting me in expressing them. 

Padraic Murray. Summer 2019

‘Pilgrim Verses’ available on Amazon and Kindle. 

March moment.

 March moment

This moment’s a nothing

In the middle of spring

But it’s rapture and beauty

Beyond everything. 

Distractedly wandering 

Among yellow furze

On Killiney’s bare Heath

Overlooking Dublin Bay.

Startled by moments 

That arrive unprepared

Invading our daydreams

Surrounded by flowers. 

Wind blows in the high trees

But down here it’s so quiet

Overlooking the fairway

Deserted by Covid. 

The green keeper mows 

As if there’s no change

On the tee box next Sunday

Decorum prevails 

Nothing has changed

But everything has

The clouds are amassing

On Dublin’s fair hills

And when the clouds break

The soft sun comes kissing

The back of our shoulders

The heat we’ve been missing. 

It’s a modest March Tuesday

As the world spins along  

Unaware of our presence like

The cars in the distance. 

Tiger

The Covid Tiger

We think we’ve tamed the tiger

We’ve got him in our sights

We’re ever so familiar

We invite him to our house. 

Twelve long months we’re looking

Each other from afar

I’m seeing him on the TV

He hunts for me indoors. 

His teeth are even sharper 

His claws are much the same

His heart has little mercy

For old or young today. 

In truth he’s getting stronger

He loves we’re so distracted

He’ll plunge a knife into our backs

When we least expect it. 

So listen up and hunker down 

Wear your mask and keep your distance

We’re nearly there, we must survive it

We’ll celebrate when it’s all over. 

Crockery

 Crockery

He threw the crockery on the floor 

And then he just stormed out

Breaking the morning tranquility

Cracking the family mirror. 

We then were left picking the pieces

On the white tiled kitchen floor 

Trying to make sense of it all

This had happened oft before. 

He then returned in the evening

Full of bonhomie. 

He had managed to expel his demons 

The lucky devil he. 

While we on the other hand suffered

As we scrambled to make sense 

Of the early morning meltdown

Lost in a moral mayhem. 

We are the ones left living with it

As he bangs the door behind him

We are the silent victims

Of his selfish angry surges. 

Is the time right we wonder 

To show him the door 

That he slams so easily

And give us back some serenity? 

House Divorce

 House divorce

I married this house forty years ago

Neither of us looking better for age 

My knees are buckling and so are the gutters

The time has arrived when both leave the stage. 

Give me a warm nursing home

Where draughts are excluded by law

Find me an agent who will rid me for good

Of this ramshackle old bungalow. 

It’s windows mirror my eyes

Stained by weather and rain

It’s trusses splutter and mutter

Like my stomach after the mains. 

The house it needs a new owner 

The body it needs a new soul

Both have long journeyed together

Divorce is the only way now. 

McCarthys Bar

 Pete McCarthy’s Bar

1. I am reading McCarthy’s Bar for the third time. And enjoying it more than ever. It opens with the marvelous premise that you should never pass a bar with your name over it. He follows this and other rules religiously.  
2. I read it for the first time in Mallorca over Easter 2003. It rained solidly day and night for 72 hours and persuaded me to hop on a plane to buy in the Canaries where winter sun is guaranteed. On the fourth day the rain clouds dissipated and sun deprived pasty faced  holiday makers gathered round the pool. Lorraine was sorely embarrassed at my breaking into uncontrolled laughter. The Brits smiled benignly as they regarded this as typically Irish behavior while reading a book. I can assure you it is not. 
3. The book has been lent to me by a class mate and in turn I have lent him the sequel, the amusing but inferior McCarthy’s World. 
4. I did buy at least one copy of McCarthys Bar but lent it on at least one occasion without return. I don’t normally mind when books are not returned but this is one book worth keeping. 
5. A horrible thought has struck me. What if I have donated it to the Quaker Library in Monkstown by mistake? No way of finding out during lockdown. Heavens!  
6. I enjoyed reading the book the first time because it’s a very funny book. But what I had missed was that beyond being a really humorous piece of writing it is really well researched. 
7. It is knowledgeable  beyond most travel books. 
8. No writer loves Ireland and the Irish more than Pete. No one can reveal our foibles with less mercy than he.  
9. It is perceptive about Ireland and it’s people and immigrants and tourists beyond any other social commentary I’ve read. 
10. While Pete might be appalled at the thought it’s fair to ask if it is not also a self help book that suggests we change our attitudes to time, travel, prejudices and Chinese food? 
11. In no other travel book has the joy of traveling been more enjoyable than the act of arriving. 
12. The book is all the more poignant because within four years Pete had died of cancer when there were daily more obvious mortal dangers on his travels. 
13. He has the timing of a stand up comedian. Which of course he was. 
14. He almost gives Volvo Cars a good name. (I’m on my 10th Volvo - 14th if I include Lorraine) I’m nostalgic for the clunky chunky Volvos of the eighties and nineties. 
15. It is a book of social reference for an Ireland that was beginning to lose its sense of self during the Celtic Tiger. 
16. It is the Gospel of unintended consequences and the joys of an unplanned grand journey. 
17. It is a criticism of travelers like me who organize everything and miss the fun of everything going wrong which produce the best memories. Often the only memories. 
18. Pete would dismiss all this as ridiculous. But he would be only partly right. 

20th March 2021

Stan the man

 Stanislav Petrof

Stanislav Petrof, let’s call the man ‘Stan’

Was the Russian on duty that night

When the US was seen launching missiles 

Said his shakey computer printouts. 

That night was in September 

Nineteen eighty three

My son aged nearly two

Was seeping soundly as kids do. 

We woke up innocent next morning 

Without a having a clue

The world had nearly ended

And we had so much to do. 

Think of the things never finished 

The children never brought into the world 

Had everything finished that night

The end of mankind as we know it

But Stan, he sat on the info

Believing it flawed and untrue 

Lying to his army superiors fearing 

They’d fire back as army men do. 

An ignorant world kept on sleeping

He kept his secret well hidden

For twenty more years we lived on

Unaware of how close we came to the end. 

The courage of one man is amazing

Or terrifying depending on your view 

That our existence should rely on a hero

With bravery and sense to come through  

How many more times can we roll

The nuclear dice and keep winning?

Why is Britain now thinking 

Of increasing its nuclear arsenal?

Small men always need big guns

To hide behind their mistakes 

Wars have always been started by cowards

Afraid of facing the truth.

Deflect all their woes on the ‘enemy’ 

Is the trademark of the tyrant

The populist shortcut to victory 

While drinking champagne at Chequers. 

If the nuclear war is started

There’ll be no more drinking on Sundays

Or on any weekday for that matter

For the despot can barely hold out

Because his short suit is easily shattered.

BBC to BBT

 From BBC to BBT

All of my life I turned to the Beeb

When living in Spain or in Ireland 

It’s to them I turned for the truth

Straight talking, fearsome, implacable. 

But Boris has come and he’s conquered

Cut off their balls like a steer

The staff now singing on cue

Like castrati high up in the choir. 

The British Broadcasting Tories

Will only face questions they’ve posed

To avoid embarrassment daily

Around their disastrous strategies. 

It’s a terrible sight to behold 

It’s a terrible hymn to endure

From journos whose reporting was once 

Respected by friends and by foes. 

. 

What now with the old wine sacks

That have lost their shape and their purpose?

Turn over the channel and listen to Sky

Til a change in Government rescues them. 

Old clothes

 I often wear

I often wear old Christian clothes

Although my God has changed

The dress is familiar and homely

I’m reluctant to abandon

All the habits of the years

No simple pun intended.  

I still love the hymns from the choirs

In ancient Cathedrals with tall spires  

The Gregorian chant lifts my spirit

Regardless of what all the words mean

The Latin allows the mind wander

To discover God at our own pace. 

Christ for me was a prophet

Showing every man a way 

Not founding another religion

Judaism was fine for his day. 

Shortening the road to the Father

Cutting out red tape and the waffle 

Two thousand years are not all wasted

Though clearly the car left the road

On various bends and in various places 

The Inquisition, the conquista and church princes. 

I can’t imagine Christ with a white hat

Or wearing red shoes with red socks

Offering a ring seems offending

His humility so true and appealing 

Walking with joy in brown sandals 

Roads with no concept of Rome. 

Up to Jerusalem he ambled 

Sensing some trouble ahead 

While no politician

He wasn’t a fool and knew 

The powers that be

Had it in for him. 

Two thousand years later

And sometimes no different

The good work still done by the lowly. 

Power is still clasped in the center

By men who have neither changed nor remembered

In halls where Christ threw over tables 

Managed by offspring unforgiving 

The loss of earnings that morning.    

Despite that a light burns 

In every church in the wide land

In memory of him who still 

Rules their hearts and their wills

With his teachings and words 

Strongest when simple 

When left to their own devices. 

The words that form in the desert

Warmer than words of a preacher  

The Christ they want to constrict 

Is stronger when simply set free

To walk in brown dusty sandals  

The spring fields of old Galilee.