Essential Poems from the Staying Alive Trilogy by Neil Astley Read Free Book Online

mother.
    Miss Him when the linen-covered
    dining-table holds warm bread rolls,
    shiny glasses of red wine.
    Miss Him when a dove swoops
    from the orange grove in a tourist village
    just as the monastery bell begins to take its toll.
    Miss Him when our journey leads us
    under leaves of Gothic tracery, an arch
    of overlapping branches that meet
    like hands in Michelangelo’s Creation . 

    Miss Him when, trudging past a church,
    we catch a residual blast of incense,
    a perfume on par with the fresh-baked loaf
    which Miłosz compared to happiness.
    Miss Him when our newly-fitted kitchen
    comes in Shaker-style and we order
    a matching set of Mother Ann Lee chairs.
    Miss Him when we listen to the prophecy
    of astronomers that the visible galaxies
    will recede as the universe expands.
    Miss Him when the sunset makes
    its presence felt in the stained glass
    window of the fake antique lounge bar.
    Miss Him the way an uncoupled glider
    riding the evening thermals misses its tug.
    Miss Him, as the lovers shrugging
    shoulders outside the cheap hotel
    ponder what their next move should be.
    Even feel nostalgic, odd days,
    for His Second Coming,
    like standing in the brick
    dome of a dovecote
    after the birds have flown.
    DENNIS O’DRISCOLL

Sheep Fair Day
    The real aim is not to see God in all things, it is that God, through us, should see the things that we see.
    SIMONE WEIL
    I took God with me to the sheep fair. I said, ‘Look
    there’s Liv, sitting on the wall, waiting;
    these are pens, these are sheep,
    this is their shit we are walking in, this is their fear.
    See that man over there, stepping along the low walls
    between pens, eyes always watching,
    mouth always talking, he is the auctioneer.
    That is wind in the ash trees above, that is sun
    splashing us with running light and dark.
    Those men over there, the ones with their faces sealed,
    are buying or selling. Beyond in the ring
    where the beasts pour in, huddle and rush,
    the hoggets are auctioned in lots.
    And that woman with the ruddy face and the home-cut hair
    and a new child on her arm, that is how it is to be woman
    with the milk running, sitting on wooden boards
    in this shit-milky place of animals and birth and death
    as the bidding rises and falls.’ 
    Then I went back outside and found Fintan.
    I showed God his hand as he sat on the rails,
    how he let it trail down and his fingers played
    in the curly back of a ewe. Fintan’s a sheep-man
    he’s deep into sheep, though it’s cattle he keeps now,
    for sound commercial reasons.
                                                           ‘Feel that,’ I said,
    ‘feel with my heart the force in that hand
    that’s twining her wool as he talks.’
    Then I went with Fintan and Liv to Refreshments,
    I let God sip tea, boiling hot, from a cup,
    and I lent God my fingers to feel how they burned
    when I tripped on a stone and it slopped.
    ‘This is hurt,’ I said, ‘there’ll be more.’
    And the morning wore on and the sun climbed
    and God felt how it is when I stand too long,
    how the sickness rises, how the muscles burn. 
    Later, at the back end of the afternoon,
    I went down to swim in the green slide of river,
    I worked my way under the bridge, against the current,
    then I showed how it is to turn onto your back
    with, above you and a long way up, two gossiping pigeons,
    and a clump of valerian, holding itself to the sky.
    I remarked on the stone arch as I drifted through it,
    how it dapples with sunlight from the water,
    how the bridge hunkers down, crouching low in its track
    and roars when a lorry drives over. 
    And later again, in the kitchen,
    wrung out, at day’s ending, and empty,
    I showed how it feels
    to undo yourself,
    to dissolve, and grow age-old, nameless: 
    woman sweeping a floor, darkness growing. 
    KERRY HARDIE

from Of Gravity and Light
    ( enlightenment )
    What we need most, we learn from the menial tasks:
    the novice raking sand in Buddhist