The Poetry Page

I'm really sorry for the long delay in producing another Poetry Page. This is entirely my own fault: I cannot and will not use little health problems as an excuse. All I can say honourably in my defence is that I have been really busy with my legal studies, and when not working on them, I've been just too lazy to do anything else.

A new quarterly magazine Imagine, is to be launched by the Tallow Writers' group in Co. Waterford next month for work by Waterford writers or those with interests in Waterford. The first issue will include pieces by (among others) Dervla Murphy and Thomas McCarthy. For more details contact James Hyde at 058 53988 or on fit4purpose@eircom.net. Those who know me know of my soft spot for Co Waterford, its history and people. I hope that Source is a great success and becomes yet one more lustrous jewel in the dazzling tsapestry of local Irish writing.

Last November saw the publication of Voices from the Hollow / Cabaireacht an Cabhain - An Anthology of Young People's Work from County Cavan, edited by Heather Brett. If any criticism can be found - and one will look hard for any - it is the definition of the contributions by the pedestrian description "work"; each one is a jewel, some reminiscent of the finest haiku.

All poems included on the previous four pages are accessible from this page through the following links.

Poems can be sent to me either by e-mail or conventional post. The address is:

The copyright for all material included here belongs to the individual authors.

Some Poems by Kelly Baker

Kelly is a freelance writer and columnist from Canada. Her poetry is charged with emotion, directness and power of expression. Underlying all these qualities is clarity.

Falling Blindly

I've seen you making faces
at the blind man across the street.
Is it because you know
your eyes will never meet?
I heard you yelling at the deaf woman,
you knew she couldn't hear.
It must be because your point
isn't all that clear.
I noticed you trying to hurt me
with the things you say and do.
Don't you know you can't hurt me,
I feel no love for you!
If you could you'd taint the words of a poet
and steal the voice of a singer so he could no longer sing.
You'd steal the water from the ocean
and break a beautiful doves wing.
You coward,
why don't you understand?
Look around you,
you're the only blind man.
You think you know what life's all about,
but you don't hear me when I whisper,
you only hear me when I shout.
What a tangled web you've created
and look who's caught!
There are ropes tied around you
with such a tight knot.
That blind man knew you were there,
that blind man could feel your stare.
Doesn't it bother you
that you go to such an extent
and don't get a reaction from me?
I lean back and let my eyes cross over you
and although how amusing you seem,
I can't laugh,
but wouldn't that bruise your ego
as you get burned by the sun beam?
When you pour rye
into the glass of the recovering alcoholic,
you're the one falling.
When you steal innocence
from a childs soul,
you're the one falling.
You pursue situations
when you don't even know if you can.
Now do you see
that you're the only blind man?

Widow of Blackness

Time is moving
into a tangled web
as Mother Nature
laid back to watch
the innocent butterfly
traveling towards
the widow of blackness.
She laughed
as the butterfly struggled
to free herself
and kept a keen eye
on the eight-legged murderous.
The winds howled
and God turned the lights out
for the night.
The beautiful butterfly
could barely struggle
any longer,
as her wings became frail.
Why did that black widow
wait all night?
To anticipate tragic death?
What could a senseless spider
hardly know or understand?
She can't understand pain,
she can't understand the gift of life
and the last thing she could ever grasp onto
is empathy.
Maybe if the spider had something to live for,
she wouldn't be so quick
to steal the beauty
from this Earth.

Endangered Innocence

A young silk-like body
lay innocently in the snow.
Peace and tranquility
is all he knows.
A gentle cry of hunger
echoes through the sky.
Why does such a beautiful being
have to die?
He doesn't have to die,
but that's just the way the world turns.
As soon as Man steps on this land
dreams of freedom and life burns.
His mother sees it coming,
yet there's nothing she can do.
She can't hold a club and strike someone down,
like you!
But the pup is actually curious,
a slight, gentle wonder.
Little does he know
disaster is about to occur,
like a roar of thunder.
The baby's big brown eyes
look up at these monstrous men.
It's season now,
the unnoticed massacre is about to happen . . . again.
His mother cries,
helpless and alone.
The memories won't fade away
and hear; like a broken bone.
Now these materialistic and heartless men
have had a hard working day.
There on the bloodstained snow,
a lifeless body lay.

" A Thousand Lives "

When I see the crippled old man walk passed me
and I look into his eyes,
I realize that he has lived a thousand lives.
When I see that tearstained face little girl being held in her fathers arms,
I realize she has lived a thousand lives
and is probably about to live a thousand more.
When I saw that young man yesterday,
who seemed so cool and calm,
I knew he was fronting the entire game
when I moved towards him
and his act crumbled to the ground.
I know not you or I could ever fit in their shoes
and they could never fit in ours.
Don't tell anyone everything will be all right,
what a high guarantee!
Don't tell me, " I know how you feel! "
because there's no way empathy could ever be complete.
I don't want your hard earned soul.
I can breathe on my own.
When that crippled old man walks passed me
and I look into his eyes,
I know that he has lived a thousand lives.
Don't you tell that man that everything will be fine,
but just tell me one thing,
that is, if you're man enough to look into eyes,
what do you see when you look into mine?

Like the Stars

I hand you this bottle

I've had over the years.

Within this bottle

is all the tears

I ever cried for you.

It has been a while.

If you asked me

how many tears I shed for you,

I'd say, " Like the stars. "

Juliet

He's chasing the girl
who's hurting inside.
He bares his soul
to the girl who wounds his pride.
He tells her he loves her
and she takes a stab at his heart.
He offres her his patience
and she tears it apart.
She kills him
within her evil glare,
yet the stallion
always runs to his mare.
She kicks up sand
as it stings his eyes.
She ignores
his agonizing cries.
Why do you chase
a girl who's hurting so?
Don't you know
what happened to Romeo?

All Because I Know

You took me to the river side
and tried to push me in,
all because you thought
I couldn't swim.

You took me to the cliff
and tried to push me off the side,
all because you thought
I couldn't fly.

You stood me in front of a target and shot,
then tested to see if I was still alive,
all because you thought
I couldn't survive.

You lied to me,
you told me our love would never die,
all because you thought
it would make me cry.

You started a war,
you made the ice thin,
all because you thought
I wouldn't win.

I looked at you and laughed,
though this game is such a bore,
all because I know,
you're not worth fighting for.

Some poems by Lucy Franks

Lucy works in London, but comes originally from Cavan

SCARRED

There was a kid eating an orange –
indelicately –
the juice from the suppurating fruit,
veining her fingers and dripping between her toes

I caught you smiling at her –
that face you save
for when the world looks in another direction

Royksopp wafted out from the hall of flower jewellery,
hand bleached paper and soul card ruminations,
fake furred cats, and stoned prophets

I thought, I could be a healer,
stopping to watch a barge
pass through the locks

The potato mash offered
tastes of salt and cardamon husks,
whilst the loos smell of vodka

It glues your stomach walls together,
and you wonder if this place
walks itself around alone
at night
to soothe whatever colic grumbles in its guts

that was the day
your words to her
scarred my face
so I thought I could never be
with any other man

The Road of Bone

It was a dry Tuesday -
tepid air heaving through an open window
and the sun’s dying glare fixing over the bookshelf.

The skull end shone it back,
repelling it faster
out beyond the laurel trees, the magnolia.

How sure it bled and danced -
almost as sharp as Siberian snow
dusting the road of bone.

They can’t drive, you know,
disrespectfully,
over the road of bone
in their Hitachi pickups.

How else do you bury a man, they say,
if the ground won’t have him?
but build him back into the road he toiled upon

It was a dry Thursday
in Lund,
an early Swedish summer
when they opened up the floor of the cathedral

Clearing the rubble of 9 centuries
proved that time was more tenacious
in holding her prizes –

A child’s shoe, a breviary,
love notes to choristers telling blushingly
of things too close in meaning
to the ecstasies they sang

Christ hangs in Shrewsbury Abbey -
his corpse resurrected
and placed on display.

Fashioned of sheep bone,
cow bone and fox
I could have sworn his blood
was pooling on the flags beneath

---

MCKIERNAN'S SHOP AT CORLISMORE

On a day when still heat would clam to the soles of your sandalslike a former friend aping your every movement –
on a day when the grit from the road would fill the spaces between your toes
and you would slime your way along like a cutsey wee honey ash blonde slug,
that day would be a good day for McKiernan’s shop.

That cavernous barn of a place squatted stiff
as an Inuit woman birthing on her patch
no garden of delights, but earthiness and reassurances –
like the grey-faced collie chained at the front
who you would expect to chew tobacco and talk
he’d seen such stories unfold
that had found their way into the local newspaper
stacked up higher than the counter,
weighted in place by a brick
taken from the oldest monastic settlement in the area.
Every atom spinning a story – you wouldn’t know what to believe.
All I knew, small child that I was,
the large Esso cans stacked red and glinting their blue letters
in daylight neon
seemed to be barking in place of the dog,

Reluctantly I fell to the pull of my mother’s hand
and entered the store.
I thought this was a place where little more than nothing happened
save the far-off drone of a car
creeping through the dust and crescendoeing onto the forecourt.

It was run by a sister and brother
and she came to greet us
slippers slapping as she shuffled along.
She had rheumy blue eyes
and flaxen hair flattened back in a bun
shafted by a pencil butt.
There were porridge stains down the front of her cardigan
and there was a wispy, near visible odour of corns.

I turned my gaze to the five aisles of stock
and listed the contents to each skip along the tiles
boxes of cereal, odd shoes, ratchets,
hay-bob tynes, house coats, milk replacer,
coffee beans, baling twine, knickers, biscuits,
clocks, soup packets, mixed fruit
and holy children of Prague
acierating me with their righteous glare.
Surely my mother couldn’t want any of this?

If I climbed those shelves and got stuck
I would be lost.
Imagine needing a seventeen rung ladder
to reach a tin of tea!

My mother by now had acquired a newspaper
some rations of beef nuts, and four bags of maize.
She turned her attention to ham for tea –
a thundering ham rinded with thick orange lard
kept enthroned in a counter barely cooled by its slow turning motor,
and then an apple tart
suppurating juice all over the newsprint it sat on.
I could scent chips fried,
saw donuts limp under a muslin cover
and flies sizzling at a blue electric ring.
It was a filthiness that smelled real good.

The sister was adding it all up,
her tongue wetting her thin lips, thinking her thoughts for her.
The brother, a bald man with sideburns
carried the lot to the car for my mother.

The car seat scorched the back of my uncovered thighs
and I dreamed of the promise of ice cream
that would melt through my fingers,
clump my hair together
and attract wasps.
Long rye grass shed seeds through the open window
as the radio mourned ‘ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone’.

Oxford

Oxford doesn’t have a smell.
This picture town you walk into, and back out of again, onto the train
is like a hall of mirrors, except you don’t see yourself
any differently.

Punts lie still this stolen Sunday,
full of winter’s deadened water.
Even the gargoyles hiss and spit unconvincingly.

In the botanic gardens each plant is labelled precisely,
as if the type who comes there would want to know
every last one. Deterrent to rolling in the grass, undoubtedly.

Two women splay-walking in the shifting gravels are relieved:
‘Look! I knew it was there! Magnolia! On the side of that building!’
giving themselves a chance
to be excitedly right, and beat the foreign branded bushes back
with simple recognition.

Despite the stone it is not cold, or hot, or anything,
and in the café two young women labelled almost as obtrusively as the plants
discuss what was, or was not, John.
It could have been his alter ego, his mother complex,
or it may have been his other being,
for he was definitely not himself.
Oh look! There’s Pimms on the menu!

And in the same café a grimacing figure is trapped in a bath
filled with ice from a drainpipe attached to the wall
-one more cryogenic castration
amid the austerity and solid stone foundations
of Balliol, Hertford, All Souls’, Queen’s and Magdalen,
so Magdalen -
you want to rush out and stop the traffic and scream ‘Is this it?’
Is it that the only missing thing from each college’s quadrangle -
is a tree from which to hang someone?
The same someone who said the only way to be yourself in this town
is to get drunk and stay drunk.

This is no world for the young tutors back home
on their eighteen pounds an hour, three-hour weeks
enunciating words like ‘Dostoyevsky’ as if he had bought them a pint last evening,
or words like ‘eunuch’, trying not to look for a mirror –
oh no! that reflex again – they would be as out of place here as knowledge.

A bubble enclosure where soapy animals all breed the same
so it’s not even worth coming to gawk
at spires clutching the sky
like a woman’s hands drowning.

Tulipmania

In the bath when I pull my head under the waterI listen inside myself -
it’s like the lurching of the Tube –
an inequal muffling of tapping couplets.
And when I rinse my hair the water turns the colour of the Thames.

Coming home I saw a woman whose braided hair was scarlet
like blown tulips, so singly coloured.
I had been looking for tulip bulbs,
remembered the bees sniving round their blooms,
loading up the yellow pollen grains and launching off above my head.

Here, crowds hurl up steps, down steps, to empty platforms,
read the news, grope the pages greedily
at home inside them; profit warnings; overweightings; trading statements;
in crisp checked shirts, Gucci glasses and tight, tight underpants.
The uninvited type who tells me furtively over a badly mixed jug of margarita
‘I can give you anything you want…’
Well, how about that Finnish lake painting hanging in the National Gallery?

The view from the surface in and down is thick as clay,
this city swells and contracts, birthing a solitary offspring
while next door’s parents combust through the wall
forcing their children between them.
The street outside, parked with small talk,
so flowery and expensive –
gapped minds.

Some more poems by Eithne Cavanagh, Dublin.

THE UNSEEING EYE

You have licked the juices
and feasted on ripe berries
savouring their tender flesh.
Lips stained red and purple
your mouth drips richness.
Greedy you plunge
moist tangled undergrowth
the sustenance of your soul.
With unseeing eye you reach
a bush already bare.
Thorn bloodied fingers
mime a picking movement
twitching the cool whiteness
of sheets, and I shroud you
against an agony of vision.

Riposte

Paintbox

The colours of my new paintbox are labelled
not just red, blue, yellow, green,
but scarlet lake, ultramarine and ochre.
The garish tin shines silky smooth
as the inside of an eggshell.
Happy paintings decorate the walls
-houses with five windows and a door.
Sentry flowers fline paths, and roundy faces
smile broader than a yellow laughing sun.
My favourite colours are deeply cratered.
The silky lid becomes a viscous mess
of muddy daubs like blurred ideals
where hatred spreads molasses-thick on streets.
The sun no longer lights naively tinted flowers.
Beneath the cobalt sky, an umber land absorbs
innocents’ shed blood: wounded children wearing blue,
red and yellow, weep – half rescued from the rubble.
In the search for truth I long to use
clean primary washes for a pleasing picture,
but choose from sombre palate
shades of khaki, the olive greens and browns
journaling poverty, warfare, grief.

THE CROW TREE

Crows dominate my sky.
Their caw and wingflap
my rock-a-bye-lullaby.

Dog howls slice the night,
Warm blanket no haven
from witches scratching
at the window pane.
Honey-making symphony
Hums the wooden hives,
Corncrake cries behind
My head where wheat sings
Nil tú deich ná haon déag fos
Níl tú, nil tú, kneel to pray
In animin an athair…
Crucifix rasping the starch
Of her Persil whitened soul
With one black swoop
She lands on a girl:
‘…There is a rabbit
In a snare…’
I hear the crows again
Louder than hens
At the back door
Louder than cattle chewing,
Or the thud of the churn
While Donnelly’s sausages
Sponsored tunes sizzle
On the airwaves
With children’s hour
And Mrs Dale.

Tonight the crow-tree
is hushed and secret
an occasional squawk
invades my sleep.

THE JEWEL BEETLES

Eucalyptus trees
dry as sacred frankincense
arch to scent the air.

Like tiny stained glass
the beetles light a greygreen
bush-cathedral vault.

Topaz, sapphire gems,
they glow flame garnet, amber,
in filtered sunshine.

Browsing through tarnished
silver and broken trinkets
you reach for necklace.

Filigree chain links
emerald sapphire ruby beads
which you drop in shock

with dryseed rattle –
minute bodies lacquered hard
once adorned a neck.

TIMES’ TREASURES

Yesterday your house sunshone a safe smile
carmine-lipped geranium Agean on white walls
cerulean sky.
Today Atlantic rainclouds roll to land

diluting the Idyll.
I, fearsome, perch at highest window
‘The house won’t flood’ you say.
Silent, I trace the torrent
through limestone grikes
deep into seeping cave rib.
Somewhere here your treasure
blue, red/gold, sparkling
under generations’ moss.
You, surefooted, torchless,
go your own way.
Stumbling on ice-age boulders
I search the wet flinty seams, custodian of your gemstones
which, if I find unaided, you promise will be mine.

Some poems by Margaret Boles, Dublin.

SECRETS

As I write
The words which
On the surface
Can mean one thing,
My inward spirit
Laughs and sings,
For their secret meaning
Is other, more intense,
Than they at first
Seem to be!

PLEASE

Please, oh, please don't fight
With me, for I must
Have a little quiet
While I log on to
My creative muse,
For with peace and
Thoughts that don't confuse
A new vision will appear
But I must listen
If I really am to hear
My own creative muse.
Please, oh, pleas don't fight
For I know
My muse is right!

IN A DENTAL CHAIR

Close your eyes,
Think of a
Wonderful sunrise
Away from there
In a dental chair
Divorce yourself from it
The thoughts of the nasty bit
Of that deep deep filling
See that wonderful sun
Rising behind your
Closing eyes.

SHEAVES OF SILK

It's never lost, you know
Travel - wisps of memory come back,
And feed the realms Of Poetry,
Swatches of material
In the tailoring shops
Of Bangkok, or
Swathes of tweed
On the looms
In Donegal!

SEA LONGING

I'm going to sit and satisfy my sea longing,
And gaze Out over the waves,
They're gentle today, but more that Iip-lapping, I'll count for the seventh, the largest wave,
And smell the surf and the spray.
A lone gull here, and a trio there,
As they fly low, and low, over the sea,
The evening sun catches, the white feathers sparkle
And glint like rare Jewels against the sky.
And I will tell the sea rare secrets,
Of things I barely know,
Of spirits who loved and loved her,
Long,long ago!

THE HAZELWOOD

I visit Yeatsean places,
go for a walk in the wood beside the lake,
I open my mind and magic flows in,
and my lot disrupting the silence,
I'll return to the car, (pretend to disown them),
The water is shivering gently by the shore,
The immature blackbird scuttles in the undergrowth
hearing my tread,
And dogs are walking, swimming,
Why so many flies?

BARBED WIRE AND WELLINGTON BOOTS.

My husband one day met
An old countryman whose words
He'll never forget,
"The ruination of the countryside has been
Wellington boots and barbed wire," he’d seen,
(my husband reflected),
Drains neglected,
hedging skills lost,
only barbed wire tossed
now along ditches the flair
of professional hedge-makers, their
half-cuts through hawthorn trunks,
side laying of huge hunks
of bush, haunts for sparrows
corncrakes, country birds lost
to the invention of barbed wire
and mud's no problem
for wellington boots.

Some more poems by Mary Guckian, Dublin

NEGLECTED MUSE

Mind alert, the body tired,
thoughts take over,
words come thundering in.
The alarm set, I try to sleep,
but sounds won't go away.
I long to reach for paper,
a pen, but the body aches.
I think of work, the mortgage,
the post on my desk,
urgent letters in the dictaphone,
meetings to be organised,
minutes yet to be typed,
and wages at the week's end.
Words flow away on nights like these
and are never found again.

LOWER DECK - 2000

Pubs change hands for millions of pounds,
then are torn asunder,
while skips are filled with well-worn wood,
old walls and lime dust,
blowing litter all over the city.

Upper decks are turned into restaurants
where golden wood covers the floors,
as eating out becomes our national pastime,
keeping our designer kitchens clean.

At the Lower Deck familiar faces
are there from week to week,
and the sound swells with old songs
from a different era.

LITT'LE CHRISTMAS

The excitement of seeing new faces
visit our small farm was over,
as relations and neighbours stopped calling.
I felt lonesome for the red-berried holly
and the crib packed away with the brass
candlesticks-, the cosy atmosphere
of coloured crepe paper decorations,
cards and posters depicting Merry Christmas,
and Happy New Year, placed in old shoe boxes.
Letters that came with parcels from America
were put aside for acknowledgement.
Waiting for another twelve months
for Christmas cake, plum pudding
and the extra groceries from Murray's shop,
and the local Co-op, made time seem infinite.

GLENVIEW HOTEL GARDENS, CO WICKLOW

Down in the gardens
I walk among trees and flowers.
The Colours are a revelation,
and every year I see more beauty
stretch before my eyes.
I wonder at the power of nature,
and why I am here.

On the main road cars fly past,
as people return to the city
after the long week-end,
but in the midst of this enthralling
landscape, I think only of Pauline
and how she was taken from us
three weeks ago.

How she would have loved
this place of tall trees and birdsong
Most of all, I remember the joy
she gave us, on each visit to her home
with Michael, at Kilmadderoe.

Three Poems by Ena O'Rourke, Dublin

Treasure Trove

I've got some buried treasures
More precious far than gold
No thieves can come and steal them
They're ever-new and yet they're old

I count my treasures daily
As Midas counts his hoard,
And soon I will exhibit
My extraordinary store

All Winter they've been sleeping
Buried deep in darkest soil
Now above the earth they're peeping
Rich reward for little toil

They will blossom forth like jewels
In their frames of tender green,
For my treasures are all masterpieces
Fashioned by a Hand unseen .

When I see their smiling faces
My heart will start to sing
For I know that they'll be saying
"It's Spring, it's Spring, it's Spring"

A Lesser Equal

She wakes at six and rises early
Has tea and toast, then feeds the baby,
The children next, gets breakfast ready,
Prepares the lunch, but feeling seedy.
The children squabble, dawdle, dribble,
Instead of eating, they just nibble
She hears the clock strike half-past eight
"For heaven's sake, we'll all be late"

At last the show is on the road
The children first at school unload
The baby next she leaves with minder
Then hopes today her boss is kinder.
All day she"s in the office busy
The 'phones and figures make her dizzy
By five o'clock she's cleared it all,
But then she hears her boss's call
"I want these credits up-to-date,
Would you consider working late"
She calls her husband right away
Perhaps he will help out today
She found him golfing with a client
"It's business, dear" he says, defiant
Her boss is fairly sympathetic
But mutters darkly, "no commitment"
Refrains from saying something rude,
She hurries off to fetch her brood,
Then home again to same routine,
She's meals to make and house to clean,
Kids to wash and clothes to dry
And comfort baby" s little cry!
By now her husband's currying favour,
"'At last" she says, "a time to savour
This double-jobbing's under-rated,
I wish I wasn't liberated"!

Berefit

I used to think that home was bricks and mortar
Bright lights and cosy comfort.
A house, like many others, but still-
A place apart.

I used to envy those who lived in sylvan splendour,
By woodland, stream or lake
Enriched by nature's awesome beauty,
A shrine apart.

III

I used to dream of palace grandeur and all
that wealth imparts,
Where I would proudly say "this is my home"
To haughty monied folk like me,
A world apart!

But now you're gone, I know for certain,
That "Home" is in the Heart.

Two poems by Ciaran Parker.

By the Waters of Babylon

Once upon a time,
   a rain shower
fell on Cavan.
With the rain
    there fell from the heavens
the days of the year.
Where each one
     landed a lake formed.

Some were large
    the day they came
from was important:
a feast day, or
    an anniversary of a battle perhaps.
Others were so ordinary that memory
    merged them together.

Later the stars pealed
    their music overhead,
the Great and Little Bear,
The Aurora Borealis also.
      The play of star-light
gave glow to the fish.
The salmon, perch,
       bream, eel – all
were charged with the music
       of far-off galaxies.

I used to gather reeds
     on their banks
for styluses to write
songs of hope on
      parched papyrus -
yet always in secret.
I crouched low,
     on all fours,
like a grasshopper. I was
so afraid of being seen, or
     discovered to be a dreamer.

Then one day, someone
     poured poison into the water.
All the fish died,
their bloated bodies - once
     an orgy of sunrises and sunsets -
were now brown and putrid.
Their corpses were collected,
     wrapped in the local paper
     ready for exhibition.

People did not cry.
They said it was a pity,
but it could have been worse.
Power poisons all, after all.

I wailed and sobbed silently,
yet still I deafened.
So persistent was I
that I was warned to stop
in case I disturbed the geese
laying their golden eggs.

But I kept one reed safe from pollution.
I sharpened it into a stylus.-
It wrote this poem.

The Silent Muezzin.

I climb the minaret’s
serpentine stairs with difficulty.
- it takes me all day now -
Each step is an ordeal.

At the top I see the land bathed
In the yellow-orange treacle of
the sun’s farewell to earth.
The rivers run with blood towards
their fate in the endless dry salt desert.

And I, clasping my hands
to my ears, begin my task.

‘Allah is great. There is no God but Allah and
Muhammed is his prophet’.

My mouth is a boiling cavern.
My tongue trembling, ecstatic in muteness.
Nothing stirs; neither the clouds nor the crickets.

I yearn to fly from this pinnacle,
this needle-point of nothingness –
To soar like a hawk through the ether,
   or swim like a butterfly bathed in
      the perspiration of rainbows,
To be carried like driftwood
       on the waves to distant shores,
          to speak in tongues

Soon it is night.
The sky fills with stars.
I know all their names.
I even know how many there are,
- I have counted them, you see.
Their reflections are caught in
a bowl of deep red wine.
I drink it and become one with them.

I do not have a lamp up here
and so can see the darkness better.

‘Allah is great: there is no God but Allah
- and I, the silent muezzin, am his prophet.’