IN THIS LUMINOUS DELUGE OF SILENCE

sunshine filling the kitchen,
cutlery stung by the light’s cry,
clock ticking its quiet fiery rhythm by,
floor minutely digressing in its
sun-filled specks of tiles
with memories of bees,
trees and seas
sweeping on in the stare
of their own time,
in this luminous
deluge of silence
while my dog lays her muzzle
as ever on my thigh,
here, under the table
where I sense a dazzled stillness
telling much more than
I’m able to tell,
in this still fiercely untrimmed
staring springtime,
in this quiet deluge
of minutes and ages
I just feel light can
summon all stages
over which spreading,
in jests that never rest,
the bright chores of ghosts,
the clamor of bones,
the burning, hidden
heart of stones,
and the thronging sinews
of the sun-beaten marrow
of noon.

MUDWOMAN

As far as I am concerned the first great, and maybe it's going to be the greatest, literary event of the year has happened: Joyce Carol Oates's latest novel "Mudwoman" I ordered, has arrived, I have started reading it at once...the narrator's voice is, as ever, like a light that gets sharper and sharper and more conspicuous at every paragraph, there's this sense of increasing force in the narration, a grip that tightens with an absolute determination on a ground reminding of Shakespeare and Eliot and the Greek tragedies. The natural setting splendidly obsessive, clustering and luminous, even if ominous too, like a growing, expanding hum.

Brendan Kennelly

I think I have written in these years in this blog about Brendan Kennelly, the famous Irish poet, playwright and teacher of English at the Trinity College,Dublin.
I have never been able to find him via internet but in the 90's I had exchanged a couple of letters with him in which he encouraged me about a poem I had written and sent him when, for me, writing in English seemed almost preposterous, let alone thinking about being published. Brendan Kennelly has always represented for me a sort of spontaneouly riotous and brilliant and explosive poetic energy. I have seven or eight collections of his poetry, what is most impressive is "Poetry My Arse" published in 1995. Today I relived the atmosphere of this collection because I decided to read a simple and powerful poem from it to the students of my classes hoping they would develop some reflection out of it.
I enclose the poem here, the inverted commas in the title and at the beginning and end of the text itself suggest maybe that the words should be considered as reported from some source, I am always wondering which, any idea?


“We failed the mountains” by BRENDAN KENNELLY

“The mountains have always been our friends.
They gave us snow and rain.
They gave the sun a chance to do all
in its power for us. It did.
We gave the mountains names
to do them justice. Touching heaven
is a mountain’s justice.
We learned green and light and rock from them,
were educated by their ice.
They gave us dreams, more than we ever dared
to take, follow, be tested by. We couldn’t handle their generosity.
They instructed us in kinship and difference
of waterfall and stream.
We let ourselves down.
We failed the mountains.
They wanted to make us real
but we’d rather be anonymous
victims of the ever-deepening All-American Scream.”

Cannon's Mouth

Well, my poem "Musing" should certainly be "cropped" and revised and trimmed, I have let myself go into the wilderness of writing with it as one day, in a marvellous letter Carole Baldock told me to do "write David, she said, for the hell of it..." It was the best encouragement I have ever received. By the way, buy the new, n.158, issue of Orbis and read about, in Carole's editorial, what happened to her and to possible readers or friends in the jungle of the internet and its deceptions...
Anyway I thank David King who has made the effort of reading the "cannonades" of my "Musing" and had to read it twice, sorry, to find a way, I imagine, in its entangled chaos of lines and suggestions...
talking about cannons, I found at my door coming back from work today the 43 issue, March 2012, of Cannon's Mouth with four of my most recent poems in it. Really a pleasant surprise also because I hadn't received, or maybe I had forgotten to have received, any communication about that.