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As the sun burns in a red September sky Children are dying in some far off place While we, shocked neighbours through the lens fish eye Recall 10 years of our own glowering peace
Where plans begun with all the best intentions Rot under the pallid, deferred glance; Courage creeps away into the darkness And hope is something hazy in the distance.
Yet for all that, the guns are mostly silent Our violence strains its shackles in the wood Not to be provoked, unleashed, or whispered For fear of 'God, or whatever means the good.'
Could it be our causes are just minnows In a teeming sea of snapping, rabid sharks, Our bloodshed not sufficient for the zeitgeist, Where conflagration matters more than sparks.
I fear that we are all scooped out and hollow Cold vessels in an unprepared state; Who if not filled up with love and reason Choose holy vengeance, and the dance of hate.
You've been to the east, you've heard The icicle tones of temple bells Tinkling out of the mountains to the tilled lands Far below, to copper, Buddha-serene valleys Where imagination posits us in Shangri-La. As it's going to be one of those sunsets A blood orange fiery spectacular Flame thrown across the sky Let's dander in the late summer breeze Down to where the boats cram the harbour Or dry dock on the oyster shale To that humming aluminium forest where in the quickening August swells Masts shiver out the sound of Temple Bells.
From my childhood bedroom window The great lough lay
like a woven scarf of silver A mere four green fields away.
To my infant eyes it marked The world's pale horizon,
Which every morning boked up A vegetable sun.
I knew that when the time came To run away from home
For some sin yet uncommitted Some homework not done,
I would pack my bags and hit the road in the direction of the Lough
As it glimmered in my vision With only four green fields to walk.
But my short legs never carried me Through that broad mid-Ulster plain
Though the fields are long built over, The great Lough, of course, remains.
Strange that you, who were so sad Should bring about such happiness Or maybe not; that humming thread You wove into sound with dancing fingers was not perhaps wholly of your own making.
Why this meandering Celt should fix Upon your Oh so Englishness, God knows. Except it seems a gentle place Full of the subtler qualities We are forbidden to have now.
For the troubadours who fed our dreams Have been outlawed from the world And damn them for it; I know too Your butterfly elusiveness solidified Into an earthbound death star.
But the songs escape all that Lovingly possess the hearts of others Like benign and welcome spirits. As beyond time you wistfully sing Something perfect for a damp May morning.
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