Leaving the violence of Northern Ireland for the tranquility of Yorkshire. |
At the border where North meets West and East, Hillsides slide into northern flatlands, Exhaling ravishment. Seduced with levity, I forget darker scenes; Ulster’s hillsides, Sucking life to premature death... Black despair Tearing reason’s staff, From solid ground. My twisted mind, Tortured by deaths... Hate’s rhetoric, The stench of corrupting goodness Rising from rivers of unworthy termination... Now seeks the meandering streams of memory; Sticklebacks skimming in idle becks, Pond Skaters on quiet pools, Swallows darting - Chirruping cheerful summers, Curlews crying a plaintiff strain...Stay; Larks raising me to past joys, Butterflies drawing me down their fluttering path, Damselfly’s hovering Over my safe earth Tranquil lake. Reed Mace whisperering strength. Opened by desiccating sun, Crazed earth Echoes my shattered mind, Cracked by hate, bigotry, intolerance The ranting of the right... Hostility rings round half-forgotten Ulster hills. Now, surrounded by the scented air And ripening Barley fumes, Hogwort raises her mature head, Acknowledging the fertile sun Setting on her bed of hungry children In eternal rays, Rising poppies wave at me Without addictive platitudes That promise vapid dreams of paradise And forever. Northward, dark woodland Whispers serenity... Her dark, garlic-scented sweetness Drawing death’s bitter cud... Purging it. I had left for hillocks of the dead... Where those who breathed tomorrow Lie in unquiet rest... Exterminated innocence. From landscapes of mourning, She called me home. Cypress - tall and motionless, Breathe the perfumed exhalations, Moon rising behind Streaks the Barley heads with mellow glow. Joy here...peace...stability, Green fields without the staining of lost life; Pure rivers...not red Like raging torrents of the dead. Mind flees to boyhood earth... Where eternal orbs illuminate the Cooling Towers at Selby... I am returned to Eden, Inhaling her tomorrows. |