Over the Boundaries Read online

  Shannon —

  Tidal river, resting bed of youth’s dreams and aspirations,

  Of many a false tear and a true one,

  From stage-set to retreat halls,

  Girlhood to womanhood, generation upon generation,

  Gone in silence, gone in glory.

  Sisterhood Revisited

  The last of the tennis players had left the courts,

  Deserted now, echoes of rebounding balls

  Lingered in our ears, hearts filled

  With poignancy, uneasy peace.

  How long can this thing last? Sweet thing

  Called youth, life, happiness. Elusive as

  The gentle breeze that touched our cheeks

  As we loitered in the trees’ warm shade,

  Mingling in the branches,

  Chatting and playing like children —

  Touching, running, jumping — full of a sense

  Of the timelessness of warm sunny days.

  Winding our way slowly back up the steps,

  We leave it all behind. Spell broken, we say goodbye,

  Flinging the cherryblossom from our arms,

  Laughing still, our disparate paths strewn

  With showers of petal pink. Strangers

  From the four corners of the province,

  We had briefly met, broken the solitude of our shells,

  Conquered the fears, mistrust, the part-forgotten pain,

  Come out and walked like angels

  Or flown like birds on the wing

  And, what if only for one summer, for a day,

  We were almost beautiful then.

  When the Saints

  They came from the hill fields,

  From the rushy plains beyond

  Where bogcotton dots the heather,

  Where lark and curlew sing.

  Their hearts were light as they tripped gaily

  Down to the village church —

  If they carried a cross, I could not see it then:

  O meekness of the saints, friendliness unbounded,

  You smiled as you went past in your Sunday best

  While the world rode by you

  And you knew it not nor cared.

  They came to pay their respects at last,

  Not on foot this time but in motorcars.

  I watched them as they filed past,

  Their downcast faces as they climbed the stairs —

  As Gaels they had lost a chieftain,

  Sheep, their sheperd had gone.

  I had lost a dad, but they said goodbye to a friend:

  O meekness of the saints, friendliness unbounded,

  You grieved as you went past in your Sunday best

  While the world rode by you

  And you knew it not nor cared.

  The Old Schoolyard

  Tall trees stand in the schoolyard,

  A big wind blows in the ragged branches above our heads.

  We hop, jump in the caked mud,

  Eyes drawn to the blue slate

  Thrown at a square in the lined earth.

  We stood at the schoolhouse door,

  With the eyes of a five year old I beheld the workplace of

  my dad.

  The chimney belched loud puffs of smoke into the sky

  above,

  The teachers smiled when I replied, “I’d slap her hard,”

  Catherine K. couldn’t spell a word.

  Nothing’s changed, nothing’s changed

  Though the engine’s chug-chug is dead and Catherine’s

  gone,

  A west wind blows through the pines

  And a blackbird sings

  Where my heart once sang in the old schoolyard.

  September Morning

  To the memory of Major Tom Moloney, killed in

  manoeuvres in Baldonnel in 1925, aged twenty-six

  Without hiding, I hid

  From what I knew to be love,

  knowing love would find me anyway;

  Lingered in the shadows serving my fellow-man,

  Looked for the transformation of my woes

  In history’s files. What I found there,

  What I saw high overhead the battlefields

  Urged me to speak with a voice the dead are denied,

  To look again for truth

  Which offers itself anew in every touch,

  In each new experience, however tried.

  Storm clouds gather beneath the moon,

  Dark forms swirling in her haloed light;

  The hour of reckoning fast approaches

  Yet my step will not be quickened,

  My heart awaits with customary reticence

  A fate it will not shirk. Who will rid me

  Of this burden? The knowledge that all is sinking,

  All is sunk and no-one can flee the trap.

  Voices divorced from the speaker, actions from the doer;

  I am a loser in this game where the stakes are high,

  The odds piled high against me.

  The planes are war-worn, their engines tired.

  ‘Our army must be tested’ my superiors argue, ’our men

  tried.’

  The enemy is man’s heart, home to murder and

  destruction,

  Jealousy and pride. With heavy heart I put on my belt -

  Will man ever rid himself of the curse of war?

  I have one weapon, one friend left me -

  Hope, sweet hope, to which I cling.

  Hope, you who chasten all sadness

  And temper all joy, to you I surrender my trophy,

  A thing so small, a greeting from the past

  As the horseman rode by.

  Man from the West

  We follow the path of your reminiscing

  Up the river of your youth, the Moy,

  Where you stand knee-deep in the Ridge Pool,

  Slaughter-house nearby, as you fish for eels

  In the brown, swirling waters.

  Serious fisherman then as now,

  Self-deprecating humour punctuating sentences,

  You note where the plough has turned the sod

  In another’s field and nimbly tread the furrows

  Knowing that the work is but half-done.

  A measure of the intelligence of the man,

  To appreciate thus what another has sown,

  To walk in someone else’s shoes,

  Mere spectator in the flesh

  Knowing true circumcision of the heart.

  Portrait of the Artist

  for Jack Donovan

  ’I keep the two sides of my work separate — portraits,

  stuff I can do with my eyes closed, well, almost, and this

  …

  Finger pointed at the daring splashes of colour

  Of the Punch and Judy-like figures strutting about

  On the canvas stage. Statements tinged with sarcasm,

  perhaps,

  And that surfaced only on the painted board, images

  From the subconscious of old ladies in their second

  childhood

  And from history, bishops, warriors, peasants, lords,

  All reduced in a few strokes to their essence

  In ridiculous and exaggerated pose, giving no hint

  Of the colour left waiting on his palate

  To paint the real man, the artist soul, childlike innocence

  Trapped like a caged bird in light, neglected frame.

  Giving no hint at all of what he had left

  So entirely to someone else to say,

  The most difficult and challenging part always,

  As with him now, to rescue a glimpse of the true self

  Hovering between tremulous expression

  And the silence of the grave.

  Kathleen Mavourneen

  She fed us snails and snakes —

  Albeit seasoned with flaked almonds —

  For breakfast, dinner and tea.

  Disgusted,
I threw them on the fire,

  “And take your chest of private things

  Out of my way,” I said. Acquiescing,

  She took out a late reader in Gaelic and, reading,

  Read out the translation every few lines.

  Oh, the wilderness schools,

  Out on the coasts

  Where young and old gather

  To watch a language die.

  Fed on grants and schemes

  The soul of a nation cannot survive

  For it is not on bread alone

  That a people lives.

  Israel

  A time of joy also for Jacob who, up until now,

  has been travelling the road alone, afraid to

  meet his God. He wants to know that he too

  is forgiven, he wants to make peace with his God.

  June 2000

  Children of light

  Ever reaching above,

  Not knowing the reason why.

  Unable to rest

  In the multitude of gods

  Created here below,

  Unwilling to forego

  The endeavour involved

  In struggling with your God —

  Jacob and the angel at Phanuel.

  All you ever wanted, in the desert,

  In the valley of Jericho,

  Was to follow, to know.

  Mystery

  Someday I will fall

  And not rise again.

  You will lift me

  As you do now

  But will not bring to life.

  What an infinitely tender thing

  Is death then! The bird

  Once courted in the under-bush awhile -

  Its warm blood stilled,

  Too big a mystery

  For one small child to ignore,

  Such total deliverance,

  Too big for small hands to hold.

  The Dress

  Friends are leaving for New Zealand, to visit the North and South Island. Others, as is seasonal, have gone to the French Alps, and a family is returning from Dubai where they tasted of affluence and the sun. And some of us find ourselves, yet once again, in a place we would not trade for all the ’hot’ spots on the planet — by a cosy log fire, stretched out on a thick pile rug, contemplating the warm glow and the shadows of the leaping flames on the wall as the evening light outside fades to darkness. Our lives are gently caving in. We wish our departed friends well and we miss their faces already at the table. A feeling of bereftness, of mourning, is close to the surface, triggered perhaps by absent ones but, more than just this, it is a mourning that encompasses all the mourning we have ever known or been touched by. ’Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you that kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you! How often have I longed to gather your children, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you refused …….Celebration and mourning, so far apart in the range of emotions of the heart, and yet so close at these Christmas and New Year’s festivities.

  We sense that we are being divested of this old dress, life. We give it up willingly, surrendering without regret, emotion even since the only true sacrifice was his. He alone did not have to die. He alone was without sin.

  Come and meet me with the dress for which you gave up your life, that I might live…words of greeting on our lips at dawn. Our collaborating with God’s grace is a positive act and not a passive one. We give, we enter, because we are received. We go, we love, because we are called. Few perceive this active force at work in our lives — a life outside our own lives that cannot be measured with the human eye or ear. We are coming from the desert where we have emptied ourselves dry. Our hearts are become dried as old bones left to dry in the desert sun. The only love we know and can be sure of is the love that comes shining through our tiny form. Dimly, at first, we see his kingdom come into view and then shining as a million suns as he comes out to meet us on the way, investing us with life that is light and love and warmth, just like he had never gone away. This risen Jesus is our friend, he clothes us with the dress we thought was reserved for resurrection day but is ours today, everyday and forever. Amen.

  The Statue

  I had never taken much notice of it before. It stood on a plinth to the left of the altar railing — a plaster-cast madonna figure that looked like countless others that decorated churches all over the country. But on this early autumn day in August 1980, it was to feature in my life in a way I couldn’t possibly have imagined. I was attending mass for the first time in about six weeks after the birth of our third daughter, Louise.

  I came in late and took my place somewhere to the right in the back pews. It was where the men, young and old had gathered. Some of the older men had rosary beads in their hands and, with their eyes closed, were fingering the beads and their moving lips bore witness to their silent prayer. They could not hear the celebrant anymore than I could due to the general hum of conversation that floated about. Young men discussing their plans for the day’s football match, the weather, last night’s pub happenings. I closed my eyes to focus my own heart and mind. But I could not ignore the feeling of regret that these young men could not be brought to engage in the act of remembrance of Christ’s sacrifice. But better they, I thought, than the Pharisee-type who held the front pews. His prayer was already ignored. I mourned the demise of the charismatic movement that had helped open up people’s lives to the Holy Spirit. But another, more urgent, feeling was demanding my attention — a feeling of weakness that was threatening to engulf me the longer I resisted it.

  I got up to go to the altar in line with all the other communicants but immediately on doing so almost passed out. Still I persisted, thinking it would pass, and continued on the slow advance to the altar rails. I was comfortably dressed in a sleeveless, full-length wool print dress with matching shawl — something I had sewn up myself. The feeling did not abate and I began to wonder if I shouldn’t turn back. But I had come for this, to register my hunger for the bread of life and I continued on. I had reached the altar and could see the priest heading down the queue to me ,but I wasn’t going to make it, it seemed. Just as he was before me and my legs began to crumble under me, the statue to my left came instantly to life, taking on human form, and held me by both arms at the elbows. I opened my mouth to receive the host and, instantly revived, I turned and went down the aisle to my seat. At the entrance to the pew I knelt down and made the sign of the cross, got up and turned to go outside into the morning sunshine.

  I called in to the shop across from the church to pick up some groceries. I mentioned to Jimmy, the grocer, when he enquired after my health that I had hust seen the statue of Mary move over in the church whereupon he peered out at me from behind his glasses and, eyes full of mirth, suggested I had been having too many late nights or something to that effect and burst out into a hearty laugh.

  The shop was beginning to fill up as the massgoers filed in. A discussion was going on behind my back between a neighbour and the young curate. I heard my name mentioned and, on turning around, was presented with the question, seemingly iniated on the previous night’s Late Late Show:

  ‘Do you think priests should be celbate?’ articulated by the priest.

  I acknowledged the question, looking at the interlocutors and, holding my silence for a few seconds, resisted a quick reply. I could not resist the answer, however, when it did came to me swiftly, and hastily said for all to hear:

  "We must be led by the Spirit into all these things.’ The words had the effect of ending the discussion and we all quietly took our leave.

  On the way home in the car I was surprised to hear the Lord address me with the words: ‘Didn’t I set you free? Why do you enslave yourself again?’ I hadn’t deliberately set about enslaving myself, I knew, and would have to search deep within myself to find the answers to his question. One fact was indisputable - that I had received a baptism in the Holy Spirit in the company of down-and-outs whilst living in a squat in London. I would have to retrace my steps, ment
ally and emotionally, and chart my spiritual development from that point. The Lord was telling me that I would have to make some adjustments to my life. All I could do, there and then, was to reply in the best possible spirit: Thy will be done.

  Prophecy, Easter 1976

  via interpretation of tongues, at Cruise’s Hotel, Limerick

  I am going to do a new work in your life,

  I just want you to open the door.

  I am making all things new,

  I am beginning today to work in your life,

  I just want you to open up the doors.

  I have begun you on the way,

  I am drawing you to myself;

  By the power of my spirit I will bring you

  Into the completion of that work.

  I want to mould you to be like myself —

  You have but begun on this way.

  My father takes great delight

  You have begun to come towards me.

  Let there be no disunity among you.

  Be at peace with one another.

  The work I have begun in you

  I will finish.

  I am your God.

  I am faithful.

  I will bring you to myself.

  Halting Train

  ‘All this in Jesus,’ he said joyously,

  Wrapping his sister in his embrace.

  Surprised to find him waiting when she turned

  In the midst of her isolation,

  After all the intervening years —

  ‘I thought you had long gone,’ she hailed.

  In the dimly-lit carriage of the train,

  The halting train to heaven,

  A woman opposite called out,

  Would you return again to London?’

  I answered ‘yes’ while he, head on my shoulder,

  Moved ever closer in the quietly

  Unfolding landscape of my dream.

  The Debutante

  She waited for me, ballerina-like,

  In short flounced skirt of royal blue

  As she stood, demi-pointe, by the door.

  Not even a protegee, just a fledgling

  I had helped take a few short steps,