Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Afternoon Song

Though your wicked eyebrows call
Your nature into question
(Unangelic's their suggestion,
Witch whose eyes enthrall)
I adore you still
O foolish terrible emotion
Kneeling in devotion
As a priest to his idol will.
Your undone braids conceal
Desert, forest scents,
In your exotic countenance
Lie secrets unrevealed.
Over your flesh perfume drifts
Like incense 'round a censor,
Tantalizing dispenser
Of evening's ardent gifts.
No Philtres could compete
With your potent idleness:
You've mastered the caress
That raises dead me to their feet.
Your hips themselves are romanced
By your back and by your breasts:
By your languid dalliance.
Now and then, your appetite's
Uncontrolled, unassuaged:
Mysteriously enraged,
You kiss me and you bite.
Dark one, I am torn
By your savage ways,
Then, soft as the moon, your gaze
Sees my tortured heart reborn.
Beneath your satin shoe,
Beneath your charming silken foot.
My greatest joy I put
My genius and destiny, too.
You bring my spirit back,
Bringer of the light.
Exploding color in the night
Of my Siberia so black.

Charles Baudelaire

Rainer Maria Rilke, To Lou Andreas-Salome

To Lou Andreas-Salome
I held myself too open, I forgot
that outside not just things exist and animals
fully at ease in themselves, whose eyes
reach from their lives' roundedness no differently
than portraits do from frames; forgot that I
with all I did incessantly crammed
looks into myself; looks, opinion, curiosity.
Who knows: perhaps eyes form in space
and look on everywhere. Ah, only plunged toward you
does my face cease being on display, grows
into you and twines on darkly, endlessly,
into your sheltered heart.

As one puts a handkerchief before pent-in-breath-
no: as one presses it against a wound
out of which the whole of life, in a single gush,
wants to stream, I held you to me: I saw you
turn red from me. How could anyone express
what took place between us? We made up for everything
there was never time for. I matured strangely
in every impulse of unperformed youth,
and you, love, had wildest childhood over my heart.

Memory won't suffice here: from those moments
there must be layers of pure existence
on my being's floor, a precipitate
from that immensely overfilled solution.

For I don't think back; all that I am
stirs me because of you. I don't invent you
at sadly cooled-off places from which
you've gone away; even your not being there
is warm with you and more real and more
than a privation. Longing leads out too often
into vagueness. Why should I cast myself, when,
for all I know, your influence falls on me,
gently, like moonlight on a window seat.


Translated by A. Poulin

Friday, May 27, 2011

Terrible Beauty

CEAD MILE FAILTE
Welcome to the theme bar
STATIONS OF THE CROSS
I’m Seamus Station
I’m the boss
Come on in
Tourist or refugee
Hear the blarney
And the goosesteps
In synchronicity
Fancy a Joyce walk
Or a talk on O’Casey
By the Abbey
Where we spat in his well
A very popular site
In our virtual hell
I invented a culture
Drank it dry
Dug up the dead
Drained the maggots from their head
Dressed them up in ringlets
And called it dancing
Traditional historical hysterical
I’m building a hotel
On the hill of Tara
Landscape gardens
Artificial lakes
And I’m buying back the snakes
I’m cutting the drive
Through the ancient oaks of the Celt
Cos there’s nothing like ripping off yourself
And I’m all speeded up
And the gravy train has run amok
And there’s no level crossing
And me head keeps turning and tossing
In porter and fear
And I can’t forget O’Casey
Sure there’s no prostitutes here

http://fierceheadpress.com/poem-terrible-beauty.html

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Carnal apple, Woman Filled, Burning moon,

Carnal apple, Woman filled, burning moon,
dark smell of seaweed, crush of mud and light,
what secret knowledge is clasped between your pillars?
What primal night does Man touch with his senses?
Ay, Love is a journey through waters and stars,
through suffocating air, sharp tempests of grain:
Love is a war of lightning,
and two bodies ruined by a single sweetness.
Kiss by kiss I cover your tiny infinity,
your margins, your rivers, your diminutive villages,
and a genital fire, transformed by delight,
slips through the narrow channels of blood
to precipitate a nocturnal carnation,
to be, and be nothing but light in the dark.

Pablo Neruda

Sunday, May 15, 2011

The National Gallery

So perserverence, a little luck and the right people - the lovely Clare & laura at the Design Shop on Bow Lane - my illustrated cards will finally be on sale in the National gallery. The Design Shop duo will have a pop up shop in the National Gallery bookshop for the month of June. If you haven't been to their shop yet, it is well worth a visit check them out on http://www.irishdesignshop.com/ its a treasure trove of delights. So if you are around Clare street, over the month of June do pop into the gallery bookshop, if you do purchase something from the girls you will be buying something handcrafted and supporting local artists...like myself!