I Am Said I (Huruma)

She waits in the shadows Of a winter evening’s dusk Eyes grown slowly dim Everything slowing down Children wandering Away and astray The tight control On life’s unfolding Unravelled In exile Looking homeward With a wondering Would it have been Better not to have left At all in the first place? The question might Be better left Unasked in the end The answer left Unsaid.

I am An exile torn Between home And the foreign Land that welcomed Where I have Put down deep roots And borne Part of me Is left behind In every arrival Given to each Person encountered And home Is only gained Again when all Is lost And there is no more Letting go

The child understood Chains of the heart The cold of exclusion Before his conception Formed felt forth By Creator Mother Father Uttered into sound Issuing from t he deep recesses Of pre-creation chaos The cry for deliverance Abiding wordless language Of his fettered flight-bound Yearning ever upward

Sitting at the back of an empty church on a dark evening, I look up the distance to the tabernacle and think of Judith Hearne (from the novel by Brian Moore). I had intended meditating, taking up the usual posture, when something within suggested that postures are not necessary when one comes to visit Love. So, I took to gazing and thinking. Judith Hearne was a woman lost in alcoholism and absolutely lonely at 40-something. She had prayed all her life and had gotten a raw deal and she comes in the end to a similar church demanding some answer from Jesus in the tabernacle but He remains silent and her faith is weakening rapidly. The sacristan and later the priest come out into the sanctuary and their attitude in front of the tabernacle suggests to her that they don’t believe either that there’s anyone there. We who are familiar with the sacred can become so casual that we forget the Presence and maybe stop believing in reality, without ever thinking about it. Now in this chur...

The Cross is upon me This Epiphany Myrrh for death and burial I have no other gift Knees that must fall down To worship This birth, this child, this life The collision Has always been there But we prefer not to notice Leaving the dealing For another time I was praying the crucifixion On a hard day When all my effort Had lost meaning The futile taste Of bile rising up The little child of God Not yet familiar with words Came to speak Annunciation to the crucified Birth to the dying Beginning to the ending Hope for the hopeless There are possibilities In everything  

We were largely content To play in the avenue Stadium of our invention Sixty something children or so Largely content with skilled And innocent games But there were days When we needed to know Courage and how much of it We had in us As one we marched down To the top of Tone Avenue Pitting ourselves against The patience and restraint Of Congo Murray who had No patience in him at all Here Congo!  here Congo ! We in unison roared Springing him into leap And chase till we were Safely home and he was In retreat We did it again and again Until  he got so vexed He decided to put a stop To our collective gallop The girl let out a screech That turned us cold Pumping blood that made Us colder still Congo had taken a huge Lump out of her leg Swear to God we said Crossing our throats Our tails between our legs For a while

I would love my children  To know What it was like to work As a boy I grew up at eleven And loved it The job and the first Two pounds wages Upstairs in a music shop With a speaker on the window For all the town to hear Black Velvet Band Was huge that Summer And all the days were hot I did errands and the tinker In me revelled Going off to the hardware For a can of paint And there I was The cat that got the cream Crossing Eyre Square In sunshine And out of the blue I collapsed black out cold Opening my astonished eyes To a crowd of grown ups Looking down But worst of all The can had leaked And I ran with it The boss roared You bloody eejit Never thinking to ask How or why the leak And I never thinking To explain

Are these the wonders of the Lord That we behold now Is this the sea On which we sail The unleashing of His pent up tears The gale of His panting Is this what it takes For us to really pray To scream out our need Of  Him? Peter’s boat is old now Unsafely holding all That is needed Him and us For everything there is A season There will be an answer To the prayer He will awake There will be again That quiet calm of His But this is the season Of our being tossed about The tumult The season of our crying And it is the season Of His sleeping

Dis-eased solar plexus Panic pitch Mitching I have an abundance Of fuchsia at the back of my eyes Tears of God And mine a bucketful For the child That might have gone To Letterfrack And the one who was sent Into remote cold discipline Speechless eyes searching The strangeness A boy disturbed By abandonement Difficult to deal with For being not wanted By mother and father Left to seek of strangers What would not be given Could not Given up and over To the pretence of Christ Perverse Gospel Suffer the little children The little children suffered

The first time of anything Is fascinating Arriving by night In a strange land Waking at dawn To the first sight of it The sun on this Particular East Being wholly new The specific scent of air Emanating from the land And its people The sight of food Not seen before Having no idea How it will taste As it enters my mouth The sweet sweet taste Of chukuu in India Lingering on the dry Texture of my tongue

She moves through the field Where the wild grass flows Touching buttercups Daisies and weeds And she is pleased For she is pregnant with Life Leaping in every womb And every heart The sight and sound Of her arrival Leaping in me for joy Word made flesh in me

If it were deserved It would not be Mercy Said the mother to the king It’s badly needed now That a long Indian Summer has suddenly Turned Bleak and bitter The wind rushing Through the open Doors of a cold church We turn on every light To offset this noontime Dark The sadness of a life Once full of innocent Promise and hope Turned We will not belittle The damage done The legacy of hurt We the undeserving And God alone Can make sense Of all the  wrong Tame the wild Impulse of a man Fatal addiction And heal what Will not or does Not want healing Mercy is what We are looking for Stirring in the womb That is best understood By motherhood Abundant as the Rain torrenting down On his remains

Air  like a cold Wet blanket Wrapped around My entirety Light is shadowed A curtained clouded Pall I smell the sickness Within me Taste an ancient Decay Repeating The sense That something Is wrong Something unknown Not understood And I am on my knees Praying

It was a week of four funerals at home. One was for my first cousin Eileen who is the same age as me. Another was Mary O'Connor who was one of the early and strong mothers of Ceannt Avenue. Memories flood in, feeling are stirred. Even when the deceased is not close to me I still soak up the grief and by the end of the last funeral I was feeling fairly shattered.  Harry and I went to collect Katie and Laura from school and when we got back to Toorkeel the two girls brought me out the back to show me something important. Harry had already told me but their version was special. The girls are aged 6 and four respectively. Princess the goldfish died in her tank. Katie and Laura were sorrow-struck and they buried her in a pink box under a sod of earth out the back. Next day they went out to have a look at the little grave and lo and behold nothing remained under the sod. "Guess what happened!" they told me "God came down and took the box and Princess up to hea...

Anchors aweigh I heard Him say Not a shout But a whisper In the hushed tone Of a funeral Foggy dawn We have been long Enough in the calm Safe embrace of The harbour To us the sea calls out To us deep waters Beckon Beacons Light the way Through mist and dark The heavy swell ahead Holds no fear No storm can blind The eyes that are fixed On horizons Not explored The centre-point Of all things The final destination Of all farriers

The smell of cabbage boiling  Out the back Baked bread Working all hours for their advancement She achieved it A woman of character Sturdy and proud Lovingly tender She has gone now   The way of all our mothers They are flying away Have already flown That's the age we are I bring my mother's bag  To the funeral bearing Memory and respect My own dignity Sorrows of arrested breasts  Brotherly burdens borne  Trustfully Not as heavy now For we too are grown stronger  In confidence In love  Being parents  Of another generation  Who will one day remember In memoriam In aeternam Eternally

It's an awful mess O God A Messy Murky Madness I cut a path Through the darkness Part the curtain Hoping For light It's not yet Bright Not bright at all And very dark I stay awake And wait Holding The frailest Slimmest hope That there never was A day that did not Break So I will break Apart Away from night And into light Even if it is A clouded brightness

I They have words But few that I Can understand Having not yet Achieved stillness Enough to hear At such depth Tears well up Overflowing down Her sobbing face I am on my knees Again She is in my arms There is nothing more I can say but Pray silently Into her abandonment "Thank you" She whispers II He looks out From eyes that shine And smiling lips That utter these Three words "God bless you" Breathing it like A blown kiss He falls asleep And I am carried Away