old sunshine

poems from the 1960's and 70's by Michael O'Callaghan

HEARTBEAT

The end of the world
is at the Sea
where the waves have failed
over generations
to encroach farther up
or even reach the
blue-black-brown rocks.

You can hear it in a shell
that once lay on the ocean floor
to the slow rhythm of life
and fish
and tentaculous anemones
of reds and greens
and blue-grey reefs.

Every tide has sucked across
the reefs of the Sea
every tide since Ulysses
visited the Underworld.
He did not let his long black ships
slip down the Stream of Ocean
at the end of the world
where eternal mist hovers
to the spume and crash of the
lichen-coloured breakers
of the Last Rock
the heartbeat of life which
has always been and
always will be
for ever.

        (Glenstal Abbey School, Ireland, 1966)

JOY

I sink, round, deep
to soft fantasy
and am so full of joy
I cannot think.

They think, strict, shallow
to dissect fantasy
and are so full of hoplessness
they cannot sink.

        (Glenstal Abbey School, Ireland, 1967)




OLD SUNSHINE

The ancient turf
glows in the grate
releasing infra-red heat
from carbon-carbon bonds
made in photosynthesis
long ago.

Dinosaurs – or was that the Mesozoic?

It's just
old sunshine.

        (Kilcoole, Ireland, 1972)

THE KINGDOM

I
am
the tiger
on your tail.

The Kingdom lies
beyond my
diamond
teeth.

        (Kilcoole, Ireland, 1972)

BODYPLANET

I have come
from behind
my own fears
love is here
love is now
I am

but more important
is that we are all
together
on our bodyplanet

        (Kilcoole, Ireland, 1973)

MOON IN LAKE

The pattern becoming clear
moon in lake
bird over water
world rolling 'round
dawn is on her way.

You are all days
all rivers faces all
how can I stop one of you
do I have to call?

Sometimes I remember
twin brother of the skies
studded constellation
from where we have come:

Starlight glowing
in the great No-Thing.

As I sit here writing
whole galaxies explode
dawn is on her way

        (Lough Bray, Glencree, Ireland, 1973)

LIVING IN THE CITY

Living in the city
the cascades of your
soft thighs
could be like waterfalls
on the great mountain
in the wild wild dawn.

But this is only symbol to me.
I truly want
I truly would like you to see
beyond the darkness
that pearl on the ocean floor
brighter than the stars
beyond
who you think you are.

        (For Caroline, Dublin, Ireland, 1974)

THE MEGALOPOLI OF YOUR MIND

Across the sprawling
megalopoli of your mind
in whose entrenched hemispheres
strategic defence programmes die
and are reborn anew
screaming alarms sirens
converge for crisis.

All the king's horses
and all the King's men
cannot put Humpty
together again.

In the secret depths
of psychic seas
nuclear bomb-bellied submarines
zoom unseen
guided by electronic wave-patterns
lurking sharklike at the cities of men.

Meanwhile, just behind,
there being more to this than
meets the eye,
eternal light
bathes the slow cartwheeling galaxies
of a-tomic spacetime
the blissfull union:
beyond who you think you are
within.

        (New York City, 1976)

uncreated future

What will you be like?
Bright? Dark? Uncreated future!

Human consciousness cannot tell.

How do you see? What do you project?

What unconscious feelings
affect you now?

It's open, the future, not determined.
What happens on this planet
depends on you and me!

A global species, high tech
in tune with nature
– and that's just the setting
for the next phase of evolution?

Or a failure
doomed to mess things up
and be dismal?

Uncreated Future! What will you be like?

        (London, 1998)

© 1981 - 2010 Global Vision • all rights reserved • privacy policy
URL of this page: www.global-vision.org/about/poems.php • updated 4 May 2010