Flying South

by Martin Delany

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Martin Delany is a former businessman and a native of Dublin. Following a bout of ill-health in 1999 he has found time to commit to paper ideas, thoughts and imaginings carried around in his head for many years. He now divides his time between Ireland and Spain. This is his first published work.

  © 2007 Martin Delany

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced

  in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic or mechanical,

  including photocopying, recording, taping or information storage and

  retrieval systems—without the prior written permission of the author.

  ISBN: 978-1-906018-00-9

  A CIP catalogue for this book is available from the National Library.

  Published by Original Writing Ltd. 2007.

  I dedicate ‘Flying South’ to the memory of my father Eddie,

  who died in 2000, and my mother Molly who knew I was planning to

  publish a book but never got a chance to read it.

  She passed away in December 2005.

  I

  POEMS

  A Country Graveyard in County Kerry

  There is a place for my dead beside a high mountain

  and turbulent water, the trees bare cowering to their

  side avoiding ungentle winds, ocean sand nestling

  at their base sucking life from the yielding bark.

  I have been through this graveyard many times savouring

  the withering flowers wafting in the wind, the weeding

  of old graves, the scent of mown grass on sun beamed days,

  the laughter of men digging new highways to eternity.

  On marble stones shining, filled with the history of

  people, time and lands from across immense oceans,

  I have wished for these dead a heaven of earthly delight,

  for them no praising of a god or singing with angels.

  On this day I feel them close to me, their primitive throb

  snaking and curling through the barriers of wood, earth

  and stone and reaching out to me, taking on the mantle

  of all mankind, helping me to understand how

  They lie slumbering one on top of the other, closer

  now than in life, uncomfortable with their closeness,

  children puzzling as to their being there, being quiet,

  the elders hoping for a sign to shake off the musty earth.

  Lying shabby now, aware of their nakedness, their lack

  of weight, younger bodies pressing down on those below,

  all marking time amidst the creeping uncertainty, the cry

  goes up ‘How much longer must we spend here?’

  On a cold afternoon, in a sand soaked cemetery, their

  song has found a way into my questing heart. When the

  light fades and dies the dead remain with us, waiting

  forever, cast down in a limbo of betrayed dreams.

  Ancient Hearth

  At the end of day in a street of my youth

  I am a young child again racing to tar strips

  laid down by councils on pitted roads.

  Mothers are calling us to tea and hatted

  fathers, in three piece suits and brown shoes,

  are bending to the wind homeward bound.

  On other days the egg man appears with two

  dozen shited feathered eggs, account book

  and heavy fawn cotton workman’s coat, his

  large hands mocked by snotty, hidden boys

  whispering ‘Fingers’ across matted hedges.

  I smell our first television blaring out its call

  as I run between it and father cleaning his

  new Austin, white with mauve stripes running

  front to back, mother cutting the postage

  stamp lawn, my brothers and sister tumbling

  together blissful in the new mown grass and

  then tea of brown bread and queen cakes,

  jams of past autumn and bottled plums

  grown heavy on bending shelves in dark sheds,

  stored and preserving the creeping progression

  of family life painted in hand written labels

  on sticky timeworn jars.

  Now I am a tiny cowboy, the Lone Ranger or

  the Cisco Kid, terrifying little nurses pushing

  plastic babies to labyrinthine tea parties.

  I am a frightened child at the banisters,

  cigar smoke curling up, tipsy guests stumbling

  into bedrooms in search of discarded fox head fur.

  Older I am kneeling beside my father’s bidet,

  white bowl of mystery, thoughts of washing and

  caressing private parts filling young mothers with

  nervous anticipation as they queue to look at this

  ceramic monument to depravity wantonly standing

  alone inviting them to squat and partake in its ritual.

  All this in my mind’s eyes, now to then, to now

  again, as I feel to scale a wall, climb into a

  bedroom blue, take refuge in a warming bed

  and deep in magic night reinvent my ancient hearth.

  Approaching Traffic Lights

  There is grace in his suffering, a serenity when

  he craves the ordinary, no more false longing

  for extraordinary happenings, no highs and

  lows but restful stability in an unstable world.

  I also never wanted to be ordinary and my life has

  seen the same steps, but on a separate path, to where

  the road now divides and we can read, in our merged

  knowing, our tacit agreement, the unspoken journey.

  A Prayer at 3.00 am

  Dear heart, wake me from this sleep

  and grant me wishes from your deep

  that sometime in the darkest night,

  in frosty sky or pale moonlight,

  we lose ourselves in love’s delight.

  Go heart, go quietly to our place

  and feed across a universe of space

  and kiss the lips that hiss a kiss

  of summer wine

  and fall between the shade that

  counts a throb of silent time

  and kneel till time and time is gone

  and wonder what took us so long

  to crawl to an embrace somewhere

  and find each other quietly there.

  At the Villa Nelle

  Speak softly to me on this cold night

  touch my heart with love not frenzied lust

  reassure me of our future bright.

  Stay with me close in this dwelling white

  swollen with decay and festering rust

  speak softly to me on this cold night.

  O be my angel, my glowing light

  our lives for ever joined you must

  reassure me of our future bright.

  Fill my arms with your body slight

  I kiss your cheeks and silent ask just

  speak softly to me on this cold night.

  Direct my passions and soaring might

  and protect our love from winter gust

  reassure me of our future bright.

  Enter my soul and allow me write

  poems of aged wisdom and of trust

  speak softly to me on this cold night

  reassure me of our future bright.

  By Appointment Only

  There is a smell of distrust in the magical garden

  perched on a hill overlooking mountains and

  shimmering coast, an evil perfume floating across

  my nostrils sensitive to any change in an atmosphere

  of sta
bility and harmony, contributors to a

  joined life of meaning and common thoughts.

  She wills the house on me, carefully excusing the

  void rooms, robbed of history in an agreement

  to dismantle a family, strip it of meaning and purpose,

  sad paintings gummed to soiled refrigerator doors,

  gentle reminders of kinder, loving times.

  For I also have tread through a house and smelled

  destruction, visited and rested in rooms echoing with

  anger now scattered, brooding in other places, other

  lives now open to my embrace by appointment only.

  Cold Mountain

  Feel how the wind races

  across the long valley

  leaving nothing untouched

  In its path to the mountains;

  no slow warming of land or memories

  no wish to return to gentler times.

  Could we have but reinvented

  golden time or reset a clock

  on the long road to a beginning

  where childhood is more than ankle

  socks or Saturday bath and Sunday suit

  set out clean.

  What sum I ask for intimacy, a kiss, an

  understanding of generations and their

  place in the heart?

  But then no gift from others of prayed wisdom;

  instead from me a fatal fascination

  with disengagement,

  a slow slide into indifference

  where your going and my leaving

  stand equal on a cold mountain.

  Counting the Time Not Passed

  I have loved the smell of hops, the twinkling

  glass of black gold, the rising smoke and

  sensual hope curling round endless night.

  I have wanted and courted magic days,

  tangled years of imagination, shining

  winter to winter and lighting a life of

  incessant beginnings. I have ignored

  crowds of silent lovers, shuffling forward

  line in line, chained feet, marching toward

  a long valley where others wait to meet and

  in faint voice weep one last lingering moment.

  I have measured and schemed and sought to

  turn back death’s hold, observed others join

  the silent crowds, and prayed that I will, in

  the unfolding of time not passed, feel the

  future slowing, going on forever.

  Dear God

  I hope it is not an awkward time to talk but I want to say

  thanks for the wake up call last Saturday afternoon. I had

  not expected to hear from You so soon but I need to tell You,

  up front, I always wanted You to get in touch, but not yet.

  Let me also put on the table that when I fall asleep with

  You, please forgive me in advance for not being so attentive in

  my hurrying years. Somehow we both seemed to drift

  away from each other – other things to do I suppose.

  With all these tubes and measuring instruments embedded

  in me I have not been able to get around as much as before

  and this has given me time to think about You and Your kind

  invitation to join the others in Your lovely home.

  I admit I did waiver, there were moments on that mountain

  when I felt I could join, should join You. But now I am

  getting better and I am not so sure any more. May I make

  a suggestion and ask that Your next call be put off for a while?

  You see I like my life now that they tell me I have more time

  than I thought last Saturday. I am making plans for the future,

  I am going to be very busy for a while and perhaps the best way

  to leave things is that we get in touch when I am ready.

  Dun Laoire Harbour, Early February

  Cocooned in wool I stride out the West Pier

  as the Stena Line backs lazily into its parking bay,

  its underbelly emasculated of decks, a great

  hole to view the East Pier, the wind howling

  across the enclosed water, rattling the flagpoles like

  crowds of drunken dentures struggling home.

  I pass a group of French students, beautiful gazelles

  in their blossoming womanhood, but sullen and

  bemused by my country in a freezing February,

  my hearty ‘Bon Jour’ doing nothing to lift waning

  spirits as they turn into an impossible cold gust.

  Resting for a moment on a wooden bench an elderly

  shabby lady joins in my survey of the harbour.

  At her feet an empty Liz Clairborne bag sways

  precariously and I fall to wonder about creatures lost

  to the world who wait for bright sunshine to wreak

  havoc on unsuspecting people, but also brave a cold

  afternoon to pass on their obscure references to

  letting them down, or deal a smack across an unready

  face or initiate a stormy going with a flourish of words.

  However this lady sits stoically and nervously I move on.

  At the end of the pier a man with a mobile phone is

  shouting ‘Baste the joint then turn down the oven

  to 190 degrees’ and I am transported back to

  the butt end of the Great Blasket. I am shouting

  into a mobile ‘Hi! I am on the Blasket Islands.’

  I cannot hear a reply, and energised by fresh air and the

  accomplishment of reaching the end of the island

  I shout louder, my words drifting away in the still

  Summer day, my contentment pricked like a balloon.

  Turning for home I face into a harsh freezing draught;

  struggling to stay upright I bend into the gale, the air

  like a messenger of despair in a grey shifting sky, a

  warning now ringing inside me that I have passed more

  than half my allotted days to walk this harbour wall

  and the coming in is ripening into a more gruelling

  journey than the shallow going out.

  El Torcal

  Half-awake I hear a symphony of belled goats on

  the road below, their bloated udders hurrying

  to a favourite rendezvous.

  The garden has greedily taken on its Spring costume

  and already the campo flies are about their business,

  interfering in the lives of all creatures, disturbing

  my naked vulnerability under the flowering shrubs.

  You are by my side, rivulets of sweat flowing slowly

  down a valley between your brown breasts, dropping

  suddenly in to the well of your belly button, the water

  gathering and seeming to steam in the mid-afternoon heat.

  Above us El Torcal is being engulfed in a fog tumbling

  down the porous limestone shaped by rocks and water

  into chalices, teeth, knives and other mineral oddities.

  The cloud fall on marine fossils buried in an ancient

  vast sea, the bed of the ocean rising to deposit sediment

  in the path of the fog’s cooling march to the valley.

  I turn to wake you as the clouds get even closer and the

  temperature quickly drops some ten degrees shutting

  down a small universe living and dying in the garden.

  Gathering our clothes we run expectantly to the house

  and in the darkened cooling room make love joyously,

  without rush, examining our bodies as a coroner would,

  turning parts from side to side, weighing and measuring

  familiar pleasure as it mounts in expectation of a final release.

  Sated we lie entangled, slipping into a time between

  waking and dreaming, m
using how our lives are shaped

  by constant willed exposure to each other, the slow dripping

  of joined thoughts tumbling into lanes of fragrant memories.

  Flying

  He died among the reddening poppies,

  flying from a height, coming to rest

  in a flinty patch of broken earth.

  As he flew he did not notice rain

  settling gently on the green

  valley below, vibrant in summer

  clothes, alive with an infinity

  of offered promises.

  Boredom some said, others despair.

  Flying South

  The life vest is under my seat, an age of

  fifty-three crouches on my shoulder, and you are

  reading the weather in some far off place, twenty

  below. As the plane banks under a cloudless sky

  bays of foam and sand rush towards the small

  window, until flattening out we enter the north

  of our final destination for the thirtieth time.

  We descend with a great roar of throttle,

  a shake of tables and movement of overhead

  racks, tight repositories of documented lives,

  until in the final moments we swoop in over

  green watered fields of plumb watermelon, set

  down beside old twisted cork and olive trees

  Emerging through the narrow door and down

  steep steps I am once again entranced by the

  light and warming wind.

  For My Father

  Gathering for the last time

  we stoop to whisper silent song

  holding back what can be held

  to stay his journey to the stars.

  But no cold kiss or stroke

  of wispy hair

  moves that solemn head to rise

  and meet the stare

  of a final touch on arm

  before the sealing solid lid.

  Now he wanders the universe, drifting

  out along the Milky Way,

  reaching for all the prayed wisdom

  of his belief,

  while we, arm in arm, throw a final rose

  to the void.

  Friday Afternoons

  The Miss Browns sit snugly, smugly,