Falling Apples (5 page)

Like a barnacle glued to a rock

She slept in her bed unrelenting,

Unconscious of each early call

After a weekend of merriment.

We drove for the train in Tralee-

Already the engine was throbbing;

A puff and hot tea on the platform

Before boarding to go to Cork city.

Going home on the road to Listowel,

The lights of North Kerry below me

Gave way to brilliance of blue

That grew in the heavens above.

The eastern colours were spreading

Over the back of Stack’s mountains;

I could see silhouettes of the trees,

The morning star shining so brightly.

Seagulls standing in a windswept field

Look exactly like the way I feel

After leaving London on a Sunday afternoon.

Slowly mile by mile the night comes down

With a kind of November melancholy.

On either side we see the country wide

Where the trees still wear their leaves

And sheep their pastures graze on hillsides

Overlooking sweeping fields, some ploughed,

Some showing winter corn freshly sown.

Stansted airport draws near; dear daughter,

The joy of being with you still echoes in us

As we eat the fudge you gave us in Victoria.

Meanwhile you are making pumpkin soup-

At least that’s what you said you’d do

On getting back to Crofton Road in Camberwell.

Stopped in our tracks

We stood in the wood

Seeing her pass before us:

She was the badger black and grey

Who shared our sylvan glenside.

Barely breathing in wonderment,

We watched the quiet manoeuvre

As her three cubs in single file

Followed closely behind their mother.

They all had their birth

In their sett in the earth

Beneath an old ash on the hillside.

Today their thirst made them bold

To take their pathway of old

Down to the pool in the stream

To have a long drink of cool water.

They are known to be shy

Of the sun when it’s high,

To hunt by the moon till daybreak.

We have new life in our glen

And imagine the thrill

To meet in our blue belled woodland.

She closes the door as she steps outside

At the end of her day’s designing;

Stooping she greets a cat on the street

Whose bushy tail it exceeds him.

He’s thrilled he is at this midnight hour

To meet with a lady of fashion.

While head to head they talk and purr,

Her handbag slung low from her shoulder,

He takes good note of its soft leather look

Like the feel of her hands that caressed him.

He swishes his tail on his way up the town,

Slipping in through the dimly lit archway;

At the end of the day he was only a stray

And he was after being treated like gentry.

In the grass beneath the noisy rookery

The frightened fledgling crow I found:

He lay there flattened and diminished

By his fall from grace from far above.

I said I’d try to change his awful luck.

Raucous caws from a beak from
Jaws,

When hungry, would go strangely silent

After he had swallowed what I fed him.

Satisfied, the little orphan went to sleep-

My mystery guest of feathered blackness.

He was not well this morning: sad to say

He died. I had my hopes that he’d survive

(I felt sad that I would never see him fly);

As he left, the light he lit was turned out.

I can only try to understand the darkness.

That Sunday afternoon,

Out on the verdant lawn

On the verge of the wood

An alien stood:

Well it could have been!

I came back to earth

And looked again:

It was a Sika stag-

Head on;

Straight-up antlers-

Antenna like.

No more doubt;

Strangers staring: daring.

Still no move.

Head down, grazing:

This noble animal icon

An honour to behold-

Past glories of centuries

Only a look away.

Out of bounds here,

Far from the herd

And mountain forests,

Making me a part of time,

Sharing his wild life-

Until the sounds of children

Made him swing about,

His tail a fash of white.

Back to the wood he fied

As if he never was-

My strong brown Sika deer.

Now I often look and think

That he might reappear.

A fox cub calmly crossed before me

And I brought my motor to a stop,

To respect a fox’s daily right of way-

Bulldozed one day against his will.

Pulling in from the flow I saw him go.

He was naive and young and shy;

Stopping in his tracks, head high,

He stood there asking why of me.

He gave me a lingering look of blame

All the way over as far as his cover;

We had invaded the private space

Of a wild and worthy rustic fellow.

Scents of the summer incense to his senses,

The boy walks barefoot most of the way.

By hills of furze bushes above the soft bog,

Though ever so slowly, the river flows free

Through flower beds of bright yellow wild iris

Where the black water hens hide every day.

In meadows the cowslips all are in bloom

But he has to hurry on fast to his school;

Beneath his bare feet he feels the wet dew.

As the startled hare springs out of his lair

He leaves in his wake a wash of light spray-

His four paws are flying, ears up, he’s away.

Watched the African snake handlers

As they drew their bread and butter

Unceremoniously out of canvas sacks

And dared us, standing there in awe

Of writhing bodies and darting fangs,

To coil them round our necks for fun.

Some of us buried our fears to dare;

Afterwards to be no worse for wear:

Their masters from Morocco gripped

The snakes behind each moving head

To let them free meant we were dead.

And then we left the Casbah in Morocco,

Coming down a long and winding stairs,

And upwards came an entourage at speed

With a sheep for sacrifice, a helter skelter,

In celebration of the feast of Eid Al Adha,

Allah’s sparing of the son of Abraham,

At the end of their Ramadan, family time;

Tangier youths unstoppable in their stride.

We stepped aside and then in my inner eye

I could have been away on Calvary’s hill

As the Holy Lamb of God was passing by.

In the annals of Cúchulainn’s sons

Appear the names of our ancestors;

Time of Land League, landlords and evictions

When our Gaelic Games were spawned

While we waited for the dawn of freedom;

Floating on a tide of national pride

From the nineteenth to the twentieth century.

Barefoot players on pitches improvised,

Tournaments and marching bands

Of brass and reed and fife and drum:

The baronies hurling the troubled years away

With camáns shaped like camógs;

The flying sliotar a harbinger of peace

Sending shivers down the spine of time,

Raising up our ancient race

To feel again our rightful nationhood.

Running on—this fever in the blood,

Leaving to posterity dexterity and style-

Present on the field of play today

In the genes of great grand children,

Accurate as them in every game

In their aim from centre field or side line cut

And we cheer them from the stands

For they are Cúchulainn’s youngest sons.

Shannon Airport is at Exit 9—

That way went each of mine;

An embrace to say goodbye:

Time enough the time to cry.

Last looks at departure gate—

Another wave but it’s too late.

Words we had meant to say

Now must wait another day;

Like two bare trees we stand—

Isolated in departure land.

Uplifted sunglasses on women who small chat

Over coffee at the terrazzo tables in Torrevieja;

The pretty coloured one is oh so chicly shaded,

Facing the February sun, dipping at five o’clock.

Meanwhile I’m playing musical chairs in vain

To escape the glare; green palm trees grouped

Over my head, my only allies now above me;

Beneath the tables there are sparrows hunting.

Like the anchored ship that now is setting sail

Tomorrow we’ll go back to bitter wintry winds

Where the swallows nests are empty under eaves;

Today I saw them fly over our apartment
attico.

Raiding ocean waves erode the red volcanic rock

But on the beach the water laps and plays around

In semi circles; sometimes crashing suddenly,

Causing me to awake from hypnotic sea sonatas.

The strolling couples take pictures from the prom

Of castles and cathedrals not built of solid stone

By architects or builders but by a busker bold-

A new Gaudi with the shifting sands of centuries.

On the western brim of Leith Hill,

Looking at all of North of Kerry,

There was a long blind bend

In the shape of a semicircle.

Now that has been cut off

To be replaced forever

By a new road climbing over-

Cut into the hill like the bed of a river.

I’ll miss that scenic semicircle:

Perfumed primroses in the sun

Displayed along the grassy ditch,

Dressed in yellow every one.

Only a brief look at the seaside

From the wheel as you drove by:

To the west a long low valley

That stretched to Ballyheigue;

For it was a risky business

To be flirting with the view,

Not knowing what’s behind you-

Maybe a big black four by four!

The boot is down, the window up,

This time you’d see no more.

I have waited for the moment

The new road straight and wide

Would surmount this hill in Kerry

And we’d have take of to the sky;

To be on the latest low horizon

Above Tralee the town deep down

And sleeping sleek Sliabh Mish

Of fleeting shadows one by one;

Of a tragic but romantic tale

Of a lovely rose born in the vale

And of her exiled lover and his lament

When the fair one died for love of him.

In its ballrooms of blushing roses

I sowed the wild oats of my life;

My Ford Cortina that I loved

Could almost drive home by itself-

Each hill and dale we knew so well.

The contours of Stack’s Mountains

Have been embedded in my brain:

I see them when I’m driving

Through the wide and fertile plains

But I think that it’s a holy shame

That they are acupunctured

By those wind turbines-such a sight!

White phantoms of the future?

Not at a price this high let there be light.

This is it at last—a sight to be seen!

This stretch of rising road, this dream:

From the blueprint to the masterpiece

Of many giant machines and men;

After all the excavation of the earth

It was filled with stone and chips,

Then the rolling and the tarring hot

And the building of its rising hips-

Each sloping down, green grassed,

Replacing what was taken at the start.

But I won’t forget the bend beyond.

I will slip off this road some day

To see if there are still primroses,

To view the bright and distant bay.

Now I’ll make a wish and welcome

A smooth black shining motorway.

On Sundays for mass he would wear his good shoes:

To be ready they were always polished on Saturdays;

With pride in each stride he went around by the road.

The shortcut he took to his school Monday morning.

Scenting another hot summer climbing over the walls,

In bare feet through the fields he made his way freely

He skirted flotillas of furze in yellow blossoms ablaze;

On its bank he followed the flow of the lazy bog river.

Through beds of wild iris small black water hens play-

He would love to stay for the day to better his learning;

In lush meadows the cowslips and buttercups bloomed

Though he kept to the path and didn’t pick any of them.

The strong startled hare shot straight up from his lair,

Ears up he took off in the bright dew of the morning;

His race was for freedom, his peace was disturbed,

Now he lightly springs up on a stonewall of limestone;

Looking back in distain at this lad so docile and tame,

He was away on his own out of view and free and easy;