Category Archive for "news" | Micheal O'Siadhail

The Five Quintets

The Five Quintets was released on 13th July, 2018, by Baylor University Press. The Five Quintets is both poetry and cultural history. It offers a sustained reflection on modernity―people and movements―in poetic meter. Just as Dante, in his Divine Comedy, summed up the Middle Ages on the cusp of modernity, The Five Quintets takes stock of a late modern world on… Read More

PRAISE

Mol an óige agus tiocfaidh sí Praise youth and it will prosper A youngster’s smile climbed from the root Of his being, a blossom so suddenly sprung, Out of such clay one burgeoning offshoot. I’d forgotten a friend’s father’s razor tongue And how in turn he couldn’t praise his son. A memory… Read More

SO

In the beginning The word. So too in the end. Birds of paradise.

PARKINSON’S

1 Stealthily. One day that quiver in your ring Finger. Or my impatience at your squiggling Such illegible notes. Just your astonishment Noticing the absence of an old lineament. Once speedy genes, high-geared and fleet; At twelve the school’s swiftest athlete. The oils of movement slower to lubricate. Stiffness, a… Read More

OUT OF THE BLUE

Nothing can explain this adventure – let’s say a quirk of fortune steered us together – we made our covenants, began this odyssey of ours, by hunch and guesswork, a blind date where foolish love consented in advance. No, my beloved, neither knew what lay behind the frontiers. You told me once you hesitated: a… Read More

PARKINSON’S

1 Stealthily. One day that quiver in your ring Finger. Or my impatience at your squiggling Such illegible notes. Just your astonishment Noticing the absence of an old lineament. Once speedy genes, high-geared and fleet; At twelve the school’s swiftest athlete. The oils of movement slower to lubricate. Stiffness, a tremor,… Read More

OUR DOUBLE TIME

1. A morning leaving hospital, suddenly the height, The breadth, the depth. Autumn of my overhaul When senses seemed to double. Rilke was right: Some fruit in me keeps ripening for a mellow fall. Scalpel and needle of growth. A wound’s suture. Etched wonder of what’s both brittle and finite: Two girls linking arms… Read More

For My Friends

Spendthrift friendships once ravelled and unravelled Carefree leisurely as a journey without a plan; Easy-come, easy-go, there was a while I travelled Lightly, made my friends catch as catch can. Gradually the casual twisted the precious weave, This tissue of feeling in which I’ve grown; Though I follow a single thread, I must believe That… Read More

I’ve Crossed Famous Rivers

(Ndiwelimilambo enamagama) For Nelson Mandela, former President of South Africa, born July 18th 1918 A slow dripped stone worn by indignities. No epiphany, revelation, moment of truth just the long rotten row of African Only. Die wit man moet altyd baas wes. The pale man must always be boss. Die kaffer… Read More

Lullaby

Stains are in, stains are in, The instant our songs begin To rockaby my darling baby Dreaming up worlds of maybe. Then byssa, byssa barnet Beddie byes my snowy Arne, Quieter now and slumber-bound, Rest in lulls of milky sound. Ninna nanna, ninna nanna, La mia bambina italiana. Aja papaya,… Read More

Matins for You

Come again glistening from your morning shower Half-coquettishly you’ll throw Your robe at me calling out ‘Hello! Hello!’ I turn over stretching out to snatch A bundle from the air and once more to watch That parade across your bower. Jaunty, brisk, allegro, Preparing improvisations of yet another day As on our first morning twenty-seven… Read More

Session

Deep, deep The legends and contours of every line, Tune womb Of our stories of who begat whom, And as phrases part or combine. So fine A line between what’s open and shut. Proud horns Above a shivering reed that mourns What never made the cut. Power’s glut Of power knows always what’s… Read More

I’ve Crossed Famous Rivers

(Ndiwelimilambo enamagama) For Nelson Mandela, former President of South Africa, born July 18th 1918 A slow dripped stone worn by indignities. No epiphany, revelation, moment of truth just the long rotten row of African Only. Die wit man moet altyd baas wes. The pale man must always be boss. Die kaffer op sy… Read More

For My Friends

Spendthrift friendships once ravelled and unravelled Carefree leisurely as a journey without a plan; Easy-come, easy-go, there was a while I travelled Lightly, made my friends catch as catch can. Gradually the casual twisted the precious weave, This tissue of feeling in which I’ve grown; Though I follow a single thread, I must believe That… Read More

Faces

Neat millions of pairs of abandoned shoes Creased with mute presence of those whose Faces both stare and vanish. Which ghetto? Warsaw, Vilna, Lodz, Riga, Kovno. Eight hundred dark-eyed girls from Salonica Bony and sag-breasted singing the Hatikvah Tread the barefoot floor to a shower-room. Friedländer, Berenstein, Menashe, Blum. Each someone’s… Read More