It’s Poetry Day Ireland so I am supporting from abroad. This years theme is Truth or Dare so throughout the day I will be posting a few of my older poems on Truth and a few more on being Irish…

Duality

And here is where we battle the truth;
east or west, the sun’s heat or the moon
that spies on our rest.
And here is where our paths divide;
the war to be won or the human
we are fighting to become.
And here the Indian draws the honour;
mild man stands in the boar’s breath
with integrity in hands.
And there in the east with helmet high;
fearless fighter bares the beast and blunders
into battle as bloody blighter.
Are we then of both moon and sun;
tied tightly to burning planet and that eye
watching nightly?
Can we be honest behind the armour;
can the blood we gorged be erased
by a single flood?
Can we be both brave and beast,
can we cry for the famine and still eat
at the feast?

Are we not confusions
caught between the confines,
are we not stars burning bright like the sun
but in the falling night?

Are we born to be beasts or born to brave the beast?

Let us be wild boars;

fearless in the face of our foe,
gregarious in our greed to grow.

All words and photographs of Dublin by Damien B. Donnelly