GPO for Poetry Day Ireland

02/05/201901/05/2019 / deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

It’s Poetry Day Ireland so I am supporting from abroad. This year’s 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…

General Post Office

1
Beneath the pillars
of your past,
I posted letters
between your walls
and wondered
if they rubbed up against
the souls of your saviours,
if they met with memories
that were made and measured,
bruised and battered
between your bricks and mortar
before being buried in blood.

2
How many letters of love
lined in lust and longing
have perfumed your pillars,
working their way
through your worthy walls
and haunted halls
in search of hungry hearts
to hold them, to open them,
to hear them.

All words and photographs of Dublin by Damien B. Donnelly

TOPPLING HIS TOWER for Poetry Day Ireland

02/05/201927/09/2021 / deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

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…

Toppling his Tower

What can I lay by the feet of such beauty?
What can I offer my love on this land?
A garden of roses, omitting the thorns
with this golden ring I hold in my hand.

But a garden of roses, omitting the thorns
is barely enough to garland your grace,
so I’ll pave you a path in the finest fabric,
a velvet so sweet to mirror your face.

So I’ll pave you a path in the finest fabric,
a cloth of brocade to comfort your cares,
a daylight distraction to hold your attention
from rebels and riots that are not our affairs.

A daylight distraction to hold your attention
to paintings and poems that hang by our side
in a tower I’ll build you to keep out the cries
of a world lost to power and drunk on its pride.

In a tower I’ll build you to keep out the cries
and a lark then from the meadow I’ll borrow
so she’ll sing of the stars and the moon that is ours
as we’ll lay in arms and let love sooth the sorrow.

But restless was her soul on the call from outside,
her beauty diminished by the sounds of their cries
and one day he lost her where his paved path divided
and he cut down her roses with tears in his eyes.

I gave her the finest, the fairest and fancy,
I gave her the beating heart of this man,
but she was bound to the call of the lost and the lonely
which now I have become and therein I see her plan.

All words and photographs of Dublin by Damien B. Donnelly

SUMMER STORM for Poetry Day Ireland

02/05/201901/05/2019 / deuxiemepeau / Leave a comment

Summer Storm

Beat away at breast;
a lie of love grown to lust,
grown repulsive,
‘Whisper who we were,’
rose water, a shadow symphony
drunk on a dream,
smooth shot to sordid,
bitter chocolate screams
beneath the sweaty skin
of a summer storm.

All words and photographs of Dublin by Damien B. Donnelly

THE TRUTH IN THE WATER for Poetry Day Ireland

02/05/201901/05/2019 / deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

The Truth in the Water

I see you, this morning
in sweeping reflections
in the waters, reflected
in the sleeping stillness
of the morning’s silence

as if the world was looking up
as if the sky had fallen down.

I see a tree, a weeping
sea of a tree, leaning,
reflected in the waters,
reflecting its reflection
into milky mists of morning

and I wonder if the world is truly what I see
or if my reflection is the truth
staring up
at me.

All words and photographs of Dublin by Damien B. Donnelly

BETTER BOTTLES for Poetry Day Ireland

02/05/201901/05/2019 / deuxiemepeau / 5 Comments

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…

Better Bottles

In the shadows
not yet departed
from former students
since departed,
confined in Parisian compartments
the Polish left to the Irish,
red vinegar wine
(as vulgar as the vultures
who drowned in its deluge)
caught itself in corners
still not drunk
by the blow-ins
still bleating
about the burnt beef
and sodden soil
as we made smoke chains
in our simple chambres
to choke a distance
between the homes we had left
and the hands that hadn’t
yet let us go. We may have been
from the same barrel born
but we, in truth, had desires
to be labelled in a better bottle.