All photographs by Damien B. Donnelly
Month: November 2019
BOOKENDS; TO BE ABLE TO PERCEIVE THE SUGGESTION OF EVENTUAL ADAPTION
Even on wrong turns, detours; damp and derailed,
along red lines I knew would rattle,
sojourns into subterranean thoughts
of finding forever in a place that only held a past
there was still a steady stream of perception,
a suggestion of adaption
worn into walls that never would.
The tunnels were only ever to be temporary.
All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly.
This month is about looking into the shadow to find the light. I first moved to Paris at 22, left at 24 and returned at 40 thinking it would be last stop, rest, relax. But it turned out to be just another tunnel along this track of life. Next stop… Ireland; Boy Returns as Man.
BOOKENDS; WHEN THE BREATH COMES AFTER THE BREAK
The lilt of the lavender that lingered for days,
long after, by the leaning, before the louvre,
the sweet consolation of candy floss cologne
that stayed on the pillow, after you had parted.
It is sometimes that simple; a scent to sail you back to me
as if I never left the garden,
as if I never left the comfort of your caress
though when it was there I could barely catch a breath.
All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly.
This month is looking back at the scent that will stay with me before I leave Paris. The courtyard of the Louvre was filled with a lavender covered tent for a Dior Fashion show during the Paris fashion week a few years ago.
BOOKENDS; SLOW MOVING SORROW
In the supermarket
on Saturday
in the 14th
on the 14th
in numb November
in Paris, their Paris,
our Paris, my Paris,
people push grief
in comfortless trolleys
down shadowed aisles
of silence, strangers
claiming their spaces
in solidarity, in queues
of slow-moving sorrow,
seeing shadow in places
where once there was light,
terror in crowds
where once there was music,
death in their streets
where once there was life.
In a supermarket
in the 14th
on the 14th,
as the numbers rise
on a Saturday morning,
there is nothing available
on a single shelf
to fill the void
of what we lost
in the night.
It’s not the whole world,
it’s not the end of the world
but it’s far too far from a perfect world.
All words by Damien B Donnelly
This poem was first featured in Nous Somme Paris, published by Eyewear Publishing to commemorate the Paris attacks of Friday 13th Nov, 2015.
BOOKENDS; WORDLESS WEDNESDAY, PARIS, REFLECTIONS
All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly
BOOKENDS; BETTER BOTTLES
In the shadows not yet departed
from former students, since departed,
in confined 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’d left
and those hands that hadn’t yet let us go.
We may have been from the same barrel born
but we had desires to be labelled in better bottles.
All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly
This month is about looking back to move on, I started out living, for two months, in the residence of the Irish College, on rue des irlandais in 1997 where I met Mary, still dear friends, and we felt like the only two who wanted to live and breathe and taste Paris while all the other students, studying french history and language, missed the well cooked steaks and wild weather. We were outsiders from the outset.
BOOKENDS; TO DARE TO REMEMBER
Do you remember Paris on occasions when spring sweeps in
with its breath of those lost days, in that other life, before
we knew London together or what it would be like to part?
Do you, do you remember Paris, my little room, our lithe love
and the plans we painted onto canvases of comfort at night,
in a single bed, in a corner, before I lost my way and we lost us?
Those lazy days of hazy light that fell to nights at a water castle,
the name-deceptive metro, where kisses took us on to the dawn.
Do you remember the first spring of our song, how it warmed
its way into a summer of sipping wine by the old, new bridge
before we’d slumber in the shade, in the park, below that bridge,
on the first site of the city, while the waters ran away with time.
Remember the rainstorm, that Sunday morning, birds near broken,
I find it funny how I missed any warning in their fluttering?
Do you remember catching colour amid the concrete of la Jatte,
in the shadow of Seurat, on a Sunday morning, still sleeping,
when we stopped to make connections between balance and breath.
You sang of the dots within the water and the sky, on that ordinary day,
in a summer of simple, on a stroll on a Sunday, along an isolated island,
in a city where everything ordinary was suddenly so extraordinary.
Do you remember that silly single bed in the corner; I always woke up
stuck to the wall. The sofa, the table and the sunflowers of plastic;
so not what you’d imagined at all.
Do you dare to venture to those times departed, when not a minute
suggested what time would design or all that we’d have to let go?
Remember Paris, remember you,
remember me,
remember us.
All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly.
We had met one night in Dublin, when I was still living in Paris, an Englishman putting on Les Miserables in my hometown while I was walking on the footsteps of Val Jean and the pretty ladies and the gang. We explored every inch of Paris and its musicality until I moved over to London and we learned how to get to know each other. We didn’t find forever but we will always have Paris.
BOOKENDS; TO BE CAST IN SOMETHING OTHER THAN CONCRETE
Would he cry now for the concrete
that has taken root in reality,
this was never what inspired his impression.
I shiver sometimes when I slip to the edge of this shore
where George saw more in suggestion
and Stephen gave names to the dots.
Balance and harmony are hopes, not foundations
but you wanted me to lay down in all you had built
before you even knew my name.
We are all artists; drawing, singing, writing,
directing, searching for our spotlight on the stage
or along the shore.
You wanted us to be a monument but I knew
the concrete would crush my concern for creation.
All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly.
Georges Seurat painted on Sundays in 1884 on Ile de la Grande Jatte, an island on the edge of Paris. Before I left Paris in 1999, my boyfriend would come over from London on weekends where we would walk along this island looking for the light and balance Georges had painted in dots onto his canvas, while humming the tunes from Stephen Sondheim’s musical Sunday in the Park with George.
BOOKENDS; MINUTES MOVING
There are but minutes now, minutes in motion on metros,
minutes moving in on me, on my identity, on my mark,
on my leaning, on my meaning, meaning I am moveable,
like a feast, as he said; A Moveable Feast, meaning I am
manageable malleable, maybe unremarkable, mistakable.
There are but minutes now, there are but minutes moving
in on my metamorphosis, on my undoing, on my unbecoming,
is it unbecoming? on my being misunderstood, misinterpreted,
misrepresented, missing.
I am famished, the feast has moved on, was moveable, mindless
to all those matters that manipulate me, mould me, remodel me.
Minutes, there are but minutes multiplying in metros moving,
on me, in motion, minutes, mounting, minutes minus minutes.
All words and photographs by Damien B Donnelly
This month is about looking back to move on, making sure I make the most out of the minutes left to me, minutes on metros, momentous minutes, minutes made of moments.
BOOKENDS; STREETS SCENES ON A SATURDAY
Paris, the nature of a city…
All photographs by Damien B Donnelly
Damien B. Donnelly 