SLEEPING SEEDS, day 18 of A Month with Yeats

18/11/201722/01/2018 / deuxiemepeau / 3 Comments

Day 18 of Jane Dougherty’s A Month With Yeats Challenge and today’s quote is: ‘The dews drop slowly and dreams gather’ —W.B. Yeats

Jane’s blog is: https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/2017/11/18/a-month-with-yeats-day-eighteen/

My poem is called: SLEEPING SEEDS

We are seeds in nesting

spread out over soil now slumbering,

still dreaming in the gentle light,

now resting under winter’s plight.

We are seeds in nesting

seeking solace from this winter solstice

under blade now balancing

the dancing dew. Seeds in nesting,

waiting to come through.

all words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

HALF LIGHT, HALF NIGHT, day 17 of A Month with Yeats

17/11/201722/01/2018 / deuxiemepeau / 3 Comments

Today’s quote for Jane Dougherty’s A Month with Yeats comes from ‘Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven’. ‘The blue and the dim and the dark cloths of night and light and the half-light,’ —W.B. Yeats

Jane’s blog is: https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/2017/11/17/a-month-with-yeats-day-seventeen/

My poem is called HALF LIGHT, HALF NIGHT

And time finds them folded

between all that had been lost

and the hope of what yet might come.

And night finds them falling

between the dark clouds covering

and the hands that caress their bodies.

And the kiss finds them feeding

on a hunger they thought exhausted

beneath the truth the darkness can’t hide.

And in the half light,

half starved,

he fell beneath her dark cloths

cast in shadow

as if half forgotten,

half starved

for that blue light

once burning bright

in the dimming night.

And in the half light,

half jarred,

she sank beneath his old hold,

reborn in bold,

no longer

half accepting

that half starved

was the whole picture

as their hunger

pulled them tight.

And in the half light,

half scarred

from being alone but not alive

in this scrapyard,

they each half held

that half light,

half bright

and held each other

in a hope

below the night.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

REGARDING REFLECTIONS, day 16 of A Month with Yeats

16/11/201716/08/2021 / deuxiemepeau / 5 Comments

Day 16 of Jane Dougherty’s A Month with Yeats poetry Challenge and the quote today comes from ‘He Mourns for the Change That Has Come Upon Him and Longs for the End of the World’: ‘Do you not hear me calling, white deer with no horns?’—W.B. Yeats

Jane’s blogs is: https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/2017/11/16/a-month-with-yeats-day-sixteen/

My poem today is called REGARDING REFLECTIONS

What follies the daylight

carries when then,

before the darkness,

a blindness banishes

the glitter we have

heaped onto our horns.

the night has no light

for lies and disguise.

Blood runs black

in the moonlight

and no one can

see your fear.

And there you stood,

somehow in the shade

of shadow, somewhat

in the mirror watching

and I, leaning on the light,

by the doorway, waiting

to enter your world,

your skin, your body,

and I saw your breath

as it billowed in the glass

all frosted, all fuzzy

and I took in your scent

there in the room

now vacant of all else

but you looking out

to see what the pale

reflection could offer

of the inside and me;

waiting for you

to come back from

that frosted reflection

within the mirror, darkly

shadowed by all that lay

unsolved, by all as yet

unresolved and then

we revolved and it was I

watching and you, my dear,

waiting for me to find you

and lead you back home.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Audio version available on SoundCloud…

https://soundcloud.com/damien-donnelly-2/regarding-reflections

NORTH OF THE NOISE, day 15 of A Month with Yeats

15/11/201716/08/2021 / deuxiemepeau / 6 Comments

Today’s quote for Jane Dougherty’s A Month with Yeats poetry challenge is from the ‘The Rose of Battle’ by WB Yeats: ‘You, too, have come where the dim tides are hurled upon the wharves of sorrow, and heard ring the bell that calls us on; the sweet far thing.’

Jane’s blog is: https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/2017/11/15/a-month-with-yeats-day-fifteen/

My poem today, penned in Stockholm Arlanda airport, is called NORTH OF THE NOISE

And so I come north

where the air cuts colder,

where daylight is a breath

that barely bays, night

a blanket bound to days.

I am not here to stay but

on a sway through ticking

time, to see what rests

where the light is less,

where day finds end before

being truly bent, where life

harks to harder as the day

hangs darker, dreams now are

the comings and goings,

the stuffing out of hours

before a bitter blanket of

blinkered blindness. Sad hearts

grow sadder, they say, grow

seasonal into sombre, into

the shadow of a city standing

still, waiting for the will. Days

fall short, are gone before

they can be caught, like hours,

like time, like the hand in that taxi

I once held, like all we cannot

hold, like all that ticks onwards,

all that moves off with the light

while I come here to the land

which time has left behind it.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

BORDERED IN, day 14 of A Month with Yeats

14/11/201716/08/2021 / deuxiemepeau / 16 Comments

It’s day 14 of A Month with Yeats coming to you from a wet, wild and rather wintery -2 degrees of Stockholm. Today’s quote from the genius of Jane Dougherty is: ‘That you, in the dim coming times, may know how my heart went with them after the red-rose-bordered hem.’ —W.B. Yeats.

Jane’s blog is: https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/2017/11/14/a-month-with-yeats-day-fourteen/

My poem today is called: BORDERED IN

Rough round that rose bordered hem

we ran, regardless of where her skirts

did scurry, no fretting to the fraying

of her fringes, never noticing how

nimble had turned to not-so nifty

above that border of red roses, oh

so pretty, on those placid petticoats

until we laid her low, on a hill so high,

hemmed in forever by a border

of bright red roses, and only then

did we sigh, only there, by her final bed,

bordered in by all we took for granted,

did we feel that teary thorn that

comes at the end of every rose.

All word and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Audio version available on Soundcloud:

https://soundcloud.com/damien-donnelly-2/bordered-in

REMEMBERING FRIDAY NOVEMBER 13th, 2015. NOUS SOMMES PARIS.

13/11/201722/01/2018 / deuxiemepeau / 3 Comments

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 and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Published in Nous Sommes Paris, a Poetry book commemorating the November 13th, 2015 Paris attacks, by Eyewear Publishing

FALLEN FROM FABLE, day 13 of A Month with Yeats

13/11/201722/01/2018 / deuxiemepeau / 6 Comments

It’s day 13 of Jane Dougherty’s A Month with Yeats and today’s inspiring quote is from ‘The Hosting of the Sidhe’ by W.B. Yeats: ‘Away, come away: empty your heart of its mortal dream.’

My poem today is called: FALLEN FROM FABLE

When this mortal coil uncurls

is it a fall into a feathered freedom

we fly, away from the cry and the critic

of this shell of an earth, this hell

on earth, do we really need to reiterate

the ferocious fable of that inferno below?

It’s here, burning through the seeds

we failed to sew and we are both

the basis of its bloodbath and

the ashes of its aftermath.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Jane’s blog is: https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/2017/11/13/a-month-with-yeats-day-thirteen/

TOPPLING HIS TOWER, day 12 of A Month with Yeats

12/11/201716/08/2021 / deuxiemepeau / 7 Comments

It’s day 12 of Jane Dougherty’s A Month with Yeats where you are asked to be inspired and pen a poem based on a WB Yeats quote. Today’s quote from the poetry of W.B. Yeats is taken from ‘The Rose of the World’. ‘He made the world to be a grassy road before her wandering feet.’

Jane’s blog so you can follow read or join in is: https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/2017/11/12/29181/

My poem today is called 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 word and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

SURVIVAL OF THE WITLESS, day 11 of A Month with Yeats

11/11/201716/08/2021 / deuxiemepeau / 6 Comments

It’s day 11 of Jane Dougherty’s A Month with Yeats. Today’s quote is from ‘The Harp of Aengus’ by W.B. Yeats: ‘Where time is drowned in odour-laden winds and Druid moons, and murmuring of boughs,’

Jane’s blog link is: https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/2017/11/11/a-month-with-yeats-day-eleven/

This morning I was watching Planet Earth, and so followed the poem.

My poem today is called: SURVIVAL OF THE WITLESS

And swept is the land

over the Okavango,

water washing once more

over earth that was once arid,

Impala in movement;

hind legs on the hop

dogs on their tales

in packs panting

along their ranks

as the hunt for hunger

breaks through bushes

newly beating, boughs

bending over fresh bones

licked bare after yesterday’s scare,

nature’s race is a rough one

from the sun’s rise

till she is toppled

by the moon’s eyes,

watching, observing the order

of hurt and hunger;

who is the bravest,

who can last the longest,

who can seek out the scent

of something stirring

on the curling wind of the Kalahari,

who can catch the perfume

of prey prancing, dancing

through the ignorance

of what lies in wait

on the sacred sands

once devastated, now saturated.

And swept is the land

as time turns to toil

over ancient soil,

its reckless routine returning

like the water returns, like the

rivers refill, like the impala prance

and the dogs devour their dance.

And so swept is the land

and turned is time

but the moon’s eye

will tell in turn

of the beasts, like you and I,

who walked on two paws

and shot each other

with pistols in the other,

survival of the fittest

now lost in the hands of the witless.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

THE MONSTER IN THE MAN, day 10 of A Month with Yeats

10/11/201722/01/2018 / deuxiemepeau / 13 Comments

It’s day 10 of Jane Dougherty’s A Month with Yeats poetry challenge and today’s quote is as follows: ‘And he saw how the reeds grew dark at the coming of the night tide’

Jane’s blog is: https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/2017/11/10/a-month-with-yeats-day-ten/

My poem today is called: THE MONSTER IN THE MAN

And was he not tied

and turned on the tide,

was there not light

and dark by his side,

though the morning’s sun

rose as his bride

it was the moon o’er his hand

at night that died.

And was he not washed

and worn on the waves,