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HEMEROSCOPIUM

/ deuxiemepeau / 5 Comments

 

I

build

sentences

in the mind

that had no

existence before,

a platform to ponder

in a place that doesn’t

exist, in truth, until it’s been told.

I move through this Hemeroscopium

like an architect building a house

into a home, unearthing light

to contrast the shadow

my thoughts have

been confined in,

a helix that

spirals out

from within,

that will return

and move on, return

and move on, up towards

that light turning transparent,

sentence into substantial structure,

considerations becoming concrete

clarities that form walls, fold out

into roofs that consider creation

compulsory, stories rising from

basements, tales spinning

off, casting reflections

upon the windows

of this place,

this mind

that watches

the sun rise and set,

time twist and turn, again

and again, the circles, always

the spiralling circles, even in a straight

sentence, even in a slotted surface.

I build spaces to house beds and

beams and bright lights to lie

before this tower of truth

and watch the visions rise

and fall, like the sun, like

the laughter, like life,

like tales, like

sentences

that never stop

while always changing,

an ancient arch now foundation

to modern moment, a true temple

of contemplation in this space holding

space, light and space, shadow and

space, sentence and space, space

between the sofa, space

between the

syntax.

All words and sketches by Damien B. Donnelly

DANCING IN THE CURRENT

/ deuxiemepeau / 14 Comments

 

I am posting a link to Dancing in the Current, a new blog from Exploring Colour‘s Liz Cowburn. Her husband Nigel took this photograph and afterwards both Liz and I wrote poems based on our interpretations. I originally posted mine last week but wanted to show you the three pieces together, Nigel’s photograph along with Liz’s poem and mine. I am so pleased how our work has intertwined despite the distance between France and New Zealand. I wasn’t able to reblog the post directly so I have copied it here but you can click on the link below to be brought to the original post…

https://dancinginthecurrent.wordpress.com/

Liz’s post:

Drawn To The Light. Dunedin, Otago, New Zealand

The St Clair’s Piles, St Clair Beach. Taken by Nigel Cowburn 31 January 2019

My husband Nigel took this fabulous photo when he was on the beach at sunset, at St Clair. I love the view of the piles seen against the esplanade lights reflected in the wet sand. In fact, I was moved to write a poem and also invited Damien B. Donnelly to do the same. Damien lives far away, in Paris, and yet he wrote a remarkably perceptive poem. Here both poems are published together, with Nigel’s photo.

Nigel works as a Landscape Architect and blogs at  Growplan

Survivors

— Poem by Liz Cowburn

[piles’ perspective]

Sentinals of the sand,
we stand

Driven deep to defend
this beach

Regimental relics – we resist,
persist

Fight for footing! Look to the land,
the sand!

*****

[my perspective]

Battered, beaten by tidal terrors ‘the breakers’
— bowed but not cowed

Centred in a century’s swirling currents,
St Clair’s piles sink, subside…

Yet… THESE SURVIVE !!!

You can see Liz’s original poem post here:

https://exploringcolour.wordpress.com/2019/02/12/survivors-poem/

Her new blog is: https://dancinginthecurrent.wordpress.com/

THE  WEIGHT  UPON  THE  WAVES

— Poem by Damien B. Donnelly

And in the tide
tight with time and its turning
they left their posts,
impaled upon the sand,
impressed upon the land.

And there they stood
ten in heart and ten in tide
for time to tend,
impaled upon mind,
impressed upon mankind.

And on they marched
up the land and on from shore
for evermore
impaled upon their wain,
impressed upon the flame.

And out with wave
woe on water and touch from time,
tormented years
impaled upon the crest,
impressed upon the chest.

And on they went
refugees in search of root
swept along the shore
impaled upon with tears,
impressed upon with fears.

And on it goes
those who run and those who can stay
and those who are lost,
impaled upon the wars,
impressed upon the waves.

All words by Damien B. Donnelly
Link to view the poem on Damien’s blog:  The Weight Upon The Waves

Notes on Damien’s poem

The reference to refugees made a big impression on me. In April 2016 Dunedin accepted their first group of Syrian refugees. Damien wouldn’t have been aware of this when he wrote the poem; I told him later via Comments at his site – the following was his response:

“When I saw the piles and the lights heading off inland in the distance a journey immediately came to mind, the struggle of those who survived, who carry the flames of the hope and the souls of the past; those who were left behind or lost on the journey, the hills we all have to climb and the oceans too many have to cross to seek refuge, I am so glad to hear how Dunedin opened its gates to welcome in a new hope. I think our global commonality is that we are all refugees looking for our place in the world, just some of us have it much easier and a more comfortable journey than others.”
— Damien B. Donnelly (conversation via Comments)

Originally Posted by Liz; Dancing In The Current (2019)

 

Reprinted by Damien with permission

THE WEIGHT UPON THE WAVES

/ deuxiemepeau / 13 Comments

 

And in the tide
tight with time and its turning
they left their posts,
impaled upon the sand,
impressed upon the land.

And there they stood
ten in heart and ten in tide
for time to tend,
impaled upon mind,
impressed upon mankind.

And on they marched
up the land and on from shore
for evermore
impaled upon their wain,
impressed upon the flame.

And out with wave
woe on water and touch from time,
tormented years
impaled upon the crest,
impressed upon the chest.

And on they went
refugees in search of root
swept along the shore
impaled upon with tears,
impressed upon with fears.

And on it goes
those who run and those who can stay
and those who are lost,
impaled upon the wars,
impressed upon the waves.

All words by Damien B. Donnelly

This 2nd photograph is also of St Clair beach, Dunedin, Otago, New Zealand, taken by Nigel and used by Liz for her blog Exploring Colour.

The original link to Liz’s blog post is;

https://exploringcolour.wordpress.com/2019/02/06/drawn-to-the-light/

Liz has also penned a glorious poetic tribute to these long standing piles entitled Survivors and the link is

https://exploringcolour.wordpress.com/2019/02/12/survivors-poem/

Nigel’s Landscape Architecture blog is;

https://growplan.wordpress.com/

IN THE PLACE OF THE FORMER PRINCE

/ deuxiemepeau / 10 Comments

I flew back to a day
no longer this day,
returning to the rubble
I had run from
to catch the last slab
being laid upon my childhood
buried under a concrete garden,
not even a root to latch on to.

I saw the permanence
of the pavement
pour over the past
no longer possible
from the next-door vantage point,
access no longer available
to my own old room
with its red walls and worries
for the former local
now unfamiliar foreigner
with footing bound
to a fondness to regress
but reality is no longer
the daydream we used to skip through
under the glorious sunlight
of the innocence
that blinded our youth.

Dreams are sometimes
rotten weeds to return to
after the dawn breaks
through the haze that once held hope,
our once great grounding
is not always as we left it.
We cannot fit into the clothes we once wore
nor the skin we since shed.

I saw my childhood today,
buried beneath the cold concrete;
the final closure on the kingdom
I thought I was the prince of.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

I WISH…

/ deuxiemepeau / 5 Comments

—

Our lives were lived in London then,

2 boys at play on shades

and stages,

in 4 bedrooms

that couldn’t bind us

forever.

In arms we sobbed

from 1 of our 2

3 seater sofas

in our 4 bedroomed house,

watching dreams disappearing

beneath the ashes of the Apple.

Eden had ended for the West.

No one knew who they were anymore,

the afternoon dawned into darkness,

arrogance had eaten the eagle’s feathers

and I only saw shadows in reflections

of myself in mirrors

that couldn’t capture the truth

of who I was or who

the 2 of us had become.

There was confusion, everywhere,

on all sides of the world, on all

the streets in shock, the television

a mirror to the madness

we couldn’t move from.

We were voyeurs to the violence

and already traumatized

by the thoughts of revenge

as Bush read books in the back row

of a preschool of potential

pacifiers or partisans.

And now, today…

—

We’d stood once, together,

years earlier, before the 2 sofas

and the 4 bedrooms

and the discontentment

and then this word called terror,

2 boys in awe

on the top of the world

with Broadway just a bellow below,

not realizing that life was but to Rent,

that No Day But Today meant this day,

not some day, somewhere.

It was now, here.

Jonathan never got to see his story,

hear his one song, his glory,

rising like Mimi from death.

A musical is but a muse on life,

plots are not planned in the spotlight.

A house is not always a home.

Towers cannot always support

the grayness that chokes between

dream and destiny.

We all have our stories,

our songs and our sorrows.

Love is love is love.

Love is…

I dream I see the planes

fly over and not into,

I dream…

we are there in London, still laughing,

still in the bedroom, still loving,

still on that rooftop, still standing

and all is still possible.

—

I dream

the towers in every territory

are rising from the ashes.

—

But we are no longer 2 boys

playing home in 4 bedrooms

in SE26, on September 11, 2001.

We have stopped counting

what we’ve lost, we have run out

of numbers and can never

go back to before.

—

But still,

I wish…

—

All words by Damien B. Donnelly

We saw the musical Rent on Broadway, New York, at the Nederlander Theatre on June 24th 1999, Jonathan Larson, its writer and composer, died the morning his show opened for off-broadway previews. He received a posthumous Pulitzer prize for Drama and Tony awards for best musical, best book of a musical and best score. It is still running in cities all over the world today. We stood on top of the World Trade Center on the 23rd of June, at 2.20 in the afternoon. But we can never go back.

SALMON DANCERS, day 3 of A Month with Yeats

/ deuxiemepeau / 13 Comments

 

Jane Dougherty’s 3rd poetry challenge based on a quote from WB Yeats is as follows: “With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones,”—W.B. Yeats. Follow Jane and her inspiring poetry at her blog, link below, where you can also see a photograph from Paul Militaru which influenced today’s poem: https://janedougherty.wordpress.com

My poem today is entitled SALMON DANCERS

 

And so swim the salmon, against

the rising stream, foam flushing

against fins as falcons fly overhead

in the fight for freedom, destiny

is not a dance that can long

be distracted, shiny specks of silver

dancing, darting, borne to beat back,

to wage against the rushing waters

as they make their way west. And so

swim the salmon, along the corroded

current of Connacht, that Atlantic

sojourn, that shore still swaying

in the shadow of those ancient songs

when souls set off in search of security

overseas, burdened boats battened

down with the beaten and the broken,

culled like cattle in the rain, boats

with bodhrans and fiddlers, singing

and dying through their dreams

of a new world, already mourning

the old lands, the homelands

they’d been swept from, kept from.

And so swim the salmon

as the storms rage, as they battle

onwards, salmon dancers, skating

on the waters, leaving trickles like stones

once tossed by hands now lost, tracks

to follow for others who’ll follow,

as others have followed, as others

who’ve fallen, their faces now faded.

And so swim the shining salmon,

off into the world with the sound

of home in every stroke.

 

All words by Damien B. Donnelly

Picture from the internet of the Salmon of Knowledge.

CEAD MILE FAILTE 

/ deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

Country roads wind where shadows linger in the light,
where whispers have withered like leaves out of season,
where the green grows in grandeur over this ancient land,
often fought for, never forgotten, where former footprints
entwine around the rolling hills and half fallen walls
of wishes that once held lovers, that once courted kisses
by knotted trees where dreams took root, when getting away
from the grass long grown was the latest calling
after Ireland’s rugged rising and falling, a nation whose
conservation of caustic comedy is more ingrained
than the moss that bursts through the cobbled stones
of home. Country roads wind as cars chase onwards
like time ticks behind us and we wonder how far we can go,
frightened we may never make it back, but we are made
of movement; seeds sewn and struggling to be seen
centre stage, mid field, along the midway as I pass
a clutter of cattle slowed by a stretch of sun as bleak days
blow over, are brushed back from the smothered south,
the light now returning after Ophelia’s brief calling;
the maiden no longer ‘sweet for the sweet’ but distress
was still caught in her caress. Country roads wander now,
ever onwards, through these humble hills and varied valleys,
like the trenches time tracks on our skin; growing up,
going out, getting old, these tosses and tumbles like life,
like this light, like the path we pave, sometimes on starved soil,
sometimes over fields of fortune, always the shadow
cast on the current of the light, always the twist and turn;
but the brook bends to bare the bother, always the steady stream;
the tear to wash across the laughter, always the leaf
at the will of the wind; the question of where I am going,
always the path we’ve already plodded; the memory
of where we have been. Country roads wind around
a hundred million echoes of a hundred thousand dreams
in the land of a hundred thousand welcomes.




All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly 

All photographs taken this weekend in Lusk, Country Dublin, Ireland

CEAD MILE FAILTE is the Irish greeting meaning a hundred thousand welcomes in Gaelic. 

BOUND 

/ deuxiemepeau / 2 Comments

 

We are to the road bound,
paved in method,
measure and movement,
we dig trenches,
turn earth and choke
with cement (no joke).
We are to the light drawn,
toward the harbour,
the heat and the hope,
bound to shore,
to security, to bath
and body (to stroke).
We are seekers of shelter
along this helter-skelter,
cutting comfort
into concrete forms,
wombs become rooms
become homes
filled with customs
we become cocooned in,
a bed to lay our burdens on
and rest our bodies (still stroking) in.
Each morning another blanket
folds over yesterday’s shadows
(light, bright till night finds flight),
each morning another curtain
opens on the dream waiting
at the end of another road
to which we will be,
once again, bound to.
We are bound to follow
the paths we are painstakingly paving.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

TIME ON THE TIDE, PART 4, OTHER ROOMS

/ deuxiemepeau / 16 Comments

 

And so
another door
finds its hinges turning to a close
(you choose, you enter, you stay, you leave),
tides twist
and then return
as another summer
finds winter whistling on the arms
of outstretched autumn
(rains fall, flowers grow, sun shines, rain returns)
and I wonder
what is left
within the rooms
I’m leaving, in the corners once
caressed and now cast off, and in the veins
that entwine themselves around the body that houses me,
that pulsed through this home
that once held me
and I wonder
what is left
of the summer heat
now burnt onto skin since soothed
by solutions and sweaters and the summer nights
that promised no end but, like life, like this house, like all this
which was once home,
has now been paid for
and packed away
and prepped
for someone else
to put their mark on
while I ponder the patterns
now a part of this person, frequently familiar
and sometimes a stranger, that is me.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

Audio version available on Soundcloud: