It’s day 19 of Jane Dougherty’s brilliantly creative and challenging A Month with Yeats poetry challenge and today’s quote is a second one from ‘The Valley of the Black Pig’: ‘We who still labour by the cromlech on the shore, the grey cairn on the hill, when day sinks drowned in dew, being weary of the world’s empires, bow down to you, master of the still stars and of the flaming door.’—W.B. Yeats

Jane’s blog is: https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/2017/11/19/a-month-with-yeats-day-nineteen/

My poem today is called SPELLING PEACE

And in between turns the tide,

in between the heavens on fire

and the heathens

freezing below, for hire,

I watch from this ticking tomb,

this dolman of deserved doubt,

forced to find footing here

on front of all this currish clout

as the sand’s siphoned

from the slithering shore,

greedy for the grains

human hands cannot hope to hold,

the sea ceaselessly

sucking more and more

from the less and less

that lunges listlessly

with the rest who hope and hoar,

souls for sale

as selfishly subservient civilians

seal another nail

in another box of beaten bones,

bruised with too many battles,

stones have warped on the waves

as time twists tongues into telling tattles;

we are no longer ripples;

buoyant in our beauty,

but grown greedy

as we dig the graves

we’ll one day drown in,

never quite trusting the fights

that came before,

the truths once worth the marching

of boots through the mud.

These are the days of the duds,

envy is the new enemy,

celebrity the sought-after salvation

as the hopeful fall to but a handful

on front of such talentless damnation.

Do the demons derive distraction

as we disappear

beneath our own destruction?

We no longer discern

the halo from the horn,

nor have time to stop and mourn,

the devil dances in the daylight

on main street’s prime time,

Disney has dipped below the darkness

and god is now a forgotten phony

once founded in faith,

now fated to be nothing

more than wraith.

And still we stand beneath the dolman,

dull men, trying to spell peace

with the wrong alphabets letters,

wondering if time’s tides will ever cease

and how many wrongs must we right

before we can come face to face

with our betters.

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

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