Yeats

TOPPLING HIS TOWER for Poetry Day Ireland

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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

UNDER PARIS, day 29 of A Month with Yeats

/ deuxiemepeau / 17 Comments

 

Day 29 of Jane Dougherty’s A Month with Yeats and today’s quote is from ‘No Second Troy’

‘Why, what could she have done, being what she is? Was there another Troy for her to burn?’—W.B. Yeats

Jane’s blog is: https://janedougherty.wordpress.com

My poem is called: UNDER PARIS

 

Caught

is the consciousness

in this constant climb

in this city of constrictions

and its current that constricts

and I can’t catch a breath.

 

And the barricades have broken.

 

Baffled

by the beat

my feet can’t follow

and so I am swallowed

sinking in this city of stone swamps

and its concrete that compresses

and I can’t get a grip.

 

And the barricades have fallen.

 

Stoned

is the spirit

of a soul now struggling

through these streets of revolutions

and its suburbs of no solutions

and not a single resolution.

 

And the barricades are weighing.

 

Turmoil

was her Troy

as this place is my poison

burning through this body of burdens

wondering if it was seduction or abduction

that imprisoned us both under Paris.

 

Are we to be buried

beneath this barricade?

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

RED CARPET, day 24 of A Month with Yeats

/ deuxiemepeau / 7 Comments

 

I’m running behind on Jane Dougherty’s A Month with Yeats poetry challenge but better a tad tardy than a no-show. Yesterday’s inspirational quote was: ‘We know their dream; enough to know they dreamed and are dead; ‘ —W.B. Yeats ‘

My poem is called RED CARPET

 

We dream

of what can be,

not of what was, we

are here because of what

came before, what we will be

is based on what we believe,

on what we have learned

to be true. There are

footprints already

in place,

already paved,

a path already plotted

by the brave, those hung

by their own hope, those trampled

by the trust they held in the truth. We

walk this road, lined with lives lived

and lost in the fight for fairness,

freedom, friendship, fidelity.

To dream is a given, to

live out our truth is

the right that

was won by

the red

carpet of heroic blood beneath our feet.

 

All words and photography by Damien B. Donnelly

STILL STANDING, day 21 of A Month with Yeats

/ deuxiemepeau / 3 Comments

 

Day 21 for Jane Dougherty’s A Month with Yeats and today’s quote is: ‘…by water among the trees the delicate-stepping stag and his lady sigh’ —W.B. Yeats

My poem is called STILL STANDING

 

Stag standing

where the river

still ripples,

where the wind

still whips the waves,

where the trees

still twist and turn.

Stag standing

as his lady

lets slip a sigh.

Stag standing,

observing

all that man

once had at his feet.

Stag still standing,

in silent hommage

to the beauty

man once tried to beat.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

SLEEPING SEEDS, day 18 of A Month with Yeats

/ 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

/ 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

FALLEN FROM FABLE, day 13 of A Month with Yeats

/ 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/

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

/ 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,

was he not crushed

like the sea cuts the caves,

in the morning did he count up

the slaughter, the saves,

was he ashamed of how many

he’d laid in their graves.

And was he not just a reed

washed over sand,

was he not just a vessel

on the ocean unmanned,

controlled in the day;

all blood was banned

but unbound in the night

the beast took his hand.

And was he not just a man

who’d lost his sight?

Is there passion for the monster

lost in the night?

But the hunger he was bound

to before the light

was too much in the darkness

to put up a fight.

The best of a man,

a wolf of a beast

but never the two

could ever find peace,

Helios held the famine,

Selene supplied the feast

but not a single God

could offer a release.

A savage surrender

into the sea was swept,

the hair of the hound,

the soul that now wept,

a man and the monster

drowned in the depth

and in their beds, his children,

safely then slept.

And was he not tied

and turned on the tides

like the rise and fall

of a twist that divides

as the nature of man

and monster collides

but when the darkness descends,

the light it subsides.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

THROUGH THE SANDS, Day 7 of A Month With Yeats

/ deuxiemepeau / 14 Comments

 

Day 7 of Jane Dougherty’s A Month with Yeats poetry challenge and today’s inspirational quote from WB is: ‘…stars, grown old in dancing silver-sandalled on the sea, sing in their high and lonely melody…’

To join in the creativity or just to discover Jane’s gentle genius, her blog link is: https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/category/poetry-2/

My poem today is called THROUGH THE SANDS

 

And when they danced

she would hold him, her

perfume by his face, his

hands as her strength

as they waltzed through

their current as the tides

swept the shore, through

love and labor, to the first born,

still born, through the twins

who stopped the tears

and the girls who tied

the bows as the sands slipped

through time and the pace

became a quick step, through

the hands that held and those

hips that swayed through

the melody they were making

as they danced through

waves of washing houses

into homes, children into

strangers; rarely calling

and barely remembering

but on they danced as red

locks swept into silver strands,

as full head turned to bald head

on an older head as they turned

to the music now made

in the memory, till she left him,

finally, one morning in may,

as he rose to the sunlight but

she had lost to the moonlight

and so he built her an alter

of sea shells and sentiments

and now he turns, alone, across

the sands still slipping,

as the stars plot a path for him

to reach her in eternity.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly

WHITE NIGHT, day 4 of A Month with Yeats

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Day 4 of Jane Dougherty’s A Month with Yeats Challenge and in a day behind but onwards we roll. The quote comes from To some I have talked with by the Fire “…till the morning break and the white hush end all but the loud beat of their long wings, the flash of their white feet.” W.B. Yeats

The link to Jane’s blog is: https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/2017/11/04/a-month-with-yeats-day-four/

My poem is called White Night

 

We are vessels

either being filled

or being emptied,

portraying pretty

or rotting as rebels.

 

We are angels

dancing in the darkness

of our own worth,

feet of feeble footing,

flapping wings

within our cages.

 

We are flowers

never quite knowing

our beauty,

pruning the potential

out of others,

never the full bloom

unfolding,

fighting the true nature

that is ours.

 

We are winged warriors

flying through the fog

of our fate,

not knowing

that decision and destiny

are like oil and water,

like light and dark,

like love and hate,

like hush and horror,

like a beginning

and an end,

beating breasts

to be fighters

instead of followers.

 

We can be angels

but choose too often

to be anger.

 

We live in dark days

and only dream through

the white night.

 

All words and photographs by damien B. Donnelly