The Émigré’s Lament - Prose Poem by Greg Patrick

 

 

The Émigré’s Lament 

  

"There's a feeling I get when I look to the west, and my spirit is crying for leaving. In my thoughts I have seen rings of smoke through the trees, And the voices of those who stand looking. Oh, it makes me wonder"-Led Zeppelin "Stairway to Heaven"  

You say that your homeland's shores are bleak and grey in contrast to a distant land, yet there has never been a light so radiant that it has shone on the Boyne or Nile that can be matched by a single smile… 

Yours. 

Nor a presence that can fail to inspire the question when you make your entrance into a room: "Why does the sun then rise from the west? Why the dawn so early this eve?" A brightness that does not blind but make one see beauty for the first time. "Who's that who looks so like a star?" Who bears their brightness in each smile? 

As one can hear the sound of the sea in a shell, one can see the starlight in that gaze and smile. There has never been a nomad-humbling desert so vast that has not been equal to that of your absence nor an oasis so sweet to a nomad's parched lips that it has not known a greater sweetness in the one word song of your name. Not a mirage that vision but a truth that beauty walks beneath the stars and with their light, the echoes of the song are the sighs that follow your absence and the sense of wonder inspire as many songs like the first kindlings of a votive flame the first breath before a duet and no darkness so deep that befalls heart or land that cannot be held at bay by its rare light. 

Like the nomad who steps away from his comrades in the midst of a song by a caravan fire to look at the stars, standing in solitude as the sultry desert winds lend ventriloquism to his sigh...so does one think of her by the stars. 

Like a dream of the gloaming light of the midnight sun to one lingering by the northern sea with the same wish brought to the horizon, and its loss a sacrifice of a dream to a shrine that no pilgrim visits anymore save one who has faith yet in his goddess. 

You say your homeland is cold and grey but what darkness is there that has not been brightened by a light in its midst like a candle by which one offers a heart-felt wish to the angelic. Like an isolated star by which one below stands and dreams… so far its brightness but no less inspiring its light. As surface of sea mirrors the dawn so too is that smile a reflection of its radiance beheld.  

Vision of beauty behind green eyes do not yearn for the land over the sea with the greenest eyes for gaze that would look over seas for you yearning with a depth deeper than the ocean… As one looks into them to see the summer sky and sea.  

The brightness of the surface seems to reflect the depth of your eyes. As great as the bright beauty seen on the surface as the sun sets over the western sea and the night never felt darker nor you farther. The brightness of the surface like an indication of the depth of the eyes. 

Gaze reflected their admirer like a nomad’s face in an oasis or sequestered tidepool of dream. A sigh to the last light of the setting sun of summer a wordless interpretation of your name. A sigh to the horizon after a distant sail or plane leaving away like a prayer to an angel invoked on eve of battle, distant as a star’s brightness darkened by the city lights after abandoned on the shore.  

Eyes worthy of the person, a gaze startlingly and impossibly blue. Voluminous as the shelves it would take to do justice in words yet understated. Their fathomless depth that of the Irish Sea, yet more so. Breath caught in mid-song like a dream-differed in the strands of a dream catcher when beauty before words proved song obsolete.  

Fare thee well.

 

Greg Patrick - A dual citizen of Ireland and the states, Greg Patrick is an Irish/Armenian traveller poet and the son of a Navy enlisted man. He is also a former Humanitarian aid worker who worked with great horses for years and loves the wilds of Connemara and Galway in the rain where he's written many stories. Greg spent his youth in the South Pacific and Europe and currently resides in Galway, Ireland and sometimes the states. 

  

 

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

 

Five Poems by Kieran Beville

 

The Magi and the Fox

  

Cousins arrived in polished shoes 

And Sunday best 

Contrasting with the ragged,  

Soot-faced wren-boys  

Who had just left,  

Coins rattling in a tin cup. 

"Soft day, thank God" they said. 

Smell of damp coats 

Drying near the fire 

Steam rising with laughter. 

I, nonchalantly, examined  

The figurines in the crib 

With its purple crepe paper 

And peeled the warm braided wax 

From the tall red candle 

Moulding it into a fox 

Who joined the magi  

Beneath the Bethlehem star. 

 

 

 

 

The Acolyte and the Olympian

   

It was 6 am, mist rising from the river  

As I crossed Sarsfield Bridge 

To the Franciscan church  

To serve the Latin mass for a visiting American priest. 

Alb and starched white surplice in a Besco bag. 

I hoped I would know when to kneel and stand,   

To remember to genuflect when crossing  

The tabernacle that housed the sacred host.  

To ring the bell when chalice and 

Sacramental bread was raised aloft. 

In the vestry, I laid out the priest's robes, 

Put water and wine in little glass jugs. 

The clergyman seemed ordinary before 

He donned those garments. 

But when he kissed the stole  

And draped it over his shoulders  

He was sanctified by ritual. 

Just like the way he patted his lips  

With a white linen napkin 

After he supped the blood of Christ. 

He gave me a silver dollar and I was wowed  

Until I learned that the coin was  

Worthless currency in my hometown.  

So I placed it on the railway track 

And it was flattened by a passing train 

Into a large disc. 

I drilled a hole in it and hung it around my neck  

With my sister's green ribbon.  

A second best Olympian. 

"In nomine Patris et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, Amen." 

 

 

 

 

Raspberries

      

Each day you turned your back on the city 

When the setting sun freed you from tedious toil.  

You followed the light, westward, to home and hearth.  

In that first summer of loss 

Memories were as bounteous as raspberries  

On the cane.  

And I marvelled at how both replenished,  

Even when I had plucked the branches bare,  

New crops appeared with new dawns. 

I still harvest the soft fruit of those summer seasons.  

My fingers stained with the blood of those berries,  

Crushed for their sacred ink. 

 

 

 

 

Tender Perennial

    

The bare branches of winter trees 

That seemed sketched in charcoal 

Against a pale spring sky 

Begin to sing in feathered song 

And fledgling leaves in hints of green 

Quiver in the dawn – 

Drinking light in thirsty gulps. 

Today I will plant 

The window boxes again. 

Some half-sheltered begonias 

Survive the frost – 

And I think of you, 

A tender perennial, 

Who did not! 

You have flown to perch far off 

In half remembered things. 

But I will always think of you 

When scarlet blossoms 

On my sills and trees begin 

To stretch their wings. 

 

 

 

 

It’s a Wonderful Life

 

We pull Christmas crackers 

Read the silly jokes and riddles 

Tie the trinkets to the flashing tree  

While wearing coloured paper crowns –  

Momentarily regal. 

When the turkey is reduced to the 

Bones of contentious conversation 

About Israel, Palestine and Hamas. 

The consensus is, to not speak of that today 

For, after all, it is Christmas. 

So we leave red wine rings 

On the white linen tablecloth 

Select a perennial 'feel good' movie - 

'It's A Wonderful Life' 

Now, there's a snow-globe world 

Where everything is black and white.

 

 

 

Kieran Beville is author of Write Now – A Practical Guide to Becoming a Writer (Limerick Writers Centre, 2019). He has had a substantial number of poems and articles published in various newspapers, journals and magazines and five collections of poetry (Revival Press).