Saturday 21 September 2024

Five Poems by Bruce McRae

 




 

 

The Saint

 

 

A Devonian flower in Permian soil. 

A song tempered by fire. 

A forgetful light, illuminating 

the nowhere that is everywhere. 

Beneficent windfall. 

 

Like a votive candle, this saint 

flickers among the penitents. 

A voice at the end of the rainbow, 

this saint is a martyr to pins and arrows. 

If you cut her she bleeds well water. 

If you kiss her you're damned. 

And still we kiss her. 

 

In one hand is an urn 

of the righteous's ashes. 

In the other, a deity 

jealous of her miracles. 

At her feet of ivory and ice 

is a garden of cleansing flame. 

Is a God without love. 

Is a heaven of cats and reptiles. 

 

The saint dwells within a prayer 

and makes her bed in the primitive earth. 

She burns like phosphorous burns. 

Her flesh submits to the dark's conscriptions.





The Uninvited 

 

 

Ghosts behind a postal stamp 

and underneath a tablecloth. 

With large black eyes and swollen fingers, 

sucking on icicles and clucking like hens. 

Ghosts, shy of a miracle. 

Making nests in a chimneystack. 

Startling week-old kittens. 

Knocking over the salt and causing 

a bit of a ruckus, a bit of a stir, 

and you in the throes of slumber, 

deep in the earth of your bed, 

swaddled from the mortal storming. 

 

Ghosts in the kitchen 

and dancing with mice, 

singing the cockroach back into its crib, 

an invasive species from another planet, 

a world where everything is grey and green, 

and you asleep, surveying night's damage, 

yesterday wedded to tomorrow. 

 

A ghost behind an eyelid. 

A ghost in your earhole, 

talking you down from your dreamy ledge. 

A thousand ghosts in a choir of atoms, 

offspring of a million-headed god 

who does not love you.





To A Sorry End 

 

 

A soldier lies dead in a ditch. 

Maybe he's you, in another century. 

Perhaps this is me, wrung dry 

with war and warring. 

 

Rain comes down in a wash of tears. 

Blood flow joins with rivulets of rainwater, 

dragging his soul to the edge of the sea; 

the vagabond soul, the unwarranted sea. 

For the dead-tired soldier, time has stopped. 

None of the other universes exist. 

The latest gods are drunk or sleeping. 

 

Maybe this is a future war 

and the soldier is yet to be born. 

Perhaps we've mistaken his mother's cries 

as yips of jubilation, 

her tears blurred in a downpour, 

a rain that's fallen since Seneca first moaned 

about the twists in the human condition. 

 

Maybe this is Rome after the fall. 

Perhaps the Somme, its bloody mudbath, 

death being timeless, a poignant proposition 

of loser-takes-all in the come-what-may. 

I can't tell you, it's hard to see and say, 

the soldier's grimace ringing a bell 

but his face unsettled by fear, a likeness, 

portraiture of a singular downfall. 

 

Corporal, you had your run, your summers, 

the lazy mornings in a lover's bed. 

A seed was planted in the heart of a cell, 

and now the harvest. 

 

 


 

Wearisome 

 

 

A bad sleep is a bad road 

skirting the Underlands. 

A bad sleep is a knuckle gnawed 

and surly argument of tendons. 

Torque and torsion play their part 

in undermining the body's tenements. 

You become a nasty thought. 

A simmering kettle of fish heads. 

An abandoned kitten. 

 

A bad sleep is acid splashed 

across the face of reason. 

We ask the same questions, 

agents of darkness 

nursing a bewildering angst. 

Planets at the foot of the bed 

wobble with uncertainty. 

Unease and silence multiply, 

the globe's axis tipping 

towards the angle of repose. 

I think I think I hear 

night-apes in the cemetery 

celebrating my eventual demise, 

a bad sleep a thankless task, 

the curious owls turning heads to hear 

a song played out on bones and minds. 

Sandman, it's a risible music. 

 

 



What We Do Now 

 

 

Truthfully, the past lies 

beyond immediate recall, 

intangible smudge, 

illegible blur, faces gone 

to hell, expressions 

frozen in rictus. 

 

The past stirs ashes 

of a former fire. 

What we have is smoke 

and the rounding of edges, 

yesterday a featureless scape 

weathered smooth 

with timely memories. 

 

What you did then 

is done; what you said 

relegated to suchlike, 

the old house torn down, 

minds gone to seed, 

beauty battered. 

 

What we do now 

is hope for the best 

and plan for the worst. 

What we do now 

is grip the handrail tightly, 

avoiding falls and doctors, 

the future a short while, 

the past a passing notion. 

 

What we are now 

are points of light 

in the folds of sorrow. 

 

 


Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician, is a multiple Pushcart nominee with poems published in hundreds of magazines such as Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. The winner of the 2020 Libretto prize and author of four poetry collections and seven chapbooks, his poems have been broadcast and performed globally.

 

 

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