Poems by Tony Kelly read at Poetry for
the Soul at the Carmelite Centre on Tuesday the 22nd of July, 2014
Address for a Special Occasion
How the bishop gamely tried
to tickle the plump sense of occasion
into a little transcendence! --
To take a step beyond
the mundane of the heat, summer frocks,
smart suits, and rows of polished cars;
beyond where family values are secure,
spouses faithful, children obedient,
motherhood a treasure, and even fathers
have a special role –
to that other region...
In the religious perspective
the vanishing point
makes all meaning shrink:
old bird-words are no longer winged;
no more abiding the open air
they roost, moulting,
pecking seed from the preacher's hand.
Some wild amazing thing has flown away:
once reachable in a bound of hope or
praise,
or in the dart of love or pang of guilt.
Piety lives here now
as a drugged bird of paradise,
smuggled in, and revived,
allowed to live decoratively,
at least as a specimen
in the ecology of a cage.
Customs check the contraband:
importing exotic fauna
is against the law.
The safer option is taxidermy...
But jokes get by --
ironic resonance
with what we barely know,
as everything comes tumbling down,
and nothing sure can stand
against the earthquake tilt from
nowhere.
For all I know, tears may be
a surer path, a strange confiding gift
flowing with more elements,
and welling up from where forgotten
things
are felt – and spell,
in a giving too deep to be one's own,
existence, if only for the moment,
shamelessly ecstatic.
Listening
To write again,
if not perfect poems,
at least to
feel that excess of meaning –
awkward in
corridors and too loud in libraries,
cluttering
desks, a distraction at prayer –
unsettling the
agenda generally.
Its the old
thrill, to write freely,
not knowing
what you have to say,
but being
written in a way:
Lower case
inspiration, you might call it.
Whatever the
case, despite the theories,
things get
given: there’s store enough
in nostril and
tongue, in skin and eye and ear,
and in the push
and pull of being here,
to say nothing
of a larger undertow
of that
presence and absence somehow --
even enjoying
the limits of vocabulary,
its resonance
and dance;
and, the times
being as they are,
to wait, pencil
poised, or fingering a keyboard,
listening. . .
Coogee Beach
Languorous
corporation of hazed consciousness,
basking
collective sprawled
in undulant,
pendulous embodiment,
contoured in
sand, or ambling to water's edge. . .
the limp
pennant of bright towel marking each place.
A sacrament of
sorts, when blessed by these elements,
baptised in
brine, posing turns innocent
and all is
forgiven –
though capering
kids agitate the truce
by throwing
stuff, and tongues of foam hiss
envious of this
prone and pacific state:
left with
nothing, not even the clothes on our backs –
all survivors
from the ordeal of going in,
stiff-kneed
against the undertow,
pummelled by a
good natured surf –
then dumped,
and dragged into higher consciousness
oblivious to
city streets and long dry roads;
then to wade
out in a daze
to hug the
promised land,
noses running
salt water, sharing this hour
as no friends
or strangers could –
every body on Coogee Beach.
Messiah
The century dies
with too many deaths. . .
I survived, I think –
though a refugee
from a succession of grey
Utopias,
even if now hesitantly
naturalised
in this present place.
Still, you learn something
from the crash-course of
history;
mostly irony – after being
ill-prepared, late, and too
often wrong.
But now, what makes me
hesitate
beyond clear borders of
love and hate,
is a gentle Jew.
John
The Baptist
Would that I could make
clear,
and cleanly real now,
the way it is these days,
the whole damn wonderful
way
it all is now:
I have no skill in
proclaiming
non-dreadful things –
just this need to goad
all the demeaning witless
unfeeling of life into
something else...
Maybe flame and darkness
are not more understood;
but at least now we must
sweat blood
in a million luxuriant
Gethsemanis,
and see the lilies waving
splendid
in the threatened field;
while that wretch at the
gate
will have a place, if not
at our tables,
well, at least in the
awakening heart.
Let sins have the proper
scale,
to test the stuff of
mercy...
if not, then be utterly,
utterly lost..
in a huge and negative praise
of straighter, narrower
ways:
Now no need to tip-toe
as before, when they,
neither saints not sinners,
feared to alarm lazing
demons,
shuddered to make idols
tremble,
or summon too quickly the
holy ones.
It's different now: this
time –
It’s all so climactically
appalling!
Jacaranda
Such a short time,
A smokey blue understatement
Yet luminously clouding
Every view—
Condensing sky-blue and dawn pink and
grey,
A cool blue profusion, incense like,
An advent wreath
Tranquil after the strident wattle,
And before orotund poitsiana;
Blooms strew the ground;
Still, a tracery of leaves is left--
And a dull sturdy trunk
The streak of parrots
Anthony
Poor old
fellow,
angular,
pinched awkward man,
taut and
pink-faced,
like a
preserved quince;
shrewd and
sensitive despite his endless chatter:
even now, the
original orphan
left at every
doorstep;
Everyone
hesitates to take him in,
wincing at his
eagerness,
and protecting
conversation
from his
fantastic interruptions,
his perverse
skill in missing every point.
His need is to
construct the world
in every
instant from the start:
recently he
discovered the name of his mother,
long dead, and
found some brothers,
and the strange
world of blood relations...
Now a gush of
communication
after the long
legal amnesia,
he reports a
big barbecue
to celebrate
the discovery
of belonging
after all:
the heat is off
us now --
unless, of
course, you take him
as a parable...
The Photo
In
the cool gloom
of
the old chapel
between
the mountains
I
first saw his photo:
Franz,
with your Iron Cross,
the
hero of this valley,
dead
now these many years,
killed
out there on the snows of Russia.
The
little posey to honour you
and
those nineteen others
from
this valley
who
died as soldiers,
is
plastic:
memory
kept as best it can...
So,
there you are, Franz,
still
looking out
with
that quick eye,
having
seen too much.
And
eyes now meet
after
all these years,
in
the darkening alpine afternoon.
You
look so young...
Did
you ever think that someone
whose
father was your foe,
would,
one day,
in
your tranquil valley,
look
you in the eye,
in a
moment of recollection,
though
you are gone
these
many years,
frozen
out there...
Well,
an introduction of sorts:
not
much worse than the tawdry flowers..
and
the brown stain creeping
over
your photo.
Who
bore you ill,
Franz,
poor lad
to
wrench you from these slopes
to
die a frozen thousand miles away?
A
fateful history
too
many evils,
and
presumably the watching Love
you
worshipped
in
this musty little place,
--
all were working,
then
as now...
to
give this instant too:
Friend,
Franz, in the growing gloom
I
kneel and let the oneness grow,
looking
at your photo,
looking
through a window.
An Irish Lament
[After an
afternoon of Irish Music in THE DAN O'CONNELL]
I lament in
heart and soul
for those whose
blood is untroubled
by the passion
of the fiddles and the throb of the drum
and the sweet
exultation of the pipes,
who cannot move
to the fanatic merriment of the reel,
for all who
have grown old and cold and numb and cannot feel,
for all know
nothing of song and feast and dance,-
the whole merry
madness and sad gladness of this inheritance -
I lament, yes,
I lament.
And for those
who can neither brood nor dream,
nor pray wild
prayers,
who know not
any leaping and bounding of spirit;
for those who
cannot die boldly,
who, so sober,
have settled so easily with death,
for them, I
lament.
I so lament the
clouding of bland mens' souls,
their torrents
of tears unshed,
their songs
unsung, their great deeds undone;
I bewail the
flat, grey bays of fear that lap them now
in their dread
of the wild open waters:
and by their
cool tidy graves, I lament.
For all the
faith grown faithless over prayers unanswered,
for all the
humbled hopes and the crumbling of great dreams;
for all the
loves that once flamed, then turned to ash,
to be blown,
traceless, so quickly away:
in all the
mourning of the world I lament:
for the men who
go lonely, the women unloved and the children unwanted;
for all the
timorous, the stunted, the broken, the haunted;
for the sweet
ones who have turned sour,
and the old
ones who have grown bitter and bent,
pent up in
despairs with no hope for mercy,
and stiffened
against any grace,
I lament, I
lament.
Now, in this
time
between the
flowering of the wattle
and the
blossoming of the plum,
I lament for
all who have snugly settled in the heart's winter
to the
forgetfulness of shining summers,
who suffer in
lifeless places for no reason,
who coldly know
that the wattle's exploding gold,
like the luminous
fragrance of the rose,
are all
dangerous inventions:
for such, too,
I lament.
And for gaunt
children with empty plates around bare tables
and for their
mothers pretending that something is cooking;
for all the
great houses that were once built for love,
but never gave
rest to friend or stranger;
for cold
priests who too easily speak beautiful words;
and for
beautiful people whose eyes look only for mirrors,
I lament, yes,
I lament;
-- for homes
where no music plays,
for faces where
no smile plays,
for the
promises made but not meant,
for the letters
written, but not sent,
I lament.
I lament from
the grief that lives in that deep place
where the heart
breaks and the soul prays,
where smooth
respectability stays
on steady
plains, in dread
of the heights
and depth of the spirit's space.
I lament for
the peace that is not yet,
for the cup of
the world's tears not yet filled,
for the cause
of my sorrow and all sorrows,
for the
fighting and dying not yet over,
for all loves
as yet unlearned,
I lament, yes, I
must lament.
Lost Art
Even
in these lovely lands
you
must rise with open hands
to
let all you held be free,
to find its own and fly away:
let all your doves and eagles
have the freedom of the sky.
The wise ones will always say
that suddenly, on a summer day,
the returning eagle will look with
eyes
alight with the span of heaven --
where all is healed and forgiven:
and wink knowingly, an angel in disguise.
And the doves? Take this one here:
Look, now she has no fear!-
In the surrounding darkness no
longer lost,
she was the one I was missing most..
Perhaps she is the Holy Ghost?
An other holds a splinter in its
beak,
plucked from once sightless eyes:
that is what she flew off to seek.
Now blind eyes see, for the dove is
wise.
She comes to hand.. but I set her
free..
whispering, `Love, go! ... bring
back the branch
of the olive tree.'
Monastique
How can one of
living flesh
not sense that
most human joy,
body alive to
body's beauty?
Enjoyed,
enfleshed, secure delights
Gently eager
for the coming nights.
Yet stark in
hope, there is a stranger,
this poor monk
sleeps alone,
with God alone
to say, Goodnight,
and him alone
to greet in morning light,
and him alone
to hear the groan
should the dark
be less than friendly.
He stirs to
murmur:
Gently now, my
lovely ones,
Waste not your
pity here:
I lie stretched
cowled between
Vigil and
sleep’s half-dream,
divining
answers about that end
when you too
will need a friend;
and you too
must sleep alone
to wake to no
familiar form.
Other Owners
Often
around the bend of the river
mostly
in early morning and at evening,
wandering
amongst the flowering gums along the banks,
surprising
improbably bright parrots,
I
have a sense that this, all this
is
still known, owned by invisible others --
catching
me midway between some feeble praise,
and
expatriate envy of those who knew by belonging...
as
they dwelt in reverence's vast,
tender
accumulation
of a
whole world beyond me;
As I
stare untutored at flower, and tree,
and
at places where animals are supposed to be,
I
know they saw;
and
breathed what I glimpse,
and
danced what I clumsily survey.
-- I
am where they were made to disappear;
still
animating the place, I think,
still
in cosmic dreaming...
and I
mourning absence
or
sensing presence,
beyond
the reach of politics,
in
this teeming, shifting seeming.
Silence
We
speak most fully the words we do:
unanswered
the question:
whether
we are spoken for
or spoken
to?
And
the rare conversation
not
so much breaking the silence
but
sounding it,
not
to paper over the cracks
in
the world's meaning
but
to prise at them
in
the little metaphysics
of
our scope.
There
are other ways;
but
soon the abyss
discretely
yawning through the chatter
invites
us to be more at home
with
what must be unutterable.
Souls
weary and retire
to
cryptic crosswords
only
occasionally to consult
the
dictionaries of desire
hoarding
signs of silence sounded
or
silence broken:
still,
all too late
at
great meals
or in
the bed of love or death --
the
heart desperately inarticulate.
Twins
They
were twins, this strange pair,
very
hard to tell apart:
they
lived not far away
in
a great old shambling house
at
the very end of our longest street.
They
had a funny trick of startling neighbours
with
a sudden cry of recognition;
or,
one of them, waiting in the dark,
would
surprise some passer-by
by
jumping out to ask, `Which am I?'
Despite
their bad reputation
with
the older folks,
with
all this nonsense and endless jokes,
there
is no harm in them really.
Only
this evening we talked:
having
just returned after some time away,
I
asked them about old friends.
Their
eyes brightly met:
`They're
safe and doing well:
so
and so bought a farm and had a drought,
another
became famous and was then found out;
this
one was strong despite the heart that failed,
but
the other prospered after being gaoled...
Then,
there was Jack who loved Jill,
but
Jill loved Will
which
proved quite a problem until..., well,
Look,
there is so much to tell
and
it is early yet --
(they
seemed so delighted that we'd met)
come
inside and talk some more:
No,
its not too late!".
So,
the darker one opened the garden gate,
and
the other, so much fairer, laughing led me
along
the path to a great ancient door.
Strange Universe
The evil is too much
of course,
beyond all measure.
But of late --
was it the winter sun this Melbourne afternoon?
Or that old fellow helping
that long-haired, limping girl?
Or the lilied tranquillity
and the bell-birds
of the Yarra billabong
exploding in the laughter of two kookaburras? --
I have begun to take
great pleasure
in this strange universe.
The Pope's
Day of Peace, Assisi October 27, 1986
They met for
peace that day,
far from my own
heart's foreboding,
in the city of
the Poverello --
to pray, these
holy ones,
in a conspiracy
of faiths and ways,
bright spirits,
in hope that darkness
need not be our
doom:
the TV showed
them almost as boys playing,
as they set the
white doves free --
distracted to a
smiling fluster
from the
solemnity of ceremony
in the elusive
practicality
of in opening
cages,
and letting
startled birds
flutter off...
to what fate?
White doves in
grey landscape,
whirling up and
off
defying the gravity
of the occasion,
into certain
danger:
a fleeting
gesture to decorate
the perilous
land of the heart:
No more cages,
only wings,
and the hawks
of winter waiting..
what of the
prayers?
Flying doves,
falling leaves,
old men
smiling,
attempting
greater goodness,
a hour of good
behaviour,
even for the
religious,
with some guns
stopped,
and the
missiles waiting for another day;
though no
pause, I think,
in the great
factories of death;
and the world
as my own heart felt.
Still, withal,
the imagination
just a little
bit disarmed
by
possibilities of mercy...
