Poems by Tony Kelly

Poems by Tony Kelly read at Poetry for the Soul at the Carmelite Centre on Tuesday the 22^nd 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...