Joyful and Triumphant

As the hymn always reminds me,

It was indeed  JOYFUL AND TRIUMPHANT

Christmas, I remember,

Was the only time

The fire was lit all day.

Da lit it real early

With twists of the Evening Press,

Bits of broken wood,

And coal brought from the

Backyard in the ashbucket.

The room was warm, flickering.

Once a year smells of nutmeg,

Allspice and stale Guinness

Mixed with coal smoke,

Pine, and white pudding.

Everything was lit up,

For breakfast!

Red and white chains of

Crisscrossed crepe,

Cards on the mantle,

And the green tree had

Cottonwoolballsnow.

The path was frosted white

On the way out to the lav.

I rode my big wheel trike

Making squeaks on the lino.

“Triumph” was written

In old fashioned letters                                                                                                                      on the red metal bars.

I was five then, full of joy.

It was indeed a happy warm

Christmas, I remember.

 

Martin Swords

Dec. 2005

 

 

Chasing The Girls at Sandycove

Mary and Carmel and Clair
Hiding in the bushes wanting to be found
In the little park at Sandycove
Hoping the boys will come round

It’s not too far along the seafront
Head towards Joyce’s Tower
The little park before the harbour
Among the trees and bushes our early teenage bower

Raging hormones race within the girls and boys
As we ran and were caught among the bushes
Run slow, make sure to catch each other
Kissing and fleeing full of blushes

Not knowing why but yet compelled to play
This game of growing up unplanned
Chasing, catching, kissing
Driven by feelings we did not understand

Ann and Jane, Rachel and Alison
Wanting to be caught
John and Dec, Pete and me, not letting on
Our hearts were thumping in this uncertain game
Chasing the Girls at Sandycove
Driven by unknown urges as yet unnamed

Martin Swords
November 2019

 

I Am Wicklow

I Am Wicklow

 

 

I am a Big River and a Small River

I am a Valley of Two Lakes

I am a Norse Name, a Grassy Meadow

I am a Toothless Monk

I am a Stag on a Boggy Hill

I am a Glen where a Devil Lives

I am a Seal at a Fishman’s Shop

I am a Mackerel with a Bright Eye

I am a Red Kite with No Strings

I am Brown Bread marked with a Cross

I am a Garden for All Seasons

I am an Old Place with Young Blood

I am the Gorse on a Stony Field

I am a Stubborn Sheep

I am a Safe Harbour in a Storm

I am the Shifting Stones on a Wave Washed Shore

I am a Market Town where Little is Sold

I am a Hungry Child unable to Eat the Scenery.

 

Martin Swords

Wicklow Writers

October 2016

Love in the Rain

 

You are my Red and Orange

My Yellow, Green and Blue

You are my Indigo and Violet

My Ark in Rain and Shine that’s you.

 

Martin Swords

August 2019

Going Down the Forty Foot

 

 

Where are you goin’? Out.

When are you back? Later.

What are you doin’? Stuff. With the lads.

 

Down the seafront with the lads

To Bug Rock, maybe a swim with Babby Martin

He swam like a seal and we all learned from him

At the prom steps and the platform.

 

Often we all trooped towards Sandycove

Along the water’s edge, past the pinkeen

Pools and crab caverns. Jumping from rock to rock

Trying not to slip into the water.

 

Sometimes walking on the wide wall high over the platform.

Jumping the gaps carelessly. The same high wall

Where Shep Redmond fell a long fall down

Onto the concrete path.

We all rushed down, we thought he was dead.

Dazed we staggered him home to his Ma in Glasthule.

He was lucky.

 

On down to Sandycove Harbour

Where the Lovely Mammies and the Crying Babies

Sat on the sand in the Sandy Cove.

Then up the hill and down the slope into

The Forty Foot Gentlemen Only, where the men swam.

 

 

Round the back to sit on the granite hill

Over the children’s pool where we also learned to swim

Two strokes took you end to end.

 

Outside the little pool

If you were good enough you swam out to the Ring Rock

A big rock with a metal spike and a ring on it for a boat.

‘Who put the Ring on the Ring Rock’, we sang and wondered.   

Some poor divil of a sailor had that difficult task,

Maybe a hundred years ago with precious little thanks.

Work was hard and men were cheap back then

 

After the swim we sat up on the granite hill in the afternoon sun.

Lots of the men sat there in the sun, naked, so we sat there in the sun,

Naked too. And us not used to being naked in public,

Not knowing where to look, or where to put our hands.

Sunbathing with the men, feeling manly and looking manly,

Aroused with the grownupness of it all.

 

We were watching the men, only years later did we

Realize that some of the men were watching us.

But we were with the lads, and the lads knew stuff.

Like who was to be avoided.

Innocense.

 

Don’t go far? No.

Swim in not out. Sure.

And mind you stay out of trouble.

Yeah Ma, Yeah.

 

Martin Swords, May, 2019

Nightwatching

Nightwatching

 

Here, in Georgian splendour,

Ivy clad house, antique contents

Des Res in the proper part of town

And I am Nightwatching

 

Mostly down in the kitchen

Half underground

Where the servants toiled and worked

Beside the coal cellar filled from the pavement coalhole

No coal dust indoors if you please

 

Echoes of the country girls who traded

Fresh air and hunger for the smothering

Drudge of a life In Service

Endless ups and downs of flights of stairs

Ups and downs of fuel, matches, ashes, kindling

Fires on every floor,

and don’t mark the rugs, and don’t be long.

 

Timid country girls of flour sack aprons and pinnies,

Now well versed in linen tray cloths

Silver tea pots and antimacassars,

one lump or two, and Yes Maam, if you please Maam, right away.

 

 

Tinkle Tinkle, that’s m’lady on the third floor,

Are her boiled eggs not ready yet, Oh God.

Convent groomed girls making their way in the world

 

Reminders too of Pat Swords and his night work

For Dún Laoghaire Corpo. Past hard work now

And only fit for Nightwatching. Sat in the small

Corrugated metal Nissen hut,

minding the hole In the road, watching.

 

Warmed by a brazier of coke,

Heat to keep you alive, fumes to kill you.

Later in the night Pat would wander

up to Walters nearby for a nice slow pint.

If anyone wants to steal the hole, they’re welcome to it

He joked, always the same joke.

 

On frosty February nights the star filled sky bright and sharp.

Orion The Hunter looks down for eons as we come and go.

Nightwatching our little lives, our misdirected worries

And concerns, our assumed importances and pomposities

Watching since before we were, long after we will be gone

Nightwatching  with sad bemusement

 

Martin Swords

Fitzwilliam Square   

May 2019

 

Gwrageddy Annwn

Green pond scum her skinsalve

Lakespit the spittle on her lips

Clinging grasping fronds her hair

Brown and sharp her greenteeth for crunching scaly fish

Webby her hands and feet on lakebed ooze

Powler patience her secret weapon

To catch our childish happiness unawares her plan

Tragedy her satisfaction

She is a grasping accident

She is a small white box

She is the photo that never grows old

She is a mother’s ruin

She is a broken family.

 

Martin Swords

June 2018

31c   summer water safety

 

 

The Holy Holocaust of Ireland, of Peter, James and John

 

Peter’s growing in his mother. 
She doesn’t know she’s pregnant.

James is in the leering look of George.
Uncle George thinking of young Molly.

John is in Pass Maths.
In the womb of a young girl doing the Leaving.

 

Peter’s in the sacristy.
The priest is shouting shame at his mother.

James is in Molly’s big belly.
They’re in the kitchen saying the family Rosary, waiting for the car.

 John is nearly born.
His mother failed the Leaving with the upset.
Don’t mention that shame either.

  

Peter’s in his mother’s arms.
They’re looking from the gate up to the grey stone Home.

James and Molly, in Uncle George’s car.
Heading for the nuns, somewhere far away where no one knows Molly.
Or George.

John is with his Granny.
In a parlour. In a convent. Under The Sacred Heart.
Waiting for a holy nun to take him.
Granddad’s in the car outside.  Listening to the hurling.
It’s Sunday

        

 Peter’s in tears.
In his wet nappy. In his metal cot. Near the window.
His next cot companion, beside the window, is in a fit of coughing.

James is in the basket.
On the weighing scales, his weight OK, just.
He’s in his mammy’s thoughts and prayers. Always.

 John is on the nun’s list.
There are lots of names on the nun’s list but John’s name is near the top.

  

Peter’s in a coma.
Beside the window now, he hasn’t woken. For days.

James is in a blue blanket, all wrapped up.
His mammy thought she’d still be holding him. But she’s not.
She’s upstairs at the long window screaming his name,
crying hysterically.
He’s in the Ford Anglia.  Soon he’ll be in Ranelagh.

John is in Milwaukie.
He’s warm, and fed, and sleeping.
In a house his Mother could never dream of, or would ever know.  Ever.
His mother is in bits.

 

Peter’s mammy’s in a bad way.
Manchester, in a squat. Red Biddy in each hand. Not long now.
She’ll never hear or read about the Angel’s plot, the big tank,the eight hundred.
Just as well.

James’s mammy’s in the convent still.
Scrubbing, serving, broken.
She likes the new glass window of the holy children in the chapel .
Sister Myra Anasthasia put it in with money from America, they said.
She likes the light, but she can’t see through it.
She feels attracted to it, she doesn’t know why.

John’s mammy’s in New Jersey.
Older now. Looking. Always looking.
At home they found a certificate where a baby’s name was changed.
‘Maybe this is it, maybe this one’, she thought.
John is a doctor in Denver now. He knows nothing.

 

The  Holy Holocaust.
The Holy Holocaust of Ireland, of Peter, James and John.
And their mammies.
No daddies.

                                                                                                                                                      Martin Swords
June 2018

‘Kathleen’s Child’

      

          

 

 

 

In The Days Before

             

I’m sorry I’ll read that again.

I’m sorry I’ll read that again.

Sorry.

In a warm cave of scratchy blanket in the alcove bed.

Turning the dial as the valves warm up.

Athlone. Hilversum? Where is that?

Luxembourg if lucky for Rock ‘N Roll.

AFN depending on the weather for talk and music.

Moscow? Never got there.

Hopeful, watching the green light fade and grow strong.

Someone speaking in static somewhere in Europe.

BBC best, LW, Radio 3 and 4.

Listening and laughing so as not to be heard, lucky to

Happen on I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again.

Great wits and half-wits from Cambridge Footlights.

It’s a long way from Glasthule to Cambridge, not only in miles.

Intelligent zany comedy, why can’t I think and write like that?

How many listen in Ireland? In Glasthule?

I did. I tell no one.

Sorry.

 

Martin Swords       April 2018

Inspired after listening to Van Morrison’s and Paul Durcan’s great song

‘In The Days Before Rock and Roll’   

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2GpEoZrS04

Making Bread

 

 

 

Much that might be said

Remains unspoken

Soft words are hard to swallow

Man to man

Son to father, father to son

Yet in the slap and fold, stretching, shaping,

Much is learned, much is proved.

A lesson given, confirmation. 

Without words, none needed.

The love is in the bread.

 

Martin Swords

Sat. Jan 6^th 2018