JANUARY 2003

....POEMS by James Kelly,
....www.angelfire.com/folk/wildthistlesongs/jamesakelly1.htm

from the earliest age I saw it all,
my eyes spread open wide in a Kerry field,
every move they made, every simple footfall
every cry and sigh and tear and Godly devious syllable
- and there my pain began to unfold but never yield.
I drink to dull the grief of what I behold,
all the cunning or cursed words, half look, half spoken,
every bashed up sigh in piles of pain I soak,
I saw every move on their ancient Kerry faces
- the loves, the losses, things done in dark places;
how to speak the half speak, half spoke defected call,
Godly knodding by a Kerry fire after football
and my pain took graceful steps and graceful paces,
from the earliest age, in Kerry, I saw it all.
...........................................

POEM WRITTEN ON THE WAY TO
MICHAEL HARTNETT'S FUNERAL...
The gods' plans have died
in all our graves green fields.
The morning comes now
as obvious as autumn colours
but the secret signs have said
death has no hold on the poet,
that you will die no death.
The poet embraces it (even desires it).
For you Irish Poet, living now longer,
more eternal in our hearts,
in the hearts of all Gaelic poets.
Every word you crafted
is nourishing our poor souls.
Every poem, every book, every drop
of blood a great gael loss.
But you are not lost on us
This is the most significant death
since that of Paddy Kavanagh.
............................................

ANGER AT GOD
Being angry at God
Is like pissing into the sea.
.......................

BOBBY SANDS
So now by the wind that cannot cut through me.
You are my first dream and my last.
The tears of Gael on a Hillside.
The tears I shed today at the Burren.
Call me naive, idealistic, call me a fool.
For my people I have no rule.
That we know who we are in our own country.
That we speak another tongue in our own land.
Because this tongue is not ours
but the one we do not bother to speak.
Speak to me of my old people.
My young, my children trying to play
Let the children play, this is their only chance.
Don't take their pleasure today.
Don't point at me, ye covet ye,
Don't label me, patriot, terrorist in my own country.
I give my belt, my shoe laces to her.
For you I lay my head down,
upon you I lay my head down.
I have no fear of you who try to put me down
or try to abolish my memory.
I fear nothing but my feelings for my land.
This dark and beautiful woman.
How far will your mind go for this history of love?
When will your great heart know how to stop it?
My memory still born in the wombs of our youth,
Could I starve myself of feeling?
Could I starve myself of love for you?

Written in memory of Hunger Striker Bobby Sands who died for principle and for Ireland
...............................................................

IS THIS ALL WE EXPECT?....

We expect nothing more in our cynicism
but that our leaders have let us down.
We expect nothing more of our politicians,
but that they fiddle and we in our cynicism
are all a party to it; that our children are abused
by clergy who lecture us on how we should love them...
that our child-abusers are men of God.

We expect nothing more?....but that our politicians
take backhands from those who won't pay a proper wage.
We expect that our parents don't understand us.

That they can't somehow show us love;
or that our old will be attacked, robbed, murdered;
that we will feel like orphans;
that we expect nothing more than despair,
the breakdown culture, the sorrow;
we expect nothing more than to be offered drugs;
to sit having the same conversations,
about the same things, drinking the same drinks in the same bars...
we expect nothing more....
.......................................

...to Spanish Ruth.
I carried your country's sorrow through my country...
Because when you came upon me
on a Limerick street one February day
I thought you had the saddest eyes I had ever seen.
Up you come, as if sailing, sailing slowly to me,
and all your pain I could see...
That pain, when I held you.
I took it with me the following evening baby,
I couldn't bare to handle it
So I left Limerick as fast as I could
into the embrace of another woman in Galway.
But my heart was filled with you..
Your every solitary step, I knelt with it,
it would'nt melt, I carried you
through the fields and streets
from Limerick to Galway.
I took your little frame between the sheets
where your sleepless heart beats.

james Anthony kelly© rainmansongs@hotmail.com

James can often be found in Grafton Street, Dublin, selling his books and poemsheets.