2 minute read
Terry McDonagh - A Love Song and other poems
Terry McDonagh, poet and dramatist, taught creative writing at Hamburg University and was Drama Director at the International School Hamburg. He’s published ten poetry collections as well as letters, drama, prose and poetry for young people. His work has been translated into German and Indonesian. 2016: poetry collection, Lady Cassie Peregrina – Arlen House. 2017: included in Fire and Ice 2, Gill Education for Junior Cycle. 2017: poem, UCG by Degrees, included in Galway Poetry Trail on Galway University Campus. 2017: Director of WestWords, Irish literature festival in Hamburg. 2018: latest poetry collection, Fourth Floor Flat – 44 Cantos, published autumn 2018 by Arlen House. http://www.terry-mcdonagh.com/
Somewhere in the West of Ireland an old woman feeds her goldfinch on birdseed to keep it wholesome. She prays the joyful mysteries of the rosary while beseeching her god of the sacred-heart lamp to take that bird to himself before he takes her. She’s a child again when she thinks of their shared time and even if life has been hit by modern use, her finch has remained golden – an old-school choir mistress and friend.
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How can I go on, I cannot with that beast of burden strapped to my fragile back and my only son the traveller out there shoeing next to where clouds shape horses and all I want to do is for me and the beast to visit a sick relative at the zoo before she passes on but as long as my son keeps shoeing out of reach, we’ll have no way of getting to Dublin.
Current Times in Blue
To begin with I didn’t know where this piece was going. It was a work in progress. I like work in progress. I’d seen the words current times in a newspaper article and blue popped into my mind. I don’t know why but it did – simply blue.
Further down the page there was a media saga on a footballer who’d lost his wife to a wag. There was scandal to keep you glued to your tea and toast and stuff about death on and between the lines. On the next page a picture of a comedian on fat phobia and a headline that said sympathy only strikes a chord in symphony or in light operas that make you cry. Maybe. I put my newspaper to one side, shut my eyes, registered a strong sensations in rocks, and watched swallows gyrating their messages in plumes.
Am I master of my fate? Don’t know. But when I hear thumping in haze and furze I know I’m a stranger trying to take something with me
as I stare out into oblivion or look for secrets in shadow and dense fog before light and blue sky get there first?
