Road of Excess

--- Blake

May every poem leave you good!
My walk to Holmoak Wood
in the morning and late evening
gets the business of poems churning

over and over until I find time
to make one. One like a dream:
we can almost say a vision
or a new piece of revelation.

Strange! one and not another
walk leaves excéss to remember.
Art or inspiration or craftsmanship,
all three in one: whichever, it's the tip

of something deeper than a normal
way. As if we try to name all
that roots deep and grows high.
And in between the mayfly.

When I walk Holmoak Wood
flowers and the blooded
hawk hover as they were told
in swathes and timeless mould.

As if poetry is caught of long neglect,
off spiders' nets, or wrong
lightening at a wrong
landscape along the brain, or drinking

or praying, or instinctive thinking.
As if the mind were a prisoner
bent on fur and leather, a maker,
by good disposition a stitcher,

studious, curious, recounting dreams
of obscure woods that teem
of bees, exuberant red
flies, anemones, jacks-go-to-bed,

a hermit thrush, all small finches,
hefted bramble branch
of blackberry, curious fecundity
cast of holmoaks. There is a roadway,

and alternative paths to tread.
There are ancient places,
made for representations, annunciations,
mayfly congregations,

that will pass if we wink.
Coming back from the brink
of holmoaks along their cluttered road,
I take home acquaintance with a wood.

Walking to Fort Camden

Leaves shake the sky. They
move with the sea's restless
shiver. This is deep in us.

We feel it hurting along
the waves pulse, ruffling
like a wind in these lines.

Fort Camden has the sound
of herring gulls and waders
through the elmwood where

branches bear the heave of
bracken. I am making land
that never changes. Of this

be sure. Chained in the hill's
grass a corncrake crackles
his center of the world. Now

we know eternity and we
can walk. Miles to go, and remember
miles to go. And we have a

comfort of a land to walk over,
yours and mine. Stride out,
keep pace and hope we will

be there before the night falls.
I will show you stepping
stones ringed by black water,

old sounds along the path, an
old gift of poetry caught up in
reeds, streams, boglands,

broken walls of blackberry.
Quarrel with me like sparrows
in the yellow gorse. Or climb

down to the estuary alone. Stare
at the estuary birds and come
back with their voice 'Turly,

turly, turly'. You know
how much I love this walk and
the anxious waiting at the end.

Morning Return

Will someone not know how
to say just one thing
- words have come in alone
long before we invented them -
that is both beautiful and true
and something be lost if I do
not write you this. Remember
words are not a minute's show,
more like when the wind drops,
the trees straighten up,
the sky clears, and water
carries home the late boats.
Like when we friends wait
to wave them in. Seagulls
catch behind the early
trawlers fish thrown
back to sea, waiting all
night on the quayside.
Not that this is about
saying something new
but getting so there is
craft between us and we
see each as we can because
we cannot see each as we
would. We wait for morning
and hear the recitation
and response of incoming
tide, small feelings it has
invented for the great sea,
that we have not the
words for, words we
are delighted with.
Either way we lose
things and fly back to
the boats' compassion.
Every word is a new
longing for harbours to come
back to. Like ancient ships,
ancient stories. Let's gather
what only we can use and
leave to the flocks what flocks
fight for. What is ours is only
what we cannot do without,
that greater gift to give
people forever like a steady

wind to sway them
and that higher gift to move
and meet, two only
still longing after night.
No place is safe as harbours.

Tristia

Ovid to Rome

Sun-light evening, a chair out front
overlooking Crosshaven harbour,
clustered yachts and seagulls on a
bookcase sailing Ovid's scarlet

leather tears, final touches to a room.
Another boat and baskets filled with
postcards. This house, this place built
for summer and steep stairs to climb.

Pay the boatman. Make a list of guests
expected tomorrow. They won't be down
today. Tomorrow I will meet the boat and
show them over my house. Today I rock

the chair out front and wait. I have a white
hat and white coat and walking stick and I
can make it to the wharf and back. I was
indicted but of what exactly? I don't own

this place. My books need dusting and my
words. Amazing how all goes rusty near
the sea, the mind, the memory, names,
plain English, plain feelings, places.

I own a whole island almost. And I have
kept your letters for winter fogs and you
know I never wrote a word against you.
All wrong. All wrong. No question of defence.

^

Biography

Christopher Neenan is an Irish poet currently living and working in Rome.