Randolph Healy - Poetryetc Featured Poet - Series 3, #11
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If I could describe what I write as a punctuation mark, perhaps it would be
a semicolon, having something of the brio of an exclamation mark, yet
mindful of the full stop. I am interested in ideas, particularly ones with
a bit of fire in them. Indeed, thanks to my four daughters, I can hardly
avoid seeing all sorts of ideas renewing themselves in their fresh and
growing minds. I remember hearing Margaret, 12, explaining the idea of
genotype and phenotype to Genevieve, 6. "You know when you write something
rough then copy it out neatly. Well, inside us we have a rough copy. People can't see it, they can only see the neat one." She went on to develop her metaphor in considerable detail. One time we were in town and Genevieve
peeled off from the crocodile and marched into a really expensive jewellers
in Grafton Street. She put 20p on their counter and said "Give me some of
your treasure." Our second daughter Florence, 9, is deaf and she has opened up
whole continents to us. Beatrice, 2, is our youngest and is such a charmer
that Louise and I are expecting our fifth child this June. We all live on
the Dublin/Wicklow border in Ireland where our immediate neighbours are a
herd of cattle. Some years ago, Louise showed me how to sew a booklet.
Armed with this, I started a micropress, Wild Honey, which to date has
published 22 titles.
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VISION
The pure fire which is within
and does not burn
flows out through the eyes
and the motions caused by contact
between objects and the visual stream
produce in the soul sight.
Plato.
Light and water:
the fluid within which presses out their shape
changes every four hours
and tears salt as the sea
in which eyes first appeared
stop them drying out.
Intelligent camera.
A dimple in the nerve tissue
which forms before the brain
will become the retina.
Skin above a bulge in the brain
becomes a lens.
1352. A church fresco in Treviso
shows two mounted lenses
their handles riveted together
fixed before the eyes of Cardinal Ugone.
By 1600 opticians can be found
in most of the larger towns on the continent.
The pure fire.
I remember
having been sent home from the hospital
dashing back minutes too late
for Margaret's birth.
There she sat in Louise's arms
irises glittering
like the sea alight with the early morning sky
and like both of these containing no pigment
the colour due to scattering
spectral blue
the blue of pure hydrogen's flame
living cobalt
the blue light streaming
from her eyes into mine.
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WORLD WAR II
Fifty five million people were killed
at a cost per corpse of over
a quarter of a million dollars,
a third their weight in gold.
Which took a total firepower of three megatons.
Which is the energy
of a seven minute hurricane
or of one hour of the world's tides.
Who got a mention?
The history book names 117
or one in half a million.
The advantages
a rise in technology
massive development in agriculture.
Indeed, by the equivalence of matter and energy
the firepower condenses to the mass
of a small potato.
How much does this represent
of all the energy used in human history?
Compare an electric fire to an earthquake
or a full stop to a small dog.
The graveyard would cover an entire city.
The gold would fill
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COLONIES OF BELIEF
Not everything is flat, like a board.
You have the regular roundness of a ball.
And not everything so regular either.
The geometric dance of atoms in
molecules becomes, closer, a blur
of energy or, further, sandy rubble.
So not everything, it appears, is the same.
Some things are different. And not everything
is different in different ways.
Things form classes. And a class is a point
of interest from a particular
point of view. And some things have a point
of view which is formed from a small area
around the thing itself. And some things have
consciousness which lets them change their point
of view. Unless they choose not to.
But they can't choose always, and the few times
that they can may get them carried away
imagining they can always choose,
which is power. Power to think the small
area around them from which springs
their point of interest forming their point
of view is the pre-eminent area
of the globe. And that the occupiers
of this first patch on the planet should be
very powerful things and, in turn, band together
to become a very powerful Thing.
And in their ardour to spread the good news
of their prestige destroy the
consciousness of things which occupy
areas around their area by removing
their already limited faculty of choice.
That is by making possible only
one particular point of view.
Their own. But their unity is time-
dependent and eventually they
fall apart and stop being a very
powerful thing, sometimes becoming powerless
under the power of another or other points of view.
Sometimes when area unity breaks down,
individual integrity which splits
events into right and wrong, becomes
of interest. To do the wrong thing for the
right reason or the right thing for the wrong
reason or the wrong thing for the wrong reason
is wrong. To do the right thing for the right
reason is right. If things cannot always
choose and therefore at those times behave
at random then wrongness should prevail
three to one unless things are under some
overpower. But rightness is a rule
holding the above relations with
wrongness, to select events and form two
classes, being stated by that thing.
And if that thing states the rule and states that
the rule is right then call it that thing's belief.
And if that thing behaves according to
its belief then it is sincere, honest,
and even noble. And noble things become a source
of rightness to themselves, every action
partaking of the becalming waters.
Sometimes conscious things forget the world.
They see everything from a point of view;
stay indoors discussing themselves;
Allow no checks on their comfort; perform
irreversible experiments on
the area around them; calculate
theorems in axiomatic systems and
call it truth, forgetting that precision
is only gained at a very low level
of meaning, where there is little foresight
and less control; they swagger, dominate,
dabble, destroy, dream, exploit and die out.
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STORMS
The reason my sister was screaming
was that the cloth I had grabbed
and used to mop up spilt black tea
was our mother's unshakeable favourite.
There was no going back.
I hid it in the shed.
That evening, in an unannounced first
my mother went out herself to get the coal
and returned to swat me around the front room
with the carbonned tanninned tea-cloth
of enormous sentimental value.
There was anger
glittering and transient
as the colours in a just caught fish.
Her last wish was that her ashes
be brought back to Ardrossan.
The ground is full of famous men.
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Two Sections from FLAME
III
Clarity *
A lacy cyan in a lyric
Ray
Nail a city train / racy / analytic / an aria
( )
Litany in an
Icy air / lit
Tiara / alacrity / act-act act-act it ran / a
Yarn / tin can / crania / atria / canal / act-act
IX
the ports are closed
there was much difficulty in selling goods
the price of corn fell
having sold himself
he forged a seal and opened the letter
they expected the city to be taken
as soon as it grew dark
the black earth
at first, for the second time, at last
in utter despair
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from SCALES
II
what seem to be specks of dust resolve
a past
pierced by harmonies
desolate fertile
***** feeding on itself
among a procession of icy bodies
cloud seas lands turning
the summed light of billions
sensitive damaging
two refractions one internal reflection
a city
cut cabochon as a gem
energy in transit *** streets
reduced by distance to a brilliant glaze
where limbs and torsos
tread light
**** freedom chance
tensing and releasing
in response to microslips along
res ipsa loquitur
relatively although not absolutely
stick bone reed metal graphite
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from ARBOR VITAE
II
Past a knuckle in the fabric
painted with horses, mammoths, bears,
rhinoceros, ibex, a panther, an owl,
and complex symbols and positive and stencilled hands,
find
The Convention, considering the incontestable
superiority of articulation over signs ...
Directly under the sun, elevation sixty degrees,
on a finger of water, as if a single downstroke,
sunflakes flicker at a frequency of eight hertz,
those parts of the waves redirecting
the sun's disc being thus tilted backwards,
smearing the image.
clause_tree(time):-! /* true leaf */
Two hundred million years ago
some molluscs slid across this mud
which became a calcareous shale
heavy as a bottle of wine in my hand
their tracks full of dodges to the side.
A semi-circle made of red dots.
A sign composed of linked semicircles.
dash dash dash
dot dash dot
Having received the Volta award
for an invention of profound historical significance,
Bell set about eliminating sign language,
preventing the deaf from intermarrying
and requiring sterilisation of deaf girls,
legislation for which was passed in some States.
Engravings thirty feet from the floor,
huge ancient subsidence.
Dusk after dusk,
a Neolithic shepherd carefully moves
a pebble from one pouch to another
telling his sheep before shutting them up.
(Pouch empty / all home.
Stones remaining / some lost.
Not enough stones / ahead of the game.)
The second branch must be higher and opposite.
(Unless there is a back branch,
but then the third must be oppose the first
higher than the second.)
clause_tree(Body). /* grow branches */
A dozen or so clay models:
bull's head, a sheep, a basket, a bar of gold.
In an important transaction
the tokens were wrapped in clay pouches
on which were stamped two-dimensional
analogues of their contents.
dot dash dash dot dash dot dot
A cross inside a circle portrayed a sheep.
Cut out a notch to make it into a ewe,
two notches and it is pregnant.
Wings thrash as a bird breaks cover.
One word, then another, and another,
until the conversation fills the sky.
senseless and incapable of reasoning
the "translated" Aristotle
excluded from salvation
Saint Augustine
(It was later conceded that although they could not hear
the word of God (Romans 10:17),
hope was not to be abandoned
if they could be taught to read)
Piero di Castro's miraculous cure:
Purge him first with hellebore
then shave his head on which apply
a salve of saltpetre, nitre, almond oil,
aquavit and naptha.
When on the next morning
the voice is strongly urged at his crown
he will perceive it and so learn to speak.
Ay Ee Ay Ee
Eye Uh Ay Ee
A slide of a cerebellar neurone,
displaying over two hundred thousand synapses,
projects beyond the edges of the screen,
stained rich red, virginia creeper.
The negation of AND leads to all gates:
(aNANDa)NAND(bNANDb)
that is, the embryo being embedded
the primitive streak then forms
along which all later structures will align.
Constant whistling as growth leads to poorness of fit;
rustle of paper amplified so as to drown everything else;
interference and feedback from standard communications devices.
Open one of those closed surfaces if you will but do
Not expect an interior any more than if
Early in the second movement, first the basses, the
Oboes, the cellos, the trombones began to sound the same
Note in never-ending regular rhythm until the
Entire symphony capsized every instrument in unison
Over and over the same note whether in time or not
Not a hint that knowledge might be in the conn
Ections rather than in a change of state
Of any isolated unit of the system
Never mind pattern or form
Emerging from an array lacking a definite centre as if
Overhead a flock of birds decided to land
Netting a tree
Excluded from the analysis while
(aNANDb)NAND(aNANDb)
On page eighty five a population graph
suggests what it might be to be outside time:
a hundred billion people smeared over millenia,
mycelial tangle of life lines
filling every niche in a mote
floating light in an empty socket.
But perhaps just out of synch,
this mind of minds, weather balloon,
history as blur or crawl
or maybe even back to front:
Attendant pays a couple to
Drain their tank while in a graveyard
Evening rises as black crumbs climb onto bones.
Notwithstanding, a pen inhales the tender words which
One of those lovers writes thinking of scorched leaves
Swirling upwards to dress, green and bud a diminishing tree
In whose moving light-mosaic kisses were still kisses.
No less conserved, bed-work-bed proceeds as normal but
Elsewhere there is a price as all
Those paintings are unpainted, statues brought to block
and years of
Research cover great ideas.
If I had a hi-fi
not
Pain, destitution, evil, though they mostly improve
and "Richtlice
Hi sind Angle gehatene", came the answer
Over Drosophila's mosaic eye
Squinting at our compound vision as it crawled across the
Page. Fricative to voiceless stop.
Horse to ekwal.
And we,
Treasuring every moment, drift to the
End, dissolving in the womb.
Someone left out the bison, and that the paintings,
although not truly polychromatic,
were in black and red ochre
(manganese and iron oxide).
And that they also show evidence of age and long term erosion
are covered in crystals of calcite
and have been clawed by actual bears.
The stones became an endless progression
of dimensionless points
stretching past any horizon -
each one's successor guaranteed.
(Until the fractions came.)
Hard of hearing,
deaf
mild, moderate, severe, profound,
autosomal, X-linked,
dominant, recessive,
multifactorial, chromosomal,
conductive, sensorineural , mixed
post-lingual,
pre-lingual,
non-lingual,
their world a document
laid out all around you,
key text centred, bold, underlined,
illegible, and surrounded by small print,
growing smaller and smaller…
Use your voice.
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The author wishes to thank the editors and publishers of Beau Press,
Gargara, Cambridge Poetical Histories, Angel Exhaust, The Poet's Voice,
West Coast Line, Other, and of the e-zine Perihelion.
Visit the Sound Eye website at:
http://indigo.ie/~tjac/sound_eye_hme.htm
or find more Irish writing at:
http://www.nd.edu/~ndr/issues/ndr7/contents.html
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