In response to Stephen Pain's reasonable requests, here's three samples for
starters. More tomorrow.

P.S. Get your corkscrew into the url at the end of my original post
Stephen!

Randolph Healy

*********************************

RETICLE MAURICE SCULLY

Move in: the web shivers (my father
swimming in the open sea, those strong,
unmistakeable strokes, link to link) a
dust of scales, greenish purple, towards
the thorax on the bramble stem, edged,
programmed trap, and your fingers
tingle. Take time as a solid. I was alive in
and overhearing what? Step.

Suddenly this morning on the way to the shop
in the blackthorn bush by the railway track
I picked out a birdcall I'd never before heard.
So. Or this afternoon coming back from the
post office the clean whorl of a snail's shell
on a white wall. Stopped. And stopped again,
thanks, to take in five more such on a
gable-end, each different, streaked, polished,
echo-ported, glazing a trail to nowhere
in particular just then.

Open your books, checking the bunched items in
the seam, yes, but skirt the piranha pool, the trick
of engagement in the air, thick. Look. Applause and
photographs. Where will the filament fall? What small
breeze take our lives away? I dip my hand in. _Spang_
goes the Giant's buckle, again.

(from STEPS published by Reality Street Editions London 1998)


from _City West_ CATHERINE WALSH

old bloom spreading back wall
       next door's gloves secateurs
not cut back all

  day long early thirst
night time hunger between
  between eventing rotating

        on a spin
             winging
                       by

     one
                  day
     long
                     tight
 breath pushing when
light
         pull lifting
                           light lifting
roll

a cold blown rose is a

the curiously unformulated

approaching

                                ties

(commisioned by Nicholas Johnson for 6 Towns Poetry Festival 1996)

Diary and will of a late governor TREVOR JOYCE

The joy of being tamed is greatest in those animals that lie longest with
their parents and are most grievously associated with them, for do not all
fixed bodies, heated, shed soft light? The young of predators, even those
not hungry, invariably shriek and howl when left alone, withering when
protection is withdrawn and dreading solitude, however tenderly near bodies
of terrestrial parts may gleam, those parts being sufficiently agitated by
heat, by friction, percussion, putrefaction, or any other cause, for since
thus it consists primarily of a sense of dependence, the filial sentiment
is particularly ready to accept a substitute. The practical qualities a
governor must possess are, therefore, (1) sensitiveness, (2) effort and
power, and (3) stability. The significance of these will be explained in
separate paragraphs.

The public executioner provided mutilated criminals (foot-amputees are
particularly mentioned) to guard the preserve, recognizing that neither
love nor hatred, kindness nor cruelty are any more connected with the
fundamental impulses that move us than with chemical reactions. Evidently
the royal preserves were not pure enclaves of wilderness, although they
were carefully protected from unauthorized intrusions, as for instance,
sea-water in a raging storm; the back of a cat or neck of a horse obliquely
struck or rubbed in a dark place; wood, flesh and fish while they putrefy;
vapours arising from rotting waters; stacks of moist hay or corn grown
alien by fermentation; glow-worms and the eyes of certain animals; the
vulgar phosphorus suffering intense attrition; amber and some diamonds
struck, pressed or rubbed; iron hammered very nimbly till it become so hot
as to kindle sulphur thrown upon it; until on one memorable occasion, the
axletrees of chariots taking fire by the rapid rotation of the wheels, they
roa

These all enter into the composition of what we speak of as Œlove¹, which,
as Spencer says, fuses into one immense aggregate most of the elementary
excitations of which we are capable. So deeply faulted a sentiment may well
become a dominant inspiration of foreboding and of art, and in order to
increase the sensitiveness, either the frictional resistances of the
governor mechanism and the regulating gear must be reduced, or since desire
cannot be entirely eliminated, the power of the governor must be increased.
This is most easily effected by loading the governor by means of a dead
weight.

One remote territory sent a Gold-sifting Bird as tribute. Men said that its
home was beyond even the Burning Island. This bird is shaped like a
sparrow, but its color is yellow. Feathers and interruption are soft and
fine. It usually swoops and soars above the sea. When a netsman gathers one
he takes it to be the outcome of dreamings. Hearing the virtue of our King
spread far over the wildernesses, they accordingly traversed mountains and
navigated seas to bring one as a present to the theocrat of the great
nation. On obtaining this bird, he kept it in the Garden for Numinous Fowl,
where he gave it true pearl for sweetmeat and turtle brain for drink. It is
no irrelevance that this bird regularly spits up gold powder like millet
grain, which may be cast to make utensils.

Wishing to prove that oxygen is necessary to life, we do not settle a
broody hen within a vessel from which all oxygen is subsequently exhausted
by a burning candle. We should then have not only an absence of oxygen, but
an addition of carbonic acid, which might prove the destructive agent. By
attending to his chickens from birth, through rubbing a long and large
cylinder or glass or amber with a paper held in one hand, and continuing
the friction till the glass grew warm, Mr. Spalding completely ousted
their mother, and the chicks would, without any encouragement, follow him
everywhere without taking the slightest notice of their own bereaved
parent. In every case, therefore, there is a time-lag between the change of
governor configuration and the regulation of power.

Such sentiments fresh in my mind, this morning I showed the King those
young children which we had preserved, and as the secretion in other
flowers sometimes takes place rapidly and might happen at early dawn, that
inconvenient hour of observation was specially adopted. The one was a male
infant about 4 months, who was cut out of a woman's belly in Covent Garden
(she was dying of a consumption) and had been (now four years past) luted
up in a globe of glass about 8 or 10 inches in diameter, set nicely in a
frame where it may be swiftly spun upon its axis, shining where it rubs the
reaching hand, the babe within preserved from putrefaction by a liquor of
his special making. The flesh was not so much rumpled but plump as it was
when taken out of the womb, and in rushing out of the glass will sometimes
push against the finger so as to be felt. The other was 2 girls joined
together by the breast and belly (which monster was born about the king's
coming in), they were dried, preserved with spices, and flowers of

Prince Rupert brought some ladies into my closet at Whitehall that morning
after, to see them. I carried them also to the Princes Royal. This cycle of
events is repeated and gives rise to periodic fluctuations of speed known
as hunting. Do, please, try to remember this. Animals are preying being;
the perception of a mangled, bleeding, or of a suffering, weak, and
helpless creature means to the universal disposition of animal life a prey,
food. That the suffering animal belongs to the same species, or is a close
associate, makes no difference. Hunting is not, however, solely associated
with isochronous governors.

About 9 o'clock I acquainted the King with my discovery of Irish lands,
whose gracious answer was that what I desired should be done. "When Indians
have killed a cow buffalo," says Hennepin, "the calf follows them and licks
their hands." A man dies on the day which he has always regarded as his
last, from his own fears of the day. An incantation effects its purpose,
because care is taken to frighten the intended victim, by letting him know
his fate. In all cases the mental condition is the cause of apparent
coincidence. The manner in which the domestication of animals first took
place will be apparent from such instances, and you may easily now proceed
to demonstrate how a simple governor may be made nearly isochronous by
crossing the arms.

Plates of various material, such as rough iron, glass, polished metal,
exposed to the midnight sky, though indestructible as honey, will be dewed
in various degrees. The royal party arrived, the events began. A shrewd
wind of feathers, a rain of blood, sprinkled the countryside, covered the
sky. Until the knife tire of the milk, figures will find their ground.




Visit the Sound Eye website at:
http://indigo.ie/~tjac/sound_eye_hme.htm



%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%