“Swallows”, George Szirtes
George Szirtes is a poet who writes both children’s and grown-up verse. His book “How To Be A Tiger” neatly shows how ostensibly children’s verse can be as valuable as…
Tag: poem
For Jakow Trachtenberg
For Jakow Trachtenberg The embers of bitterness did not burn in you. The machinery of mathematics did not cease in you. The days of hell did not rob you of…
An Italian poem of World War I – “Last Rite”, Clemente Rebora
The current TLS has a piece by NS Thompson on Italian poets of the First World War, along with translations by Thompson of some of their works. Futurism, which glorified…
Fighting Talk
The power drips from the open wounds. The big guns lie silent, resting for the next time. The phantom stalks the air, peering Into the muzzles, bathing in their Dominion,…
“Be Still”, Agnes Hunt RHSM – poem in Glencomeragh, Co Waterford.
I have posted photos of Glencomeragh in February and photos of Glencomeragh in August. Glencomeragh was a Rosminian retreat centre near Kilsheelan (which is in Tipperary, but Glencomeragh is across the Suir…
Not not not not
I decree that Nothing about me is to be of other existence, My solo self is to be completely sovereign. My boundaries are to be impassable, inviolable. Let me be…
Down down down
Down down down. Circling circling circling. Circled, finally. Circled, lastly. Further down, digging in, digging down. In trench, entrench. Down down down. Circling circling circling. Spiralled, spirals. A final spiral.…
Denise Levertov, “Conversion of Brother Lawrence”
I particularly love the lines “your way was not to exalt nor avoid the Adamic legacy, you simply made it irrelevant” – which neatly summarises Brother Lawrence’s way of deceptive…
Séamus Sweeney 