1939 Germany invades Poland: World War 2 begins: but in Toronto University, Canada, the professor of English, G. Wilson Knight, was writing a book: The Burning Oracle. I came across this book around 1984 when Max Hafler and I decided to form a small-scale touring theatre company. We wanted to show how Shakespeare and the Jacobean…
Crying Out for JudgementAfter the doctors of Médecins Sans Frontièreshad their bags searched by the Israeli Defence Forces(After Mathew 25, 40)The medics’ bags were searchedThe cartons of baby milk Were taken from themTo be poured perhaps down a military privy “They knew what they were doing”Said the brave doctor They knew the mother’s breasts were…
Feb. 1st. A Celtic feast and a Goddess of Nature rather like Gaia but exclusively Irish. See https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2026/0128/1555477-how-st-brigids-day-and-imbolc-mark-the-beginning-of-spring/ A nice RTE blog about her and the day. Feb. 2nd. The day that follows is a purely Christian Feast, The Presentation of the Lord: when the child Jesus was taken to the temple with an offering…
The Anima Mundi in New Year FrostThe first deep frost of the yearwe walk to the second gate three kilometres at mostmy boots don’t always hold meso unstable for a split second on the ice but the light is perfectwith multiple shades of blueand white caught by the lakeand the distant mountain topssnowless clear as…
This flower always seems to me as an archetypal symbol of the cosmos or of cosmic consciousness. The image of the white blooms orbiting around a central red star-like core – something emerging as in an expanding space – the cooperative evolution of something beautiful and spiritual – an outward sign of an interiority….all of…
The Transpersonal Self as The Incarnate Christ in Christian Belief.[1] Michael Daniels was one of my teachers when I did an MSc in Transpersonal Psychology at John Moore’s University, Liverpool, in 2006. I remember him then as being a very friendly and good teacher always encouraging us to comment and interrupt him for an explanation…
“Thomas’s methods as a teenager, bogged in masturbatory claustrophobia, desperately seeking in language the fulfilment of clandestine sexual needs …. those methods were suited to the phallocentric, percussive, short-circuited poetry proper to his situation then, but they were not what he needed later as a sexually mature, world-scarred and world-skilled outsider at the literary centre.…
When Sorrows Come(For Fer) ¨When sorrows come they come not as single spies but in battalions¨ (Shakespeare, Hamlet.)When sorrows comeThey do not always flowLike light in water,Or the blood in the river of our hearts,But losing the moon’s pull,Well up, motionless, at the sedged-rimOut of our reach,In the slow bent bow that isBeyond the swift…
Reflections(For Rolf on his 60th. Birthday)I grow old thinking in pools slow refractions of the past Narcissus-like cursed by Nemesis for pridehaunted by Echo Ovid, Metamorphosiseslike an old songthat wont stop going roundand round in my headTall and tan Boy from Ipanema and young and handsomeAhh! when he walks to the seaDreaming how Lorca seesthe…
The Road to Emmaus(after Luke 24 v.13) “For Christ plays in ten thousand places,Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not hisTo the Father through the features of men’s faces.’Gerard Manley Hopkins, from “As kingfisher’s catch fire”. Why go to Emmauswhy go on such a disturbing dayfull of that sense of loss and idle talesEmmaus…
August RainWe let the grass grow long hereit takes the rain infinitely gentleeach blade leads a drop to earthand springs back catching my eyeshere there everywherein an energy of dancethen the beat of rain like a drumthe sound hollow bird-song-silentSensation gives way to feelingthe river is an octave lowervision joins in the grasses dancereturns a…
“Therefore the moon, the governess of floods, Pale in her anger, washes all the air, That rheumatic diseases do abound. And thorough this distemperature we see The seasons alter…the spring, the summer, The childing autumn, angry winter, change Their wonted liveries; and the mazed world, By their increase, now knows not which is which. And…
Mary O’Malley’s poem is in an anthology of poems “A Different Eden: Ecopoetry from Ireland and Galicia”, in a section of the book called: “When we were not the centre of the universe”. I liked the poem, especially as it was read to me by Lorna Shaughnessy (see her latest collection of poems: “Lark Water”,…
Boundary Wall “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall”. “He moves in darkness as it seems to me.” Robert Frost, Mending Wall. My neighbour calls to ask my time To inspect the wall That runs between his house and mine. I follow his bent back, Behind which tight-clasped, His hands are counter-weight It seems…
Song for Joe Nora had not been dead long when her cottagewas burned downHer net curtains at the small windows stillthe sacred heart of Jesus on the walllooking downThe charred reed fell but the walls stillwithstood the wind somewhatThe fireplace and the chimney tower remainedwith ash and beech growing from out the roofThe heart on…
The Hug of Gaia 