A Poem for Thursday..."The Visitors."

Visitors arrive
with bundles full of home.
house coat
new slippers
bag of apples
favourite newspaper.

Professionals stand
stoically
at their desks.
silently
walk the path
between
the healthy
the sick
the dying.

A grey skull
open mouthed
coughs harshly
alone.
too many beds... to pay attention to one cough.

Drawers are labelled
technical
medical
warfarin
arrest situation
body chart.

All life is here
and..not.
more handwashing takes place
than Pilate
ever thought necessary.
With empty relatives
sitting in
grey cafes
drinking grey tea.
and waiting
for the results of loved ones.

This is Kierkegaard's observation....
that life is a reality to be
experienced
not a problem
to solve
and all existence
is beset
with paradox and riddle.

(this is written with Louis MacNiece in mind...I love his thoughts and was taught and studied him when living in Belfast....he lived close to the city... The one especially in mind .."I am not yet born"...) I hope I've managed the link this time Brian!!

dVerse

~ Poets Pub

 

 

A Poem for Thursday.

I was looking through the note book that I keep with all my bits and pieces of thoughts in, and remembered this lot. It's not quite poetry and it's not all mine. But my love of the sea, or at least of being by the sea prompts me to put this post together.

" It's all there.

It's all in the sea.

The battle of life is there,

And fate.

And the inevitability of it all.

And the purpose."

" It's the battle of life - 

The turbulence of the sea.

And life's pretty turbulent, isn't it?

I am very fond of the sea of course;

I have been fond of the sea all my life.

How wonderful it is,

Yet how terrible it is.

But I often think...

What if it suddenly changed it's mind,

And didn't turn the tide?

And came straight on?

If it didn't stop...

And came on ..and on... and on... and on...

That would be the end of it all!

L.S.Lowry 1963 [Salford artist].

 

....And I give you the faces,

- not the permanent masks

But the faces balanced in the toppling wave -----

And I give you the sea and yet again

The sea's tumultuous marble,

With Thor's thunder or taking his ease akimbo,

Lumbering torso, but fingertips amarvel

Of surgeon's accuracy....."

Extract from, Train to Dublin by Louis MacNeice[ Belfast poet].

The lonely tree

Looks out to sea

Looks out to see the weather soft

And seabirds

Flying high aloft.

Muckross Point Donegal.