Maurice Scully lives in Dublin, Ireland and is the author of many books of poetry including Steps and Five Freedoms of Movement. The following selections are from Steps (London U.K.: Reality Street, 1998).
"Steps," "Sonnet" and "Responsibility" Copyright © 2002 Maurice Scully
Steps
He is moving a ladder. He is climbing it.
He is whistling. The sound of a jet. The
sound of someone sawing wood. A cat moves
smoothly along (hammertap of hands fixing tiles
to slats) the granite coping of the cottage
in the laneway. Stops. Disappears over the
rooftop.
Downwind of your nightsky time-probing telescope's
definitely not apples, or clove oil or myrrh!
Chipped granitic plug. Pad along past the lip
of the last grip, let fly ...
You'd slept well and rose immediately,
kettle on, bundle of papers out to the shed
at the end of the garden through the dewy grass.
In detail and proliferation (hoverfly's
pulsing abdomen, secret nectary opened out)
a ladybird beetle ambling past through
the proliferate grass. Is that the word for it?
A woodlouse dropped off the door-jamb, so quiet you
could hear it drop.
Sonnet
In it build. A wall of tiny, precise, bricks,
a wall of fittings, of feelings, discoveries,
evasive shadows, a wall of absence collected,
wall of tears justified, the wall of plain
speaking. If the system locks you to the screen
it directs your life. Leave the room. Breathe
in. The wall moves out a bit. Blue pen, red pen,
the many ways through: put that in your pocket
to feel better in times of distress ... yes?
An old wine bottle base found in a wall
built a century ago around a house in rural Ireland
now in a case in a museum in a castle in the middle
of Ireland under my odd pink reflection
peering up; with what intention? Click. Sunlight
on a chimney pot. A crow on a roof. Shocked by
the shards that fly past my face here: a "career in
'development'," the "management of the poor," And
lodge in the receptive surface of the wall opposite
and disappear.
Responsibility
the fid; stirps.
not to write very cold poetry.
that events of social/political significance
be witnessed seemed reasonable enough & yet.
ha! pro deo pro patria & the tightening knot
at the top of the spine.
long lines of characteristic compact crowns
suckering vigorously in hedgerows.
they've never had children.
there it is, yr ache, fibrous, gripping the
secret verbum at the basis: take, take, take,
kerfed & set into the rabbets.
little nude screams.
coda
in the tree's underchamber
the roots enmesh & thicken
(I know I know I know)
after white silence
the yellow growthsound
very quite
delicate listen
h Top h