(no subject)
Somehow the Irish Centre for Poetry Studies wound up in my Facebook feed. They posted a poem last week that stuck with me:
Echoes
Michael J. Wheelen (from the collection Peacekeeper)
There is nothing left in this village
but the burnt out shells of homes,
roofless rooms and echoes
drifting across scorched black grass,
following boot prints through alleyways
and well-trodden streets,
over rank smelling chicken coops,
dead pigs and silent tractors
stuck in time and sodden earth,
past the ancient cemetery and schoolhouse
to a raised ditch on the side of an infamous hill,
where the only living things without guilt
are the swarming swollen flies
feasting on the end story of a thousand years.
The echoes are not of children's laughter!
The poem made me think of Ireland during the Civil War or the Troubles, but it was probably really about Wheelen's time serving as a United Nations peacekeeper. I ordered his collection, Peacemaker, from the publisher and look forward to reading it. He's come out with a second collection, also. He describes himself as a soldier-poet. It's a grand tradition I imagine few follow now.
I need to finish The Captain's Verses and get it back to the little library I took it from, but his verses about love and eroticism don't speak to me as much in my life right now as poems about disquiet and unease.
I've also started reading John Steinbeck's The Pearl, another book picked up at that little library. I was surprised to see Penguin charges $12 for this 95-page book, but I suppose the student market is captive. I keep thinking I need to read more Steinbeck, but every chance I give him he doesn't really speak to me. I should just read The Grapes of Wrath and then give up instead of giving him all these chances. Everyone in The Pearl seems like a caricature to me. Maybe it will get better before the end.
Echoes
Michael J. Wheelen (from the collection Peacekeeper)
There is nothing left in this village
but the burnt out shells of homes,
roofless rooms and echoes
drifting across scorched black grass,
following boot prints through alleyways
and well-trodden streets,
over rank smelling chicken coops,
dead pigs and silent tractors
stuck in time and sodden earth,
past the ancient cemetery and schoolhouse
to a raised ditch on the side of an infamous hill,
where the only living things without guilt
are the swarming swollen flies
feasting on the end story of a thousand years.
The echoes are not of children's laughter!
The poem made me think of Ireland during the Civil War or the Troubles, but it was probably really about Wheelen's time serving as a United Nations peacekeeper. I ordered his collection, Peacemaker, from the publisher and look forward to reading it. He's come out with a second collection, also. He describes himself as a soldier-poet. It's a grand tradition I imagine few follow now.
I need to finish The Captain's Verses and get it back to the little library I took it from, but his verses about love and eroticism don't speak to me as much in my life right now as poems about disquiet and unease.
I've also started reading John Steinbeck's The Pearl, another book picked up at that little library. I was surprised to see Penguin charges $12 for this 95-page book, but I suppose the student market is captive. I keep thinking I need to read more Steinbeck, but every chance I give him he doesn't really speak to me. I should just read The Grapes of Wrath and then give up instead of giving him all these chances. Everyone in The Pearl seems like a caricature to me. Maybe it will get better before the end.