E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

One-on-One                                                                                                       Charles Bennett He put on his glasses. They were half-frame reading glasses, over which he gazed, suddenly fearsome. His whole frame centred and grounded itself, and the gravitas of his gaze made the warm afternoon sticky. I prickled with sweat.                 For a while he praised the we...

POETS’ WIVES i.m Seamus Heaney Away with the fairies my wife will say after we’ve been on a walk or I’m asked, out of the blue, what I think of the dress she’s spotted, when I’m only vaguely there – pursuing the rhythms inside my head and depriving her of my attention as slowly, mysteriously, the lines coalesce into another damn poem. And if at times I frustrate her, the fault must lie with you whose work first inspired me, devouring your books, until each three, four or five year interval has mapped my life from its teenage days: increments of time that once dragged, yet speed exponentially now that I see behind me fallow years of paid work, bills, responsibility; thankful at least for the late revival of a gift which – however slight – I know I betrayed: a bind your own exemplar, Yeats, defined and you surely understood when, in ‘An Afterwards’ perhaps only half-jo...

  Magenta City/ St Ronan and the Song-Thrush/ St Ronan’s Day i.m. Seamus Heaney d. St Ronan’s Day 2013 The Big Man is gone who hollowed out space for us to scribble in who said ‘the pen is mightier than the spade’ whose slow smile Ireland evoked, solid like the land grateful for rain, louring mountain and we waking to a colder day. Irony bent to a clatter of hooves at noon. Kind Derry lyre. Sing him, keen. The city wears purple now. Long of him, long his. As he passes into the halls a hush, while the great swell of his words rises, ripples, breaks, speaks for him, and more. May his priestly Maker soul mist and gambol with mirth. The clock ticks for song, for us. poem by Geraldine Clarkson, copyright 2013

Walk on air S.H. A morning progressing in the usual manner, that Gorgeous every-day glory we’ve almost gone numb to. The Awful music blared the moment you went from us, far Into the woods where Mad Sweeney roamed, his hajj Now yours. Did you pass your father, digging time, tau Spuds in golden ratio? Did you pass Aunt Mary, broad, Teaching love with a goose’s wing and a scoop sunk snug, Years of flour fading its gleam? I hope there was a tree Outside your window to link you into the firm Unending network of eternal life. And all the while, Remember, I was unconscious of your pain. Beating my legs against a machine, an animal that Escaped, so far, the pit that you fell into. Seamus, The gym seemed silent, my muscles spent, feeling your death. poem by Bethany W. Pope, copyright 2013.   Bethany W. Pope is an award winning author of the LBA, and a finalist for the Faulkner-Wisdom Awa...

i.m. Seamus Heaney 1939-2013 The windmills turn, but no one can push back the wind. It comes from the far darkness, and without a sound war drops confetti primers where the young will find the haw beds stirring, laughing where great words resound. The spires of the citadel are stark and bare, no longer young, none striding forth with prospects there to find the mazy streets lead to the fullsome w orld . . . for darkness once again has been to darkness hurled. A great one's passed, who validated much of youth . . . to rattle in the darkness, finding signs of truth. His clear voice boomed and worked to put us all at ease with prospects of a keen, perpetual increase. Now we shall hear his voice no more, except in signs the sharp and shaping anvil has its grand designs.   poem by Ben Mazer, copyright 2013