Lizz Murphy Poem # 373 Starless

STARLESS

We believed in heaven occasionally spoke more poetically of the heavens often raised our eyebrows said heavens above! But that heaven those heavens were not connected to the sky The sky was just the sky Separate We didn’t look at the stars In winter we were inside because of the cold or shrugged into our ourselves and itchy scarves beholding our frozen breath thinking about our frozen feet In summer the night didn’t fall until midnight We were starless

*

In this hemisphere

city lights blur the skies

In the country

where the nights are black

and you can’t see the person

you are talking to

the stars are back to front

I try to read them

wish I had a sky size mirror

*

Mythology has the sky full of creatures and the The Milky Way is a woman spilling her milk It sounds so nurturing Women can’t help themselves Though in ancient Ireland it’s The Way of the White Cow which still sounds milky and may be how come the cow jumped over the moon

Lizz Murphy - Poem 354: Arrivals

ARRIVALS

We’re talking to Ireland all the family is there for Christmas (except us) we are talking loud because 

it is far away and we are all on loud speaker 

I remember the neighbours We’ve just arrived opened the windows to let in cool air and those fragments of conversations except tonight it is us calling out across the narrow street into the night over the fence 

No dogs have stirred that’s a good thing 

Lizz Murphy - Poem 260: Train xii.

TRAIN

xii.

A prominent poet is interested in my history

So you won’t have ‘survival guilt’ but you would have ‘migrant guilt?’

I take this away with me

It is tucked in the leaves of their poetry books

stashed in my suitcase sitting on the luggage rack 

Lizz Murphy - Poem 260: Train xi.

TRAIN

xi.

Remembering

How after the event the famous poet

entertained in a broad brogue

They were all Protestants and they all walked like that

his back bent over his knees buckled his arms reaching

like the men who had carted cement most of their lives

He was sixteen his first job he lasted a day

His wife the musician said simply near my ear

Oh he’s well oiled

 

Lizz Murphy - Poem 259: Train x.

TRAIN
x.

I remember walking up steep slopes

the green veined with black where the turf had split

How it reminded me of my mother saying she couldn’t believe

we’d lost our father’s pen

How she had presented it to us after his death

dark green marbled black

The nib silver as the broad rushing ocean 

Lizz Murphy - Poem 258: Train ix.

TRAIN

ix.

I remember the slate roofs clad in emerald moss

How fallen leaves were rain-pasted to the ground

How many inside-out umbrellas were caught in hedges

How loughs and skies shone platinum

How they danced all night

How they partied like there was no tomorrow

Lizz Murphy - Poem 257: Train viii. Returning

TRAIN

viii

Returning

I am on the return journey from my first visit to Ireland in forty years

I remember how everyone laughs at everything

How everyone sees the irony in everything

How everyone says ‘Aye’ with a knowing look

How everyone says sorry to everyone even when they don’t have to

How they say ‘Safe home’

How I stepped back the first time I heard this

Their thirty years of the ‘Troubles’ catching in my throat

How my heart felt

How much I laughed in those weeks

Lizz Murphy - Poem 253: Train iv.

TRAIN 

iv.

Like Irish-Australian history

How I felt connected for the first time

after that National Museum exhibition

all those achievements set out

like pavers in a path

How I felt the heft of those who have

walked this way before me

How I had to see the exhibition write about it

then travel the skies there and back again

Sit on this train ruminating

Feel closer than ever

to the rough side of it all

Lizz Murphy - Poem 250: Train i.

TRAIN

Riding through the Highlands on the Countrylink looking down 

into the forests (from a 2011 notebook – I have a few backlogs)

i.

Returning from Ireland I remember the word sclerophyll that hard leafed word of the basalt forests I look down into Watch as rock folds over itself melts and flows in all shades of stone Above it is flax flower blue the grass with its hackles up the underfoot of animals

Gold tinted train windows reflect on passing white tree trunks They are changed into flames or warm memories or something torn out of us some part we didn’t know was there we didn’t know we were a part of

Lizz Murphy - Poem 244: Lilt xxxiii - Men's talk (nod to Myron Lysenko)

Nod to Myron Lysenko's Father's Day with thanks

LILT xxxiii.

MEN’S TALK

Gallagher’s Blues or Gallagher’s Greens who’s got the yellowest thumb and fingers The soft tuth tup of tobacco threads shed from tongue tip brown pinstripes hitched up above knees head back laughing at some joke Brylcreemed brunette waves oily impressions on white antimaccassars  all day Sunday newspapers here read the cartoons his interest in words his gentle talk his weak  heart his short dear life

Lizz Murphy - Poem 236: Lilt xxxii. The Shankill Butchers

LILT xxxii.

THE SHANKILL BUTCHERS

c. 1968

I buy a mini kilt

and a gold maple leaf pin 

with green and white borders

My grandmother says

people will think I’m a Catholic

I say sure it’s all one god

c. 1975

We’re in Australia 

Ten Pound Immigrants

My mother writes 

glad you went they’re cutting 

the throats of mixed couples

I say there’s no god worth that 

—

The Shankill Butchers was a notorious loyalist gang in Belfast’s Shankill area, which kidnapped, tortured and murdered random Catholic civilians 1975-1982. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shankill_Butchers online [accessed August 27, 2016]. At the time there were also reports of mixed (Catholic and Protestant) marriage killings. 

Lizz Murphy - Poem 220: Lilt xxxi. The rise of the non-religious

THE RISE OF THE NON-RELIGIOUS

Of course, we are not arguing that the movement
of the Holy Spirit can be mathematically modelled

The church of my own childhood is a showroom and a restaurant  another reduced to brick and rubble as we watch the atrium still eerily standing like some portal to a broken hereafter There is a steep decline in the faithful or another way to put it: 150 years of the rise of the non-religious There are statistics and graphs percentages and fractions predictions and mathematical models of the committed the affiliated the non-religious The non-religious are mixed: no religion, atheists, Jedi Knights, heavy metals, free thinkers and those ‘other’ Protestants are a minority and there is no hope for reconversion


--
Reference:
'Collapsing Churches in Northern Ireland?' Saints and Sceptics 
Accessed online: August 11, 2016 URL: www.saintsandsceptics.org 
  

Lizz Murphy - Poem 219: Lilt xxx. Church

LILT xxx.

CHURCH

I am standing on my old main road looking across at the church I attended as a child most Sunday mornings It is larger and more elaborate than I remember it I don’t know what to make of this I wonder if it is still cobalt blue inside Heavenly I remember the gentle reverend and how he surreptitiously gave me a correct answer in my Sunday School test the dilemma he unwittingly created Will I be rude if I don’t change my answer will I be a cheat if I do How relieved I was that I didn’t my 99 per cent achievement all my own I google Ulsterville Presbyterian Church on my return see they still have their missionary drive I google again tonight There is a lot of press from 2013 it’s turrets towering into the evening sky spotlights accentuating the stonework The new Sapphire restaurant is in the rear a high-end furniture showroom in the front

Lizz Murphy - Poem 218: Lilt xxix. Dancing the Schuhplattler

LILT xxix. 

DANCING THE SCHUHPLATTLER

I demonstrate German dancing slapping thighs

slapping knees slapping feet and for a finale

slapping faces Her glasses fly from her face

her tears fly from her eyes  she flies inside to

her mammy me calling but that's how they did

it on the TV! It was a long time ago I still feel bad