Ronnie McGinn's Poetry Page
| If you have a poem you'd like to see published in The Irish Examiner then send it to:
The Poetry Corner
The Irish Examiner USA
1040 Jackson Avenue, Third Floor
Long Island City
NY 11101
or, preferably, you can email it direct to
ronniemcginn@eircom.net.
If possible keep your poem to 20 lines. You may choose any subject you like, in any form you like as long as it's original. We look forward to hearing from you. |
It is difficult to comprehend how to measure the speed of passing time for it hardly seems like a year since we received a poem for St Patrick's Day from Charles Fishman.
Unfortunately last year's issue had gone to press when the poem arrived, but somehow the poem would not go away. It kept haunting my thoughts and I was waiting for the right occasion, and suddenly a year has almost passed, and I now realize there is no wrong occasion for a good poem.
Charles Fishman of course is no stranger to the literary world, his dedication, intense creativity, his productivity and his power to give thoughts a poetic presence makes him one of the truly inspired writers of our time.
Swans in the Mist
Markree Castle, May 2000
Mist rises on the river: even the swans
are lost in silence This water
has forgotten its sheen its tidepools
and current but it holds the light
cast down from burnt edges
of charred clouds
Trees have already darkened:
the merest smudge
against the river's sinuous bed
Soon, the country will lose its shape,
all depth engulfed by a muffled blackness
This is the land that offers no escape
where the mind sails out alone
in the last flush of brightness
This is where rain is speech
where the notes of song your lips remember
are droplets of fire and poetry
Ireland, your blood fills this dark
and misty river that winds back on itself
like the curved necks of swans.
© Charles Adès Fishman
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