Before it grows too late …
before they turn the sod
and hide the green and hire the hearse …
I want to thank you, God,
for a life that wasn’t great,
but could have been a whole lot worse.
Tag: Survival
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for the freedom fighters of Ukraine
It was like coming out of a coma, or a long deep sleep
in which all the pleasure of the world before,
and the days before, and the nights before,
when everything seemed so tender and vibrant and good,
was no more than a thing imagined,
and the actual world was forever that one –
that grim hellhole, with its perpetual darkness,
and its muddy trenches of confined people,
with no dreams left, and no thoughts ever
of getting up, getting out, to where there might be
some ladder to the elusive stars; but then,
from somewhere, something shifted … and there was a voice,
a light, a smile … and you were beside me,
beside the bulletless boundary of my bedside, when I woke up. -
What a joy it would be to wake
beside you in a world
that’s pure and uncorrupted by wars;
to wake beside you
and feel the soft fire burning
in every movement of your body!What a joy it would be to see
your exposed breasts
gleaming in a golden room,
as the dawn breaks once more
on the ordinary
miraculousness of existence!What a joy it would be to touch
the newness,
the wildness,
of that mysterious
haven of awe and wonder,
beyond this battlefield!What a joy it would be to begin
again at Genesis;
to begin again,
with all our senses undeadened
by horror, or hatred …
and all our chances before us! -
In the latest TV report from the war in Ukraine,
a young mother and her two children,
(who are holding a blanket and two small teddies)
are huddled together beside, at least,
a hundred others, in a semi-dark air raid shelter,
as the snow-cold night takes hold around them,
and the sirens wail above them, compelling her
to say something we’d do well to remember,
long after the fighting stops, and the war is over.She says: ‘All I want is to go back to the heaven
of my old anxious life, and all its small worries
I thought were so big, before the tanks came
and the bombs came, and my whole world exploded
for real. Now, there is only this … to be thankful for!’
MARTIN MC CARTHY POET 