Memorial Gardening

And this is part two of yesterday's poem; remembrance of them in death. It is a painful subject, but again with bitter-sweet and tender memories of a life that should have been longer. I tried to keep match the sense of loss, of the potential of this life, The carnage of nations surrounded my soul but I/ I am released with the individual himself, this unique and mad, eccentric and wonderful, tragic and comic soul we all lost too early.

To D.C.
Memorial Gardening

Revisiting the scene, it struck me at once-
how divine it all was;
how the angels of god were at play.
And I counted the stars from the plateau of steel
while the campfires grew dim in the day.

The carnage of nations surrounded my soul
but I, I am released.
I feast on the bones of a banquet grown cold
They’ll never grow old, the deceased.

Ah, I have the secret of dying for love
and I care not for dying of hate.
If this dance were to cease, I would cry out in rage-
as I carry the secrets of state.

I long ago realized how it began-
the man who was cheated made money
the money become the compost of souls
the holy flocked like the flies do to honey.

Ah! I cannot be burdened by Musings and dreams
Away with the shades of the battle-scarred dead
These contours of concrete are swaying like flags
The graves stones are huddled like sheep in a storm
And poppies are clouding my head.

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Memorial 2000

This is part of a two-part poem, or perhaps more properly two poems both memorials to the same person. The first remembers them living and here it is. It's a sad and painful remembrance, but one that is also sweet and tender; hence the poem tries to reflect the rawness of remembering tempered by the bitter-sweetness of nostalgia and shared joys recalled.
To D.C.


Memorial 2000


You have caused me,
more pain in the remembering,
than any hurt in real-time ever could.

From out of nowhere,
you assault me.
Stealing time.

I smell the newly opened pages of a book
and see again
the white desked college library

in springtime sun-
the sweetest silence,
the ordered rows of books.

The smell of you,
your skin golden,
your eyes on mine.

I inhaled deeply
And held it as long
As lung and heart could stand

until the pressure made me exhale.
And rushing back
Came shop and street and traffic

and rain and wind
and thirteen hard won years
and adulthood.

And my very bones ached.

Geraldine Moorkens Byrne

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Ancestor

This was written in 2005 for a friend who requested a prayer suitable for a remembrance ceremony. Along with Lower Me Down (in the Where The Hazel Falls anthology) this was read at the funerary service. Since then it has been used several times.

Ancestor

If I should die tonight
and my bones laid in the earth
would my voice not be the wind
and the sun my smile?
I am the blood in your veins;
all the lives I have lived
have been, in this way,
transmuted to new life
flowing from your heart to mine.
I am the beat of the Bodhrán
and the touch of the line on water
I am the thought unbidden
the instinct that springs -
If you listen not to me,
then you ignore yourself,
and silence your own voice.
I am the string plucked,
the note quivering
the dream sung by voices
you remember from your cradle.
I am the silent watch of the nights
and the first breath of morning
because you carry me always in your heart

Geraldine Moorkens Byrne

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