Dear Friends,
As the horror of Russian bombs raining down on Ukrainian civilians continues,
I'm finding it difficult to write new poems.
I'm in a kind of wordless, speechless state. Time is strangely fluid. Memories
of the "before" time: before the pandemic; before the grinding, daily insanity
of this insane war.
I don't want to go back. I want to go forward, to the better world we were
supposed to be creating right now, after all the hard lessons of the last 2
years.
I'd be lying to you if I said I feel any sense of "balance" today. All I can do
is leave you with a poem I've already written. I know the seed of the new is
there in the old; the natural world renewing itself reminds me of that. I'm
trying to pay attention to its lesson.
Leaf-flutter accompanies
the new season's smell --
cattle's pungent body odor,
the scent warm stone gives off,
damp earth's tang.
A difference in light summons
memory, slow warmth,
the sharp edge
of an unnamed longing, the ache
of some forgotten obligation
remembered.
The work of a gradual transformation
quickens, slides through cracks
in this enclosure or enters openly by window or
by door, Conchobor,
the tyrant king can't lock out
this intruder Spring; ubiquitous,
its subversive changes
takeover…
From "IN THE BECOMING: Poems on the Deirdre Story"
©photograph & text copyright Margaret McCarthy 2022