Steadily he watches the meadow stall in a series of curtsied bows, then fall.

Some might consider it odd. Some might consider it a depressing thing to do.

Me. I’m different – not for the first and not for the last time. I enjoy walking in graveyards.

There are stories to be imagined from the writing on the headstone. I have learned a lot of history from dots started in cemeteries.

Some of the headstones are works of art that can be appreciated in their own right.

I started this an hour or so ago – I took that time to create a category called Cemeteries and went back to the archive adding the tag to blog entries.

There were quite a few blog entries inspired by what was found on headstones and in cemeteries. I have been introduced to songs by Bruce Springsteen, Johnny Cash, Harry Lauder - just from reading headstones and wondering as to the words.

Last June was my first trip to Co. Cavan. Early one morning, the message on this headstone at Blacklion was of such impact that it was photographed. Today I was going back through photographs and was reminded of this headstone.

The web provided a link to the poem which provided so much more than can be expressed on a headstone – a way of life; a time past; a family relationship.

Enjoy.

---

Uncle James

For Patrick and John O’Rourke

(i)

Steadily he watches the meadow stall

in a series of curtsied bows, then fall.

The clipping sound of a set of triangular

buttercup, grasses, thistle, honeysuckle,

grass swathes.

 

He is reminded each day of his father’smight

Tired of summer warm night

After mowing the same swathe

Seeing him stoop with upturned blade (a scythe’s)

like some Mishima drone

in the rhythmic sharpening daze

of a bluestone double-cone maze.

 

(ii)

And times his mind flits back to sun-lit hoardings

in upstairs lodgings, bachelor boardings.

Brothers leaning out,

vested, over half-open window panes

above Kilburn streets

and thoughts of country lanes.

 

One, Peter, I located on the uppermost landing

after a day in Queen’s Park Irish pub’s standing

and a night walking across the lamp-lit concrete glow

the retraced dreamland miles from the townland slow.

 

At dawn I was greeted at the door

by a serious drinking John the Baptist figure

I had taken note of the day before

Who merely pointed heavenwards sure

as doves fluttered from the floor

out the roof window into air pure.

 

On the street outside headed for the station

two Missionaries of Charity on staycation

in their white, blue-line edged saris

loomed out of the middle distance

as in a mirage

seeking cases.

Memories of Lagos,

the poor in all spaces.

 

(iii)

This morning I see him stand

by the flung-open back door of the barn

in yellow triangular conical hat and coat for the farm

working on a wooden piece for the mower: - an arm.

It is caught in the vice and using the plane he is shaving it down

nothing to be done about a wooden blackboard but frown.

 

He is calm Buddhist presence in the world

peering through lines of white rain

running off the reddled corrugated iron barn.

Watching the washing in ‘the Planting’ unfurld. 

Earlier in the morning after Joycean ablutions,

and before milking the four black pollies,

feeding the noisily suckling calves from bruised, battered buckets,

he heaves two brimming plain aluminium pails

up the thirty odd steps from the well.

Steady, solid, stable, balanced

And hair that has not greyed.

 

In ’68 and ’69 or was it ’69 and ‘70

when we first came to visit

with Uncle James and my grandmother Honor

in Moffitts big old thatched house it was the milk that tasted different.

James went for dinner at eleven.

Half a small metal bucket of potatoes,

Cabbage and onions six or seven.

Later on

(as with Heaney)

my granny cutting seed,

separating the eyes,

the scallop knife, the mystical deed,

the flag floor, the open door,

the gold ring she lost in the ashes

cast into oblivion after a basin of water swooshes.

 

The shop on a Friday night

was our La Scala.

On Sundays our stadium watching Cavan do battle

seated on old television casings,

upended mineral crates

or a buttercup kosangas cylinder to saddle.

 

Then Saturdays or Sundays

The Rainbow dance,

whose sounds undulated in relays

‘the Ballroom of Romance’.

James, dapper and light,

Brylcream flicked raven hair,

off on his Raleigh,

into the coal dark summer night.

 

The second time we,

your dad and I and our dad,

left for Glasgow after a big flood

and on the last morning

of our August stay saw haze,

remarked steam coming out

of the pikes of hay saved:-

incense to some harvest God:-

Cuilcagh’s Vesuvius.

 

A mound of stones, an echo of bones,

a covered well, the barn a shell.

Now spring is here, blossoms appear,

daffodil bulbs have broken clear.

 

1st April 2011

John O’Rourke – from ‘Lines – A Season of Light, Reflected in the Night’