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      • My mind's not right by Dr. Vicky Gilpin >
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      • On Poetry & Poets by Abhay K.
      • Poetry of Kamla Das –A True Voice Of Bourgeoisie Women In India by Dr.Shikha Saxena
      • Identity Issues in the Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel by Dr.Arvind Nawale & Prashant Mothe*
      • Nissim Ezekiel’s Latter-Day Psalms: His Religious and Philosophical Speculations By Dr. Pallavi Srivastava
      • The Moping Owl : the Epitome of Melancholy by Zinia Mitra
      • Gary Soto’s Vision of Chicano Experiences: The Elements of San Joaquin and Human Nature by Paula Hayes
      • Sri Aurobindo: A Poet By Aju Mukhopadhyay
      • Wordsworthian Romanticism in the Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra: Nature and the Reflective Capabilities of a Poetic Self by Paula Hayes
      • Reflective Journey of T.S. Eliot: From Philosophy to Poetry by Syed Ahmad Raza Abidi
      • North East Indian Poetry: ‘Peace’ in Violence by Ananya .S. Guha
    • 2014-2015 >
      • From The Hidden World of Poetry: Unravelling Celtic mythology in Contemporary Irish Poetry Adam Wyeth
      • Alchemy’s Drama: Conflict, Resolution and Poiesis in the Poetic Work of Art by Michelle Bitting
      • Amir Khushrau: The Musical Soul of India by Dr. Shamenaz
      • PUT YOUR HANDS ON ME: POETRY'S EROTIC ART by Elena Karina Byrne
      • Celtic and Urban Landscapes in Irish Poetry by Linda Ibbotson
      • Trickster at the African Crossroads and the Bridge to the Blues in America by Michelle Bitting
    • 2015-2016 >
      • Orogeny/Erogeny: The “nonsense” of language and the poetics of Ed Dorn T Thilleman
      • Erika Burkart: Fragments, Shards, and Visions by Marc Vincenz
      • English Women Poets and Indian politics
    • 2016-2017 >
      • Children’s Poetry in India- A Case Study of Adil Jussawalla and Ananya Guha by Shruti Sareen
      • Thirteen Thoughts on Poetry in the Digital Age by Mandy kAHN
    • 2017-2018 >
      • From Self-Portrait with Dogwood: A Route of Evanescence by Christopher Merrill
      • Impure Poetry by Tony Barnstone
      • On the Poets: Contributors in Context by Donald Gardner
      • Punching above its Weight: Dutch Poetry in English, a Selection, 2013-2017 by Jane Draycott
  • Print Editions

Poems by Ciaran O'Driscoll

My Builder’s Opinion Of Light


'Is it light you're looking for?' my builder says
with a schoolmaster's heavy irony.
'How d'you think you'll be able to pin it down?
It's not like timber, RSJs or pipes.
Has nobody told you how fast it travels?
All the world's glass won't help you capture light.
One hundred and eighty-six thousand miles
a second – no sooner arrived than gone –
sure it’s out again before it’s rightly in!
Oh there's plenty of light in the universe,
the problem is to get it into a house.
But then, if you contemplate the sky at night,
there isn’t much of it compared to dark. 
We have the case of what’s called dark matter
up there, and a similar case down here –
a lot more darkness in the world than light.
Even if you trapped brightness in a room,
it’d cast more shadows than was worth your while.
The less there is, the more you'll appreciate
the light you have. And didn’t you ever read
the scientific theories on the subject?
Sure it’s half-nothing – it’s not a thing at all.
Still - no cause for despair', says my builder.
‘Be of unspeakable cheer, all that's serene
will come from nowhere and your colours fly
in Cygnus, Andromeda and the Little Bear.
Everything has already been wrapped up.
You're on the eternal publisher's autumn list,
and the critics are choirs singing your praises.
Eternity is ripe, ready to burst;
your wheatfields in the sky, your olive groves
and vineyards are in need of supervision.
I see you in star-studded wellingtons,
robed in a mantle of the zodiac, 
the overlord of angels at their labours
harvesting galaxies and superclusters,
spirals, discs and threads of constellations,
dwarves, quasars, pulsars, protostars – the lot!
Be patient, and a light-harvest is yours
from suns whose beams will never reach the earth.
Meanwhile, if I was in your present state,
I'd be plumping for a warm and sturdy house,
with a kind of chiaroscuro effect,
more scuro than chiaro, which should keep
peepers and daylight robbers in the dark.'





Man In Field Talking To Cows


Man in field talking to cows
in the early morning, we’re skirting you 
on a wide berth of motorway, but for all 
we accomplish in the end, for all we do,
we might as well be in a field like you
talking to cows. And it’s no bad call
to be out and about and standing in a field
at the break of day and talking to cows,
to be able to talk to them, have the know-how.
And it would be an even greater feat
if the cows were to talk back, as well they might,
and for a proper parley to ensue,
with white mist blanketing the ground
while we are airport-bound
skirting your field in a wide arc
through the dissipating dark. 

We’re going to Italy to take the air
in hinterlands hill-towned and singular,
where livestock’s scarcely sighted out on grass
nor man in meadow glimpsed, talking to cows,
but grape-growers are known to trust in song
for optimal results, and one morning
a neighboring recital rose to keep 
a pair of frazzled travellers from sleep,
unsure how blessed they were to be alive
and hear a vineyard opera at five.

Are those the spokescattle, the two beside you?
Have you a name for each herd-member? Is
the most serene of them called Molly? Does
the teat-cup kicker go by Briggs, and how
do you talk her back to rights?... But what would I
know about cows? I knew a little once,
now I don’t pause to think the juice that lightens
the colour of my morning coffee flows
from biddable beasts like these you put to browse
in pasture on the edge of a motorway.

I wonder who’ll travel furthest today,
you or me, man in field talking to cows.




Ciaran O’Driscoll, born in Callan, Co. Kilkenny in 1943 and living in Limerick, is a member of Aosdána.
​

    He has published six collections of poetry, including Gog and Magog (Salmon, 1987), Moving On, Still There (Dedalus, 2001), and Life Monitor (Three Spires Press, 2009). His work has been translated into many languages. Vecchie Donne di Magione (The Old Women of Magione) with Italian translations by Rita Castigli, was published by Volumnia Editrice in 2006 and a Selected Poems in Slovene translations was published in May 2013 by Kud France Preseren.
    Liverpool University Press published his childhood memoir, A Runner Among Falling Leaves, in 2001. His novel A Year’s Midnight was published by Pighog in 2012.  
    He has won a number of awards for his work, including the James Joyce Prize and the Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in Poetry. His poem ‘Please Hold’, included in the anthology Poems of the Decade: An Anthology of the Forward Books of Poetry, has become a prescribed text in post-2000 poetry for A Level Literature from September 2015.

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  • Home
  • About Us
    • Contact
    • Media Coverages
    • Copyright Notice
    • VerseVille Blog
  • Submissions
    • Poetry and Essays Guidelines
    • Book Review Guidelines
    • Research Series Guidelines
  • Masthead
  • Editions
    • 2011 Issues >
      • ISSUE-XIV November 2011
    • 2012 Issues >
      • ISSUE-XV March 2012
      • ISSUE-XVI July 2012
      • ISSUE-XVII November 2012
    • 2013 Issues >
      • ISSUE-XVIII April 2013
      • ISSUE XIX November 2013
    • 2014 Issues >
      • ISSUE XX May 2014
    • 2015 Issues >
      • ISSUE XXI February 2015
      • Contemporary Indian English Poetry ISSUE XXII November 2015
    • 2016 Issues >
      • ISSUE XXIII August 2016
      • Poetry From Ireland ISSUE XXIV December 2016
    • 2017 ISSUES >
      • ISSUE XXV August 2017
      • ISSUE XXVI December 2017
    • 2018 ISSUES >
      • ISSUE XXVII July 2018
      • ISSUE XXVIII November 2018
    • 2019 Issues >
      • ISSUE XXIX July 2019
    • 2020 ISSUES >
      • Issue XXX February 2020
      • ISSUE XXXI December 2020
  • Collaborations
    • Macedonian Collaboration
    • Collaboration with Dutch Foundation for Literature
  • Interviews
  • Prose on Poetry and Poets
    • 2010-2013 >
      • Sylvia Plath by Dr. Nidhi Mehta >
        • Chapter-1(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-2(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-3(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-4(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-5(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-6(Sylvia Plath)
      • Prose Poems of Tagore by Dr. Bina Biswas >
        • Chapter-1(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-2(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-3(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-4(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-5(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-6(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-7(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-8(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-9(Rabindranath Tagore)
      • Kazi Nazrul Islam by Dr. Shamenaz Shaikh >
        • Chapter 1(Nazrul Islam)
        • Chapter 2(Nazrul Islam)
        • Chapter 3(Nazrul Islam)
      • Kabir's Poetry by Dr. Anshu Pandey >
        • Chapter 1(Kabir's Poetry)
        • Chapter 2(Kabir's Poetry)
        • Chapter 3(Kabir's Poetry)
      • My mind's not right by Dr. Vicky Gilpin >
        • Chapter- 1 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
        • Chapter-2 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
        • Chapter-3 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
        • Chapter-4 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
      • On Poetry & Poets by Abhay K.
      • Poetry of Kamla Das –A True Voice Of Bourgeoisie Women In India by Dr.Shikha Saxena
      • Identity Issues in the Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel by Dr.Arvind Nawale & Prashant Mothe*
      • Nissim Ezekiel’s Latter-Day Psalms: His Religious and Philosophical Speculations By Dr. Pallavi Srivastava
      • The Moping Owl : the Epitome of Melancholy by Zinia Mitra
      • Gary Soto’s Vision of Chicano Experiences: The Elements of San Joaquin and Human Nature by Paula Hayes
      • Sri Aurobindo: A Poet By Aju Mukhopadhyay
      • Wordsworthian Romanticism in the Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra: Nature and the Reflective Capabilities of a Poetic Self by Paula Hayes
      • Reflective Journey of T.S. Eliot: From Philosophy to Poetry by Syed Ahmad Raza Abidi
      • North East Indian Poetry: ‘Peace’ in Violence by Ananya .S. Guha
    • 2014-2015 >
      • From The Hidden World of Poetry: Unravelling Celtic mythology in Contemporary Irish Poetry Adam Wyeth
      • Alchemy’s Drama: Conflict, Resolution and Poiesis in the Poetic Work of Art by Michelle Bitting
      • Amir Khushrau: The Musical Soul of India by Dr. Shamenaz
      • PUT YOUR HANDS ON ME: POETRY'S EROTIC ART by Elena Karina Byrne
      • Celtic and Urban Landscapes in Irish Poetry by Linda Ibbotson
      • Trickster at the African Crossroads and the Bridge to the Blues in America by Michelle Bitting
    • 2015-2016 >
      • Orogeny/Erogeny: The “nonsense” of language and the poetics of Ed Dorn T Thilleman
      • Erika Burkart: Fragments, Shards, and Visions by Marc Vincenz
      • English Women Poets and Indian politics
    • 2016-2017 >
      • Children’s Poetry in India- A Case Study of Adil Jussawalla and Ananya Guha by Shruti Sareen
      • Thirteen Thoughts on Poetry in the Digital Age by Mandy kAHN
    • 2017-2018 >
      • From Self-Portrait with Dogwood: A Route of Evanescence by Christopher Merrill
      • Impure Poetry by Tony Barnstone
      • On the Poets: Contributors in Context by Donald Gardner
      • Punching above its Weight: Dutch Poetry in English, a Selection, 2013-2017 by Jane Draycott
  • Print Editions