For sure a priest I’ll never now become: Sonnet 2<\/p>\n\n\n\n What’s in a name? I’m forced myself to ask, Sonnet 3<\/p>\n\n\n\n Though beauty is no more my main concern <\/p>\n\n\n\n Sonnet 4<\/p>\n\n\n\n Depending on my spleen and state of mind, Jerusalem <\/p>\n \n\n\n \n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \n\n\n<\/p>\n Aired kindly Bloom his tragic-comic streak Jerusalem Post midnight from a brothel on Tyrone Lower, Jerusalem Sonnet 1<\/p>\n\n\n\n Two years have gone since last I saw your face Sonnet 2<\/p>\n\n\n\n Six years ago, when Paris was the base \u2013 Sonnet 3<\/p>\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n<\/p>\n The two key years I spent with your kind Dad, \n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n Sonnet 4<\/p>\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n In addition to being a humanist indeed, <\/p>\n\n\n\n Sonnet 5<\/p>\n\n\n<\/p>\n The only thing that’s true, a friend once said, Sonnet 6<\/p>\n Your mother helped me find my earthy side, Sonnet 7<\/p>\n<\/p>\n When you revealed you’re often called a Yid, Sonnet 8<\/p>\n It is a strange coincidence indeed Jerusalem Sonnet 9<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not least because of Gandhi’s sound advice, Jerusalem Pre-Bloomsday Sonnet 1 For sure a priest I’ll never now become: I’m through with sado-masochistic faith; A Church with clergymen puffed-up or glum; A blood-stained Father, Son and Holy Wraith. Instead I’ll grow into my pregnant name And “cunning artificer”, poet, be; Then my imagination can form and frame The words that will this nation’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelpeach.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1249"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelpeach.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelpeach.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelpeach.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelpeach.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1249"}],"version-history":[{"count":101,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelpeach.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2499,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelpeach.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1249\/revisions\/2499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelpeach.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelpeach.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelpeach.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
I’m through with sado-masochistic faith;
A Church with clergymen puffed-up or glum;
A blood-stained Father, Son and Holy Wraith.
Instead I’ll grow into my pregnant name
And “cunning artificer”, poet, be;
Then my imagination can form and frame
The words that will this nation’s soul set free.
But what if I’m not father but the son \u2013
An Icarus who’s doomed to soar and fall?
Fear not, dear Dad a Daedalus is none:
I’m free to fly and heed my muse’s call.
++<\/span>I leave tomorrow Ireland for Paris fair;
++<\/span>Alone I shall my country’s conscience bear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nWhen friends say mine is antithetical.
\nStephen means crown, which might confirm my task
\nAs artist to lead and be heretical.
\nToo bad, I muse, Saint Stephen met his death
\nFor being a Promethean, like me.
\nWhen stoned, he claimed that Jesus of Nazareth
\nWas Ascended King, whom he right then could see.
\nIcarus I’m not, but am I Lucifer?
\n“Non serviam!” was Satan’s proud avowal.
\nBut he belongs to the Apocrypha \u2013
\nTo hell with Pope, Parnell and Baden-Powell.
\n++<\/span>Rather than serve the gods which others make,
\n++<\/span>I’ll martyr myself for art and beauty’s sake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
(That year in Paris brought me down to earth),
I’m still committed through my art to learn
The truth regarding Ireland’s spirit’s dearth.
Convinced I am her actual vocation
Transcends the Church poor Mother begged me serve
By kneeling at her deathbed and the nation,
Whose promised independence we deserve.
Now I hear once again the cryptic final words
Mum whispered when her time had come to go:
“You’ll meet a kindly leopard, who feeds the birds,
And find at last the word that all men know”.
++<\/span>Whatever she meant, I mean to stay the course
++<\/span>Though wracked each day by merciless remorse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nMartello Tower’s the Globe and I its host
\nOr Elsinore, in which I sadly find
\nI am both Hamlet and his father’s ghost.
\nI’m trying to probe Shakespeare’s private life:
\nWhy did he flee his childhood’s rural heaven?,
\nWas he betrayed by a possibly shrewish wife?,
\nHamnet, his only son, died when eleven.
\nAlas, it seems I too will soon be leaving \u2013
\nMulligan’s all but usurped this realm and throne.
\nBeneath the Moon, I feel, I shall be grieving;
\nHaunting the streets, quite homeless and alone.
\n++<\/span>Yet no-one knows what seeds will sprout and bloom
\n ++<\/span>From Time’s invisible, ever-teeming womb.<\/p>\n\n\n
28 August 2019<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\n\n<\/p>\nLeopold Bloom<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n\n\n<\/p>\n
As he wandered through the hostile, lively city,
While playing existential hide and seek
In a psychic stream of logic, mirth and pity.
And haunted was he by Rudy, his lost joy,
Whose sudden death had doomed the marital bliss;
He’d now be eleven, the cloud-capped fairy boy
They’d always mourn and never again kiss.
But Bloom didn’t know that by the end of night
He would adopt a soul in search of his own
Or that his earthy wife, her heart alight,
Would long for his return in bed alone.
++<\/span>Thus he regained a spouse and found a son
++<\/span>And deemed his odyssey love’s labour’s won.<\/p>\n
23 January 2019<\/p>\n\n\nStephen Dedalus<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\nTo which flushed Lynch and he had drunk their way,
\nLike guardian angel or a modern Noah
\nKind Bloom delivered him into the day.
\nIt seems his mother’s ghost he’s exorcized:
\nFor in the afternoon, while he conferred
\nOn Shakespeare’s final plays, he realized
\nHe’d solved at last the mystery of “the word”.
\nNow he can meet the woman of his life,
\nWhom he shall know when he sees her shining face;
\nTo Europe then he’ll go with this loving wife
\nIn order to forge the conscience of his race.
\n++<\/span>For, if made manifest, that sweet word love
\n++<\/span>Indeed aligns the below with the above.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
21 January 2019<\/p>\n\n\n\nPost-Bloomsday<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\nAnd three since your father sadly passed away;
\nThe time has come to tell you your kindly grace,
\nLike his, has touched my soul until this day.
\nAnd now that you’re an adult, not a teen \u2013
\nThough even then you seemed so worldly wise \u2013
\nIt’s surely right to lift the prudent screen:
\nThis love for you I need no more disguise.
\nIndeed I have adopted the name Bloom,
\nTo celebrate my resurrected life \u2013
\nWhich started when I grasped the heart’s a womb
\nAnd sympathy’s a sheath for wit’s sharp knife.
\n++<\/span>So, generous Milly, if you feel the same,
\n++<\/span>Please join me in Gen\u00e8ve and feed the flame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Though only briefly, for my mother died \u2013
I tried to hold a mirror to the race
Through showing Irish folk their artless side.
I meant by “artless” unaesthetic not pure;
For I was still a narcissist within
Who deemed it noble, bold, indeed mature
To cultivate from France my land and kin.
But then one day in Dublin the next year
I had an epiphany which changed my life.
Hence my mother’s words to me on love sincere
Incarnated \u2013 bringing me “father”, now a wife.
++<\/span>And so, dear Milly, here’s the latest news:
++<\/span>I’ll smear with shame all those who hate the Jews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n
Before I went to sojourn in Trieste,
Provided memories both joyful and sad:
Of all the men I’ve known he was the best.
And how appropriate that he should die
Trying to save a drowning scruffy boy:
A pauper with whom he had no social tie \u2013
The sort of kid who’d me those days annoy.
Although he wasn’t religious formally,
He often spoke of the immortal soul;
Needless to say, he’d then add jokingly
Something like “Oh! my shoe has sprung a hole”.
++<\/span>In short, sweet Milly, your “Papli” was the one
++<\/span>Who taught me how to temper graveness with fun.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Poldy was prophetic, in a Jewish way:
Universal justice and freedom were his creed.
You ask me, Milly, if I wish to return
To Ireland at last, now I’ve made a name.
Oh yes, kind dear, but daren’t \u2013 lest I unlearn
My hard-earned truths, threatened I fear by fame.
I met a man called Kafka the other night,
A lonely Jew from Prague, no older than me.
He was drinking at a bar in a blue light;
Told me his people soon would sacrificed be.
++<\/span>With nationalism today the popular view,
++<\/span>The worthy poet must be a wandering Jew.<\/p>\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n
In this fickle world impelled by pull and shove
Which honours prophets solely when they’re dead,
Is a natural mother’s unconditional love.
Whereas to me he was a substitute father
Who could at times be also elder brother,
To you, it seems, our Leopold was rather
Both conscientious Dad and spiritual mother.
When a prickly male called him a womanly man
After he’d advocated the female vote,
He claimed by picturing a womb one can
For one’s aggression create an antidote.
++<\/span>If every man would heed his feminine side,
++<\/span>The need for war would cease, he prophesied.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n<\/p>\n
While your father cured my primal fear of water;
And you should know, kind Milly, before he died
He said I’d learn a lot from his dear daughter.
Pals called me in Greek crowned bull and the ox-soul,
An exegesis of my curious name:
Which brings me back to Leo’s crucial role
As healer and how for him I was the same.
Telling it is that he a Taurus maintained
Deep water reflects the feminine side of life
And that through me, an Aquarius, he sustained
The masculine will to satisfy his wife.
++<\/span><\/span>This aired, my love, I feel a strong desire
++<\/span>To dive headlong and swim in your sea-fire.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n
Despite your efforts to disguise your race,
I thought of Poldy’s tales of how he hid
In dreams of Palestine and outer space.
He told me there are farms in Galilee
One’s free to sponsor for a modest sum:
Places to which a Jew could even flee,
If dates and oranges don’t vex his tum.
But here’s the rub, he also prophesied
Religion would pursue those pioneers:
Democracy by theocrats be defied
And hope displaced by hatred, wars and tears.
++<\/span>Whatever woes in future we will face,
++<\/span>For us our love shall always be the base.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n
That, given yesterday’s sonnet, I’ve just met
Here in Zurich a Yank who promises he’ll lead
The world to light: his name is Cashel Bett.
And aptly called, for he claims to be the heir
Of evangelist J. Dowie, whose gross scam
The Church in Zion \u2013 more bank than house of prayer \u2013
Declares it washes souls in blood of the Lamb.
Needless to say, I told him to get real:
Which prompted him to state he is Messiah
And like Carl Jung, whom he’d also failed to heal,
I’ll burn eternally in Hell’s great fire.
++<\/span>As Jesus said, and so did your good Dad,
++<\/span>Religion fed by blood or money’s bad.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
4 July 2019<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I met him seven years ago by chance
In an East End London Gents, to be precise,
I’m now convinced we should indeed quit France.
In short, brave Milly, it seems the time has come
To cease at last our exile and sail home,
Before mad Hitler and his fascist scum
Conquer the continent like ancient Rome.
To live in Dublin, though, need never mean
We’ve bought the notion of the nation-state:
Throughout this odyssey we have sadly seen
How tribalism engenders greed and hate.
++<\/span>But if all accepted their God-given Soul,
++<\/span>Mankind could unite and Mother Earth be whole.<\/p>\n\n\n<\/p>\n
19 November 2019<\/p>\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"