And A Blackbird sang

 

 

 

 

 

 

And a Blackbird Sang

In deepest pain
I sought a  lover’s arms.
In solace and in warmth
I lay relieved and soothed.

I thought of all who lay alone,
hurt, distressed, wounded without redress,
throughout the troubled world
and wept hot tears of love.

Just then outside on frozen bough
a blackbird sang his morning ode of joy,
and smiling through the tears
I saw all pain and love as one.

Margaret Gill

 

Birth of a poem

 

 

 

 

 

 

A poem is not an artefact
but a message from the soul.
It is the in-breath and out-breath
of the universe.
It is the sea rolling in,
the elements singing,
the heart breaking,
the golden hush
before the sun sets,
before the tears fall.

It is the moment
without sound,
where is no tumult,
where all is whole;
the breathless moment
before spirit speaks
or the heart beats
or the music floods in.

Margaret Gill

© Copyright 2013

The creative zone

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How open flood gates of perception
to let the fresh blood cascade in?
How access records hidden deep within,
unlock secret doors on the train of life?
They will not yield unless all loads are left behind.

All baggage ditched, all excess weight
scoring deep ridged imprints in the brain
abandoned; all fear of error or of blame,
all struggle, past angst, dilemma foiled,
shifted down the corridors of past pain.

Ignore all moving images, lights that flash
and signals on the line; all striving,
all sound of outward rumblings and chaotic din.
Enter deep in silence. In the stillness it is there.
The place one calls ‘the zone’ is everywhere,
a space where nothing is that can’t become.

Margaret Gill

© Coptright 2013

Oh! Howl!

‘Girl lashed 60 times for talking to men in Mali’
–      Independent

 

 

 

 

 

I saw the nightmare of our century.
A girl child who deigned to speak to men
sacrificed to stony eyed Islam fanatics
who, soaked in deep hard hatred, heaped their own lust on her
poor thin shoulders and raked her back of quivering flesh.

Fuelled by self hatred, hatred of womankind, fearful
of its mystique and how it could betray them, they flay
and flay to let out their own poisoned filth
as flesh is torn to bleeding pulp. And still they flay
as the blinding pain slashes in and out.

Can nothing assuage the burning, searing fear of sin
that flails and hates in frantic sterile haze?
Or save this soft frailty from their claw?
Sin burns in their own souls like a branding iron,
scorches them and all who know them.

Mothers howl to heaven’s vault they bred them.
But still the killing beast kills on,
Slashing at the heaving mass of tattered flesh

Margaret Gill

© Copyright 2013

Enchanted Wood

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So woke we in a ‘shower of our days’ under Milk Wood.
So walked we, wood thickly dappled, shadowed sunlight,
A straight path under twisted branches and arching trees.
Trunks in magic shapes of bear, shark and crocodile grew.
Children’s voices hushed, small footsteps stayed;
Wonder spilled at magic and enchantment there.
There, where sea and river meet with
Seaweedy, rivery, sea smells.
Footprints sink deliciously in mud thick banks
And stones plop in the sea by the
‘Sea-wet church’ on the sea-green shore.

Margaret Gill

© Copyright 2013

Good Friday (Semana Santa: Seville)

 

 

 

 

 

They wait above from hushed balconies and droop
the shameful Judas rag.
Below, crowds press and push, in watchful, silent group
through gathering sultry Seville gloom.

There comes a shuddering, shivering sigh
from a thousand Spanish throats in answer to the blood beat,
the pounding, martial blood beat of the rolling drums of death.

In dream-like file stride black cloaked masks of doom,
bare-footed penitents, flanked by deathly robes of white,
bearing flaming scarlet cross, the smell of burning in the air.
And the pounding, martial blood beat of the rolling drums of death.

Them ‘Maria, Sancta. Sancta Maria’ as borne aloft, she glides.
Painted tears of blood on her frozen painted face.
Poised and dainty dagger digging deep in waxen heart,
below her veil of fluttering lace.

Next, in glassy-sided bier enmassed with wreaths of red
the travesty of Love lies dead
On purple, velvet bed.
And my welling tears of agony, at the mockery
Spill down,
to the pounding, martial blood beat of the rolling drums of death.

Margaret Gill

©  Copyright 2013

Patterns on the shore

 

 

 

 

 

As patterns on the salty, wave-ridged shore
Repeat the same yet different swirl,
These photos stained in album aged and torn
Repeat, recall the faces long since dead.

How can they be same eyes, same quirk of brow
In one deceased in painful childbirth pangs
And one left single, thronged with myriad cares
And teeming children round?

My father, young and straight, clear eyed,
Not yet the shrivelled flesh and shoulders bowed.
Myself, in throbbing noon-tide flow
With hope and childhood friends among.

Remembering how, on his return I ran
Sweets bulging in his pockets just for me.
Long years wiped out of stumbling suffering man
Once straight of limb, child hoisted high on shoulder strong.

And now that child, less sure.
When washed into the sands of life
What bright reflected image will remain
For others to cling on?

Full tides recede, the cardboard image falls,
But patterned through new waves and unborn cells
The throbbing noontide spirit shines.

Margaret Gill

©  Copyright 2013

Two faced Saint (St Agnes Isle)

 

 

 

 

 

A calm sea now, a gentle isle and fair,
named Agnes, lamb of God, saintly, pure.
Smooth are the sunlit backs of docile cows,
heady the tang of moorland ling and seaweed salt.

Beyond the cricket pitch, a preening gull
presides over newly towered church and quiet bay,
basking in virgin air, loving the light,
lulled by silky sounds of unctuous sea.

One face holy, exhaling quiet.
The other secret, inhaling death
where sedge gives way to salt-edged pools,
shadowed by wind-tortured stones.

There lie bleached skulls, jetsam
of a violent sea.
Close by the Western rocks glint greedily
like dragons’ teeth ringing Bishop Rock.

Those steel needles will gnash, slash and maul
when the sun’s fire damps down.
Will rend bowsprit, shrouds, and men
lured by that treacherous siren maid.

Margaret Gill

© Copyright 2013

Even now as we’re dying (Poem for Tibet)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Though you grind us like chaff in the wind,
Though you milk our veins, drink our blood,
Raze our temples, defile our altars with your jeers,
Kick, curse and stone our burning flesh,
Our spirit will shine through our immolations.
The flames that scorch us will turn to wave
Upon wave of peaceful inondations.

Though you scorn us, our plight
Will reach out, even now as we’re dying,
To those who will take up our fight
Beyond our tight ringed snow peaks,
Where our prayer flags are still flying,
Beyond to where their mountains are free.
They will hear the plea of our land-locked nation
Smothered in blood hatred, blanketed in silence,
While wires overhead crackle with information.

At last they will see our agony aflame, see our youth
Crushed and maimed, our sacred centres stained.
We die … that our land may be free,
Yet we do not blame. If we blame we would
Lose what is dear to our hearts, compassion.
May all people be free of our pain,
May all souls be blest by our sacrifice.
We die that all might
Understand.

Margaret Gill

© Copyright 2013

Sudden sea mist

 

 

 

 

Blue noon.
Then sudden sea mist quivers, cloaking down.
Sea wrack shivers on dulled edge of foam.
Cloud banks thicken.
Now wavering light like ‘shook foil’ flings
Its sparks of borrowed glamour on artless things,
Palely etching bones of distant islands.

Now phoenix-risen rocks catch fire in burning pyre
Of sun burst through in streaming, blinding strands.
The cormorant shakes its black umbrella wings.
White crested spume in heedless racing flings
Itself to fade once more
In filmy fringe upon the eternal shore.

Margaret Gill

© 2013