Poems from Heartlands: Special Illustrated Color Edition

By Dr. C. A. Buckley

This second book of poems by Dr. C.A. Buckley has been five years in the making, but comes from a lifetime of dedicated writing of poetry. His first collection, The Last Irish Romantic was launch by Gabriel Fitzmourice, the noted Irish poet, in John B. Keane’s pub at the Listowel Literary Festival of 2015. He described the collection as a striking series of works reminiscent of T.S.Eliot and Michael Hartnett. The book was also praised by the legendary poet and publisher, Pat Boran of the Dedulous Press, as a “truly distinctive debut volume”. The prize-winning modern British poet Bernard O’Donoghue was more fulsome is describing it as “brilliant”. For those who have been patiently waiting for a sequel here is an even finer, more mature and more varied follow-up volume.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jan 18, 2021
• ISBN: 9781665582018

Dr. C. A. Buckley

Fr. Buckley, a graduate of St. Patrick’s College Maynooth, and Oxford University, lives and works in Kilgarvan, Co. Kerry, Ireland. He has also published two prose works, Wheels of Light, Learn from Me and is busy finishing three novels, The Cottage, The Mountain and the Island. Thes should see the light of the day in the not so distant future.

Book preview

© 2020 Dr. C. A. Buckley. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

AuthorHouse™ UK

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403 USA

www.authorhouse.co.uk

UK TFN: 0800 0148641 (Toll Free inside the UK)

UK Local: 02036 956322 ([phone] from outside the UK)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed

since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not

necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-6655-8202-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-8201-8 (e)

Published by AuthorHouse 01/18/2021

12381.png

It’s only with one’s heart that one can see clearly.

What is essential is invisible to the eye.

—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

Table of Contents

The Tree

Christ the Clown

Villanelle

Stars

Words of Light

The Birds of Truth

A Sonnet for Mr Pavorotti Thrush

To Scellig Michael with Aine

The River of Life

The Ballad of the Swimming Dog

Death of a Populist

A Waking at the Top of Coom

Hair

Trip to the Dentist

Aisling on Garnish

The Almighty Car

Back to the Blue Lagoon

The Baptismal Rite

A Love Song for Clare

An Idealistic Poetic Manifesto

The Poet at Heaven’s Gate

Surviving the Virus: Poetic Reflections on COVID-19

Our Progressive Era

A Mother Theresa Memorial Poem

When Elvis Sang in Tupelo

Grace

Dreams

Stack of Turf

Bog Days

School Days

Faraway and Near

New Praties

The Trap Father

The Seagull

Summers of the Swallow

2020 Swallows

The Sparrow

Lament

The Badlands

Complaint of a Latter-Day Conservationist

Summer Hay Time

Hope

Home Thoughts from Abroad

The Tree of Life

Sonnet for Jean

Tribute

Life and Death

Bethlehem

Beit Umar

Peace in the Valley

Letter from Eve

Icon

A New Heaven

The Celibate’s Heaven

For Vera

The Devil Speaks to Me

Circles

Near Death Experience

The Lone Pigeon

The White Dove of Palestine

The Farmyard Goose

The Colourful Drake

The Wild One

The Jackdaw

The Robin Redbreast

The Magpie

Michael

The Golden Plan

Killing the Goose

The winter Robin

The Wise Old Owl

The House Dog

If Apes Had Been Content with Tails

Chains of Darkness

Depression

Lost and Alone

Only the Lonely

The Mad Revolt of Mr Words

Light Relief

Obsessed with Rhyme

The Sometime Priest

Penguins

The Great Ship

Hy Brassil

Country Escape

Islands Faraway

Mortality

Elegy for Jerry

The Ah, but Generation

Queen of Darkness

The Poet Philosopher Home Hiking in Clare: Seasons of the Soul

The Wisdom of St Simon Stylites

They

The Last Frontier

Extracts from the Second Voyage

Epitaph

Image4917.JPG

The Tree

In leaf and limb the greenest tree

I painted in simplicity,

Expecting the world to kneel and stare

And feel the love I dared to share.

Yet when the broken bough was pain

And my world was dark again,

I lifted up my silent eye

And saw the tree that would not die.

The tree I painted was to me,

Both life and all I wished to be.

Christ the Clown

(Christ was seen as a clown, laughing at

man’s follies, in the Middle Ages)

Two thousand years

Have tumbled down

And still we laugh

With Christ the clown,

Subverting all

Our gnostic creeds,

Fulfilling all

Our inner needs;

In the circus 2000s yet to be,

Be master clown among the free.

Curb the plumed horses

Of our pride,

The lions tame

Of all our crimes,

While high upon

The wire of hope,

Keep safe the jugglers

Of our arts,

And the shapely ladies

Of our loves;

In circus 2000s yet to be

Be master clown among the free.

With fireworks

Light up all our skies,

Let brightest wonder

Spread surprise,

To fill our youth

With dazzling smiles,

Set pearls of joy

In children’s eyes;

In the circus 2000s yet to be,

Be master clown among the free.

Villanelle

Life in itself is surely not enough.

The grave finds out the artist in the worm.

We are such things as dreams are made to touch.

The artist etches patterns in the dust.

The dreamer writes out projects in the mist,

The sailor in the passing of the storm.

Life in itself is surely not enough.

The politician thrives on power and still corrupts.

The courageous stand up and call him out.

Life in itself, like sand, is fleeting stuff.

The lover, it is true, comes closest to the best,

Though lying down in sheets of stain and lust.

Life in itself is surely not enough.

The hermit in the forest, sleeping rough.

The nun within the cloister neat and calm.

We are such things as dreams are made to touch.

Life in itself, like sand, is fleeting stuff.

The mystery of all that is, though sometimes lost,

Lives on, though tortured on a bloody cross.

Life in itself is surely is not enough

The worm crawls towards us bearing gifts of truth.

The artist etches patterns in the dust.

Life in itself is surely not enough.

We swagger through, disguising with a laugh,

The clay beneath the skin, the fading youth.

Life in itself is surely not enough.

Time’s monkey squats and opens, chink by chink,

A door into the dark of evermore.

Life in itself, like sand, is fleeting stuff.

The sun shines on while nature rules the clock.

We waver between the spirit and the brute.

The artist etches patterns in the dust.

Beauty flames within the burning leaf,

And brave buds die in frosts of winter grief.

The artist etches patterns in the dust.

The farmer plants the corn and gains increase.

The banker hives the profits off the top.

Life in itself, like sand, is fleeting stuff.

The One has left a poison in the cup

And left the end of summer in the fruit.

Life in itself is surely not enough.

The mystic seeks the desert free from blight

While lords and ladies fester in the night.

The artist etches patterns in the dust.

The crust of bread the poor man sees as life,

When eaten, leaves a hunger in the heart.

Life in itself is sand, is fleeting stuff.

The thinker pulls ideas from his hat,

Or wallows in a senseless stream of cant.

The artist etches patterns in the dust.

Life in itself is surely not enough.

The man of science seeks in vain a final truth

While physics holds to ever-changing faith.

Life in itself is sand, is fleeting stuff.

The dancer and the singer need no proof,

But when froth fades, the beer is always flat.

The artist etches patterns in the dust.

The philosopher seeks for patterns in the mist.

The gambler hazards all in pitch and toss.

Life in itself is surely not enough.

Come take the bull by the horns, and quick.

Seek still for nought that is not less than right.

The eternity of the heavens, pure and bright.

For life in itself is surely not enough,

The artist etches patterns in the dust.

Stars

Sometimes stars speckle the sky,

And people looking up see

Them as the brightness of being

In the blue emptiness of life,

Emblems of inspiration and aspiration

On the edge of time’s knife.

Sometimes stars appear

In the eyes of a lover,

Or in the hands of Lady Luck,

Or sometimes they gleam

And glimmer in a good book,

Like sunlight through life’s bars.

Sometimes a star is something

We’ve always seen but never seen;

Because life has been

Stripped of its green glamour,

We see no light in the clamour of cities

Or in the clutter of commerce,

Only the glare of neon lights.

Yet on rare occasions,

A star from on high shows us

Not only what we desire

But also what’s infinitely true and right.

But walking in the more usual night,

We see only cloudy planets,

And rain, and the demands of vanity.

So our starry angels flee from us

To hide themselves in shadows

Like frightened dogs.

So even when each new day dawns,

Though brighter than stars,

It doesn’t come as a surprise

Or make us more happy or wise.

Only divine stars of diamond light

Can do that, for we live in a sea of sighs,

Yet there are always stars in a child’s words,

And in a child’s wondering eyes.

Maybe only the pure of heart see stars;

Life has cares, so we look down

Rather than up,

And so we see only life’s snares,

Or the tinsel stars sold in life’s fairs.

True stars are those that like fishermen,

Guide us to the safety of a home bay.

In every night they are guiding lights

In the darkness and storms of the sea.

So as the depthless blue space at night,

Is lit by a wonder of sapphires stars,

May the deep inner space of my heart

Be lit by stars of highest life and hope.

And thereby freed from earth’s snares,

May I rise on fearless wings of faith,

Poetry, and art into the fine, starry skies that

Illuminate life here and forever more.

Image4929.JPG

Words of Light

Words have the power to plumb

The depths of the soul’s well within,

Or transport me to heavenly towers of being.

As I struggle sometimes,

Suddenly the right words come

Like stars out