to an insect on a windowsill

to an insect on a windowsill

god you’re ugly

and yet to another insect…..

who am i to feel superior

you’re good at what you do

perfectly adapted to what you are

i couldn’t cope in your life

and you can’t drive a car

yet both our lives could be

stamped out in an instant

i know it and you perhaps

more blessed, can’t

we are both alively

a little both the same

but god…..

you’re still ugly

martin swords

june 2009

As I Came Over Wicklow Gap

As I Came Over Wicklow Gap




As I came over Wicklow Gap
All on a summer’s day
A sight I met which held me trapped
And took my breath away
A view emerged as if to say
Stop and remember well today
Treasure the memory from this day
Before you’re on your way, now
Before you’re on your way



As I came over Wicklow Gap
All in a summer still
The sun shone on the mountain cap
A single shaft of golden spill
And lit ablaze the very hill
I can recall it still
If ever my spirit’s ill
It lifts my heart and always will, now
I know it always will




Martin Swords May 2009

These Are The Days

These Are the Days





These are the days
When nothing seems to happen
When plans go awry
Someone mentions pancakes
Instead and off we go
Pancakes too thick as bread
Others thin and crispy
Like cardboard someone said
Extra large square shaped and folded
Like a broadsheet, The Daily Pancake,
Unleavened, brittle like a parchment
sacred book this Easter Sunday Morn
Luscious Chocolate everywhere.
Laughter mixed with maple, lemon, sugar
As everyone ate too many.
Dad told them something about
Baa Baa Blacksheep and tax
Which was interesting, but not funny.
Nothing happened. Everything happened.
These are the days when life happens.




Martin Swords April 2009

A Bowl of Rice Always

A Bowl of Rice Always







A fractured home
A distanced heartache

A chopstick, an empty cup
A windchime in a garden

A bowl of rice
Always the small things





Martin Swords
May 2009

Listening at Sally Gap

Listening at Sally Gap






There is always a wind
one or other of the four winds blowing
moaning with the loneliness of the place
soft ground tough grass and hard sheep.


Ghosts of silent footed rebels tramping to the
safety of their mountain valley holds
before the Military.
The wind still carries their shouts


their cries their pleadings and their hopes
mixing with the bleak empty sounds of this place
a trickle of water on stone
a gurgle of water on wet black turf


Is that the thin echo of a sleán slicing sods,
or that heavy hollow sound, the turf-cutter’s
clunkin’ bottle of sweet milky tea
corked with a scruntch of newspaper


Or a bit of broken fence banging in the wind




Martin Swords
May 2009

Far From Athy

Far From Athy




Pat told stories of old times, living in digs
in Athy, working on the roofin’ for aul’ Hammond.
Me with my booklearning piped up
“I heard of Athy,
“And look! a barge comes bringing from Athy
And other far- flung towns mythologies.” ”,
lines from the canalbankpoet.
“Bet he never saw it in the lashing
rain”, Pat observed dryly.
No. Nor I had never seen it his way,
from a cold slate roof breaking galvanised
tacking nails with the long ripper,
and only the price of two pints in his pocket,
till Friday.

He was glad for me that I hadn’t.


Martin Swords May 2009

i.m. Pat Swords 1915 - 1978
On His Birthday 1st May

The Smith

What is this magic you do?
Taming the fire
Bending the earth
Making beauty from brute strength
Giving death a sharp edge
Creating in your mind and fire
Tools and everydays that
Humblefolk might live in peace
Making death and making life
With the same hammerblows
Are you a god or a man
Or the spirit of earth and fire
That men fear and love you, Smith







Martin Swords March 2009

Plastic Daffodils

I wandered lonely as a prayer
Along the monks path by the Glendasan
When all at once around a rocky bend
I saw a sight afloat to make me take a stand
A host of plastic bottles thrown away
Waving their caps and labels o’er the land
I often think in solitude so grand,
For all their cheap and handy ways
Discarded plastic bottles of today
Are simply just too big a price to pay
And then my heart with sorrow fills
A refuse sack with plastic rubbish daffodils


Martin Swords February 2009

Broad Casting

p
p
p
p

The Bishop and The Priest, The Teacher,
Doctor, Auctioneer,
these were the Grey Gods of the Grey Fifties
Even the Politician and the Merchant
had to pay Respect, to gain Respect.
Knowledge was broadcast at us
Like seed scattered on an empty field.
We were told the answers to the questions
we didn’t dare to ask.

Then the men in hornrim glasses spoke.
With no mention of God the new
black and white God spoke in every livingroom.
It told us what we ought to know,
it opened doors and shone light in the shadows
where the grey sins lay hidden by the Grey Gods.
We thought we were seeing.

The new Grey God lives among the stars.
In glorious colour it speaks,
it tells the news, it makes the news,
it tells us what it is we ought to know.
A black and white view in colour.
The old Grey Gods look on, green with envy.
The strings they pulled were never as long,
strong or well played as this brash messenger.
This full colour God in the sky.
We still think we’re thinking.
Nothing changes but the colour.



Martin Swords
Jan 2009


(“Broadcast” was originally an adjective and adverb, and meant literally “scattered widely”, particularly in the farming context of sowing seeds.)

I Stood in Line

November 4th 2008
United States Presidential Elections



I stood in line
To have my teeth examined
I stood in line
While my chains were locked
I stood in line
For a bowl of soup
I stood in line
With no poll tax
I stood in line
To board the bus
I stood in line
To face the water cannon
I stood in line
To speak, to be heard
I stood in line
To be listened to
This day,
I stood in line.
Proudly, stood in the line.




Martin Swords
Nov. 2008

Wicklow Lighthouse 3a.m.

Wicklow Lighthouse 3a.m.

“ ………. A deepening depression ….. heavy rain ……

………… poor visibility …… strong southerly winds ……

..............veering southwest.............................

………… building strong gale after midnight ………….. ”




Shine, steady light,
and bring them home
to Wicklow

Dear God, look out for Jim
and all the lads aboard the Sarah Ann,
struggling home against the wind
beyond the Arklow Sands

Shine steady, light,
and bring them home
to Wicklow

And all for what? Less
fish than ever, every time,
a box of crabs, a living? A
hundred hooks, a life, all on the line.

Shine strong now, light,
shine strong all night
and bring them home
to Wicklow

Your daughter Sarah, soon, I hope
will have a brother.
And they will need their Father
then, to love them, and their Mother.

Shine steady strong and surely
show their way
and bring them home
to Wicklow, safe, today.




“ ……….. reports are coming in …… fishing vessel …… no contact …

…………. sighted ….. approaching Wicklow harbour …………

…………. just after 3a.m. …………”




16 November 2005
Martin Swords

The Seven Birches

The Seven Birches




Seven Birches stand
On the right hand of the garden
Towering over house and sheep shed
Yet holding hands
Below the ground.
From Tiglin they came.
Picked and pulled as seven saplins
From the woods of Synge’s Glanmore.
Playboy, of the Western Woods.
Planted by Mervin, as he tells it
On a stormy day as dark as night.
When three storms, like three witches, met
And flashed and roared and spilled their spells of rain,
Macbethian, like three Weird Sisters, yet
Making beauty despite themselves
Not Birnan Wood, but Birchwood.
The Seven Birches still stand tall,
Now the sons of the seven show themselves,
Ready to make their stand
Whenever the witch’s storms return
To take the old and weak.
As they always do


Martin Swords Aug 2008

The Way of Kevin

The Way of Kevin




And then there was St. Kevin’s Way
The Way of Kevin, Tóchar Chaoimhín
In a Meditation Garden on a hill
below the chapel graveyard,
Suaimhneas Chaoimhín, the Tranquillity of Kevin
sings with the sound of water splashing.
A first Cuckoo calls on 4th of May
Tadpoles swim in the old stone
Baptism Font from Annamoe Church.


Are these Holy tadpoles in the Baptismal Font?
Or are they like the rest of us, struggling?
Is this their time, their place, their struggle?
Life is what’s Holy. Life is a struggle
whether in a Holy Water Font or
in the outstretched hand of a saint.
Struggle is the Prayer of Life.
Ask St. Kevin. Ask the Blackbird.
Ask the sons of the sons of the Blackbird.
Ask them the way.




Inspired by Seamus Heaney’s Poem
St Kevin and the Blackbird
And then there was St Kevin and the blackbird





Martin Swords
May 6th 2008

A Walk In The Woods With Robert Frost

A Walk In The Woods With Robert Frost






Overcast but warm,
The day dry, unusually.
Walking the woods with the dogs
As many times before.
Lucy and Tiggy, away in the rough dark deepwood,
Yipping with the scent of deer, excited.
Ruby, river scrambling, biting
At the bogwater, wagging her tail,
From the shoulders back



Along the old familiar track into
The clearing where the roads diverge.
I stopped and stood. Which way to go?
Think of another Poet, and roads not taken.
Yes, I’ve been here before. This way I came.
That way I saw a squirrel once.
And down that way a badger.
Straight on, the Mill Pond where ducks dabble.
Behind me then a stag, stares my way, and
Startled, slips into the wood.
I think again of Robert Frost and look a different way.
I stand a while. I turn, retrace my steps, recall, relive,
I’ll write this down, and this will be
The road I’ve taken.






Martin Swords June ‘07

A Tree Has Fallen

A Tree Has Fallen


i.m. Tommy Nolan 1940-2008


In a silent belfry
An old bell.
From the sea at Wicklow
A new rope.
In the graveyard
A new sound.
The Tolling Bell
Calls loud
To the quiet hush
Of the slow walk.
Ask not for whom,
It tolls for Tommy Nolan.

Back from the valley
Forest hills,
Derrybawn,
Lugduff, Camaderry,
Brockagh,
The toll returns,
The woodland wakes
A sturdy forester.
A tree has fallen,
Back to the earth.
Ring on Toll.
Echo Thanks.


Martin Swords August 2008

The Shallowman

The Shallowman



The Shallowman has friends
he counts as assets,
for favors he might need
from time to time.
He lists their skills and
contacts in his busy greedy mind.
He’ll call them when he needs them
when next he’s in a bind.

The Shallowman is jovial and great fun.
With tales, and yarns
he’ll entertain the crowd
Backslapping, and backstabbing
he’ll amuse and castigate all round
They’ll laugh,
but not laugh with him.
The Shallowman can’t read their hollow sound.

The Shallowman is lonely at the end
for all the hale and hearty cheer is false.
The friends when stripped of favours
don’t deserve a second thought
the Shallowman can’t see their worth
when they’ve nothing more to offer only
friendship, and friendship by itself
can’t satisfy his lonely shallow want.



MARTIN SWORDS, JUNE 1999

Bob Dylan,and me.

Bob Dylan, and me.


I know Bob Dylan well.
Grew up with him,
We all did.
He was the voice
We didn’t have.
Said the words
We didn’t know to say.
Such words.
He saw and sang
Of things we saw
Yet wouldn’t speak about.
Where we were awkward,
He was talkin’ out.

For forty years
I’ve looked up,
Listened up, to him.
Now changed, aged, yet
Both forever young,
I’m glad we grew together
In interesting changing times.
We never met,
But it’s alright.
We spoke.
We played our parts.
He needed me to listen all along.
The singer sings
So others hear the song.

Martin Swords, June 2003

Some Times

Some Times

Sometimes
Time is measured
In Christmas decorations
Minute baubles and second
Sets of lights. A treefull.
Hours in attics reaching the
Back wall where the good stuff is.
Silver Birds in black tissue paper
not to be used. They were Nana’s.
The Crib in the cardboard held by
Five years’ sticky tape
The old figures with the three legged
Donkey and the chewed-up
Baby Jesus in the manger.
Meg, had left her mark.

This yearly task,
The Getting Down,
The Putting Up,
The Taking Down,
The Putting Away Again
Flimsy boxes, treasured memories.

Sometimes
At The Putting Away,
Thoughts come unbidden
Of the next Getting Down.


Martin Swords 15 January 2008

Written at 263c Vale de Pinta Lagoa Portugal

A View at Rheinfall

A View at Rheinfall






Be happy. Don’t be
Concerned with correct.
Be happy. Be easy.
Give happy. And receive.

Look at the water rushing.
Vibrant, pounding passion.
Is it moving faster?
Is this the river youth?

Life is Rheinfalling away,
Soon there will be little time.
Soon we will be far downstream,
Drifting on the quiet waters

Like two Autumn leafs
Far beyond the falls.
Happy, remembering
The Rheinfalls of our life







Martin and Jacinta
Rheinfall
Flueringen
Schaffhausen
3 Sept. 2007

Sarah's Saturday

Sarah’s Saturday


Like an egg, she felt complete, enclosed,
Protected, full of promise,
And yet, Sarah wondered, and yet.
Alive, alert, attractive, alone,
She had personality, sex appeal.
Her sparkly lovely eyes, her Snow
White red wet lips attracted.
There was a man at the office once,
Told her so, but he was married.
She was full of figure and full of life,
Two days short of thirty seven
On yet another Saturday night
She curled up comfy watching telly
In her cosy little room
“Her cosy little womb” she called it,
Wondering if any man would enter,
If anything would develop.



Martin Swords
Prompt Poems
“Egg”

Feb 2008