Cónaitheacht Theach Bád Loch Sionnaigh - Peter O'Neill
Scríobh Peter O'Neill 'The Dublin Trilogy' agus 'The Elm Tree'. Is é scríbhneoir cónaitheach Theach Bád Loch Sionnaigh do thréimhse an earraigh, buíochas le tacaíocht ó Oifig Ealaíon Fhine Gall. Tá sé ag déanamh taighde ar an bhfuil stáisiún trádála na Sean-Róimhe ann, stáisiún a bhí ann sa cheantar márthimpeall tráth. Chomh maith leis sin, tá sé ag ullmhú le haghaidh 'Donkey Shots 2', An Dara Féile Filíochta Idirnáisiúnta sna Sceirí a bheidh ar siúl ó 18 Bealtaine go dtí 21 Bealtaine. Tá sé de rún aige dhá bhailiúchán nua a sheoladh ag an bhféile: 'Divertimento, The Muse is a Dominatrix' (mgv2>publishing, an Fhrainc) agus 'Sker' (Lapwing, Béal Feirste).
Mare Nostrum
Dánta a scríobhadh do Thionscadal Theach Bád Loch Sionnaigh
Peter O’Neill
Buíochas
Scríobhadh na dánta sa tsraith seo nuair a bhí mé ar mo chónaitheacht i dTionscadal Theach Bád Loch Sionnaigh. Bronnadh Oifig Ealaíon Fhine Gall an tionscadal seo orm don tréimhse ó 1 Márta 2016 go dtí deireadh mhí na Bealtaine na bliana céanna. Ba mhaith liom mo bhuíochas a ghabháil leis an Oifigeach Ealaíon Cúnta, Sarah O'Neill, agus Oifigeach Ealaíon an Chontae, Rory O'Byrne, as a gcuid ama agus tacaíochta don tionscadal seo mar ní bheifí ábalta an tionscadal sin a chur i gcrích gan é sin. Ba mhaith liom chomh maith buíochas a ghabháil leis an ealaíontóir cónaithe a bhí ann romham, Thomas Brezing. Ba eiseamláireach a fháilteachas agus a thuiscint ar mo riachtanais.
Ba é an treoir a tugadh dom mo chuid ama ag an teach bád a chaitheamh ag déanamh taighde agus ag déanamh oibre maidir leis an bhfianaise stairiúil agus seandálaíochta ar stáisiún trádála Sean-Róimhe a bhí ann thart ré Juvenal mar luaigh sé Éire ina chuid aortha - AD 55-138.
Tá na dánta seo a leanas le haimsiú in eagrán 43 de 'A New Ulster': ‘Mare Nostrum’, ‘Sansperata’, ‘2001- At Italo’s’, ‘Democracy & Freedom’, agus ‘La petite morte’, 4 Márta, 2016.
Leathanach
5 Mare Nostrum
6 Sansperata
7 2001 – At Italo’s
8 Democracy & Freedom
9 La petite morte
10 Scraps
11 Baudelaire’s Albatross
Is leis an údar an scríbhneoireacht ar fad ó cheart
Cóipcheart © Peter O’ Neill, 2016.
CLÁR ÁBHAR
Mare Nostrum
nonne vides etiam guttas in saxa cadentis
umoris longo in spatio pertundera saxa?
Lucretius
Your silence envelopes me like a sea,
particularly when I sit at the kitchen table.
It rushes up against me in currents,
holding me fast to the leather chair.
Hands bound, arms tied, with duct tape on
my mouth, I try to cry out but all I can
manage to hear is the thin sound of graphite,
scripting its way across the sheets.
How long can I thread water like this?
I have no idea. Like stone I endure,
weathering the oncoming waves. Erode.
Our death will be piecemeal. The slow
almost imperceptible annihilation of memory,
like water dripping, down through millennia, upon stone.
Sansperata
After Sciola
Rimbaud called for the systematic
Déréglement de tous les sens – colouring
the vowels, which you read and later heard,
echoing through the stones of the nuragi.
The sonority of granite whispers
to you with all of the tenderness
and softness of the flesh of the peaches
of Sansperata, where I wish to hear again
the stony lament in the basalt of the pips
embedded in the hill of stone structures
echoing above the silence about your lips.
This rock retains walls of sound, its spectre,
just as your hands press inwardly upon
the untraceable braille of your love.
2001 - At Italo’s
In memorium
It was high summer, the Emperor’s month!
the temperature down on the street
was in the mid-thirties. We walked in the shade,
I following carefully your every move.
When we arrived at your father’s apartment
your whole family seemed to be there.
The television was up full volume,
Berlusconi’s beauties flew high on the trapeze.
Old and young alike clamoured.
I took a seat to sit back from it all, the casino.
Count Ugolino’s castle winked at me from its hill.
When your grandmother, almost a centenarian,
approached me with a glass of grappa.
We raised glasses before she said, “Here’s mud in your eye!”
Democracy and Freedom
Power is fluid, such is Foucault.
The body being politicised;
the zones of contention are highly
eroticised: the anus, phallus…
and the clitoris, and breasts.
Such are the hotspots, the fleshy fields
of Armageddon. We stand together
at the frontier, our guns in hand.
The tension is fraught with possibility.
Submission and domination,
who gets to rule and be ruled?
Hence our obsession with role play.
Power is fluid, the body being politicised.
Your clitoris and breasts, the keys to my deliverance.
La petite morte
The resolution of violence
is a preoccupying theme,
dictating as it must issues such as
sex, love and the many forms of death.
These days you think more often than not
of la petite morte, or the little deaths
upon climaxing; the head goes limp
only to nestle upon your shoulder.
Nature’s ergonomics. Vitruvius
In extensor! Designer living.
The perfect symmetrical fits.
Yet, such a death should be imbued
with the whole struggle to realise it;
body and soul being exhausted with the effort.
Scraps
For Thomas Brezing
A cheap notebook and a pencil,
such are the tools for this craft.
A formal impoverishment , yet
Rimbaud’s eternity flashes in the blade.
Here the sweet music of infinity lies,
hauling its cargo of radioactivity
upon a dying yet vibrant sea;
fish and bird being plastified.
Baudelaire’s albatross having
returned from the taxidermist,
his entrails now made in China.
“It has being found again.” What?
“Eternity! It is the cut away
filet of fish with plastic chips.
Baudelaire’s Albatross
In medio ramos annosaque brancchia pandit
ulmus opaca, ingens, quam sedem Somnia vulgo
vana tenere ferunt, foliisque sub omnibus haerent.
Virgil
Impeding wings take flight,
setting out upon the perilous road to
Loughshinny, there in the boathouse,
seated before the spectacle of the
sun-dancing on the sea’s luminous
shield, pooling there in the bay before
the rumours of the ancient Roman
trading post, in the first century AD.
Caesar, Juvenal and Tacitus
all give credence to the historical
evidence, yet here there is no mention of it!
A story shrouded in mutism and laid
out like a mummy for sheer conjecture.
Let the giants lie sleeping in the isle of Lambay.
The Mountain
Your profile appears, all head and hair,
Looming before me like a mountain.
Five thousand meters above sea level,
Such is the natural limit of man.
Rising any further you take your life
Into your own hands, it’s suicidal.
Mountaineers call it the death zone.
Everest is littered with poor souls.
That is where your eyes inhabit,
Engaging with mine in a deathly
Game. Temperatures rise and plummet.
The silence too is glacial.
I live or die by a look or a word,
Hanging on for dear life at the summit.
Désordre et volupté
La bohème plays intermittently
In the café, recalling the image
Of you and the promise of youth, and
Days which are made up of one hundred sheets.
Days as gentle as cotton on the skin.
The cooling fabric of our lush lives,
Lying together with the silken touch,
And the warm flesh we get lost in.
The image of your clothes hung on a chair.
Love’s iconography, their installation;
Your shirt and tights are Readymades.
The sound of your voice then and your laughter,
Exploding in the room. Both of us
Happy, fervent and promiscuous.
French Roast
The espresso cups arrive, balancing
precariously on their miniscule
shields, spoons aligned beside them
like sword. Images of weaponry
occult the mind , for the stuff is poison.
One sip being good enough to kill.
A cup of treacly muck. You want to hurl
it far from you, send it hurtling across the floor.
Instead, you sit on it, looking down on it.
The foul brew. And it makes you think of
Paris, and the other 100 000 cups like it,
which you had served up to you at some
time there. And, with attitude too.
And here they go trying to replicate it….
In medio ramos annosaque bracchia pandit
ulmus opaca, ingens, quam sedem Somnia vulgo
vana tenere ferunt, foliisque sub omnibus haerent.
multaque praeterea variorum monstra ferarum,
Centauri in foribus stabulant Scyllaeque biformes
et centumgeminus Briareus ac belua Lernae,
horrendum stridens, flammisque armata Chimaera,
Gorgones Harp