I Wish I'd Written This

The Music of Bone

By Donall Dempsey

GONG ride the shellac waves
of nineteen hundred & 71.
I gaze into the black pool
that the record spins
as an Youtube video
that has lain dormant
all those seconds ago
suddenly awakens & so
a Neanderthal flute from
80,000 years ago
suddenly decides to
join in as
eerily the ages dissolve.
Slovenian Neanderthal & GONG
now as one
making mocking
animal noises.
The cave bear's femur
the giver of music.
Fragments of music
scattered across time
shards of men's minds.
Divje Babe & Camembert Electrique 
journey through thought
like starlight that has
finally arrived.


Link to the recording referred to in the poem:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8c-Nl_r9Zs&feature=youtu.be

Click this link for pronunciation of Divje babe



You have met Donall Dempsey here before. It was only after Daevid Allen, founder of GONG (whom you also met here recently) died, that Donall and I, who live in different countries but have been online friends for years, discovered we both knew Daevid. Donall wrote two poems for Daevid after learning of his death. This was one of them.

GONG never went commercial, in favour of staying true to their art. Many people have never heard of them. Donall is surrounded by people who hadn't. He thought he was writing the poems just for himself.

Then I saw them on facebook, loved them, and asked if I could read them at a poetry reading held to celebrate Daevid. Donall said yes, and the audience loved them too. The next thing I did was make an online tribute to Daevid, using poems from that event by those of the poets willing to share their work that way. There you will find Donall's other poem, and also a couple of poems by Daevid himself, shared by Turiya Bruce, the mother of his youngest son. Click here.

And do please click on the link above to hear the recording Donall refers to. It's pretty amazing.

For the fascinating story of the bone flute itself, see Wikipedia, and for a recording of it being played without additions by GONG, click here.

And, after all that, do we absolutely need to know the back story of this poem, or hear the music it's based on, in order to appreciate it? Perhaps enough information for the reader's understanding is right there in the poem; and the beautiful last lines are as haunting as any music.

  

Poems and photos used in ‘I Wish I’d Written This’ remain the property of the copyright holders (usually their authors).

I Wish I'd Written This

...and this, and this, and ...

This is as close as I can get to Christmas for a Friday post, so today is the day I am giving you a treat — a smorgasbord of poems from some of the wonderful people I've already featured before. But the poems are different.

I hope those of you, in any part of the world, who observe a festival around this time are all still having a delightful festive season — and that anyone else is also having a delightful time!

(And sorry, it seems this posted later than usual. I am away from my usual computer and even my usual town, and must have got a bit mixed up.)

Bounty (a remix)

By Jennie Fraine

Thinking of Christmas and the arrivals

with children, I take the camp bed

we no longer need

and come home with two green skirts

(my  favourite colour) and a felted

gumnut hat with stalk.

The very next day I can wear the hat!

The day after, it is warm enough

to wrap a skirt around.

I have drawers full of picture and photo

frames, toys on  shelves in garden,

wooden bowls, Bakelite.

Oh sheds and shops of donated goods

you constantly surprise me, gift me

a sumptuous life.

It Is Cold & Raining in Austin, Texas

By Thom Woodruff

The lights we share are candles and electric bulbs
if we were ancients, there would be fires blazing
to keep us warm and keep out the cold
yet wisdom says to welcome in / all elements challenging
Rain that floods, cold that freezes
Coughs and colds and sneezing allergies
Caught within this web of cities
that look like blazing fires from space
we steal back time, and for a moment
meditate on human fate.
Time's candle flickers in the wind
Night will reclaim us to the cold
We have this moment to reflect
upon the New Year—and the Olde.

The Tree Walks Home with Me

By Donall Dempsey

my uncle Seanie
growing from the soil

my uncle Seanie
a silhouette in sunset as natural as a tree

I climb up
into the branches of his hands and
the tree walks home with me

always in my dreams I am
always climbing up into my uncle
his footsteps falling forever in my mind

The Tree Outside the Yoga Room

By Helen Patrice

The tree outside the yoga room

 takes me through the yearly dance

 from summer to winter and back to heat again.

 We are both in savasana

 as winter blankets us,

 both deep into earth,

 muffled by sky.

 My hands curled soft,

 while outside, the tree stretches out

 and holds the clouds in place

 with bone and twig.

 We wait for Spring,

 for Demeter to cease mourning.

 We shall burst forth

 in joyous tremblings of blossom

 and Salute to the Sun.

 The tree and I,

 we take our yoga slow,

 like sap, like the year.

 There is time and space in both of us.

Elegy for the Not Famous Poet

By Lori Wlliams

Someone, I Tell You, Will Remember Us - Sappho

As we reduce to root and rock,

we speak there, still — recite with dusty breath

food for worms, old lovers, the synchrony in death

look up! at the tree above the stone,

see green turn to brown in a blink,

then blink again, watch peaches grow.

The sun once a sword that flamed our belly

now leaves us to bone. Don't cry,

listen for the poppies that burst

through the earth.  You can remember us,

what we meant. You have that.

Poems and photos used in ‘I Wish I’d Written This’ remain the property of the copyright holders (usually their authors).

I Wish I'd Written This

Last Lonely Flight

by Donall Dempsey

Butterflies that flew in 1932 
still held in that summer 

by the exquisitely neat calligraphy 
& cruel glinting pin. 

I wipe the dust from the glass 
& they gleam as if they still dream 

of being alive. 

i smash the glass 
clutch them in my hand & climb 

from attic to roof & slowly 

drawing myself up to 
my full height 

release them back into time 
smile as they flutter in the summer breeze 

of then & now 
their dead eyes taking it all in

clouds...trees...skies 

their one last lonely flight 
back into nothingness


Donall Dempsey, an Irishman based in England (at Guildford, Surrey, where he works as an English teacher) is one of various amazing poets I first met on MySpace and encountered again on facebook. It was hard to choose which poem of his to feature; he is prolific, and there are many I'd love to have written. He writes on all manner of subjects, and is particularly good at human relationships, from tender and funny recollections of his daughter when she was little, through grief over the loss of his beloved mother a few years back, to sensual love poems for Janice Windle, a poet and artist whom he met through poetry nearly five years ago. As far as I can gather, they fell for each other immediately and were obviously made for each other. While they write their own separate poems, they collaborate in the production of books and sound recordings, and in hosting poetic events. Also Donall is sometimes a subject for Jan's paintings.

Although it ranges over different styles of writing, Donall's voice is unique and unmistakeable. His work includes haiku, free verse and prose poetry. And when he posts his poems to facebook, he will often include the back story, in prose, for his readers. It's usually at least as fascinating, moving, and beautifully written as the poetry. I frequently feel like saying to him, 'Can I please have your imagination when you've finished with it?' His work is often imagined, probably even more often autobiographical, and even the autobiographical pieces reveal a very personal, imaginative way of looking at things. Luckily for his readers and audiences, I'm sure he'll never be finished with it as long as he lives.

One of his online biographies says:

Dónall has spent a lifetime loving words and images and will continue to do so. He believes poetry should always be an aural and oral experience. His early work in Dublin included performance on Irish radio and television with John Cooper Clark and Paul Durcan. He has been writing and performing regularly in London venues since 1986.

You can see and hear him in perfomance on YouTube. 

The lovely poem I chose for you here will be included in his forthcoming book, Being Dragged Across the Carpet by the Cat, which he says will hopefully be out in time for the July/August festival in Fermoy. (Oh, I didn't mention his wonderful, and often self-deprecating sense of humour. This book title is a good indication.)

Others of his poems can be found at PoemHunter, on facebook, and at a site called Poem Punch. He and Janice share a web page, Dempsey & Windle, where you can obtain their books. They also collaborate in spoken word poetry as Shadows of Our Former Selves.

Poems and photos used in ‘I Wish I’d Written This’ remain the property of the copyright holders (usually their authors).