In Deference To Heaney
The August light shrinks faster now
We have to settle for the night
We commit to memory, getting older,
Your purity of thought that was our light
You, camera obscura, your
Dry stonewalls and gritty Mossbawn clay
Showed beauty in the weave of things
Even sorrow’s cutting edge could have its way
You’ve slipped that inconvenient shroud
We liked to think we knew
The suit-clad stance, honest smile
The resonant, blaming words from you
You’ve transcended that axiom – out there in the dew
We mortals, can only murmur, wait, and hope it’s true
We are without; and must take the savage cost
For us, there is no beauty now we’ve lost
Your perfect, angled, prism of a mind
That conveyed a light of beauty to the blind
©Gerry Tully 2022
On Hallowed Ground
So, what of all this music, the big to-do?
After banjo Barney’s gone and
my Mother and father two
The world’s turned in on itself for good
My ballads call – but no-one comes
Just me haemorrhaging the blood
of the past into a made-up, materialist desert
swamped in sex and trancing drums
Look at me now. I’ve pierced my own illusion
Out-lived my dream, become my own delusion
Ran full-tilt since childhood when I departed,
and returned a stranger, to the place I started
I tore every muscle and sinew to reach a world
and find it badly faded by the clock, not by me
Had I the power I’d climb it now
I’d stand where I’m supposed to be
And scatter all the fakes pretending to be me
©Gerry Tully 2022
Journey From Within
After searching, languished bitterly
Slept one hour only, every day
And fear its ghastly choke-hold in my way
I was unborn, unknown, hidden in the world
Finally I knew the need to reconstruct
Renaissance light is merciless and abrupt
I a crucifixion, for a week or more
Stretched out and hung there and never spoke
Until deep in meditation, I awoke
Dwelt at the source of all that was before
The Tower of Babel for a month or two
Looked out on the early form of Errydo
I slithered down the white wall to the town
Before I had to watch the tower burn
The city roasted too so, I could not return
Forced to re-live every folly once again
Tortured on the journey from within
A melding of the truth onto my skin
Begged for any hope – but there was none
I jumped and washed out in the water of Absu
Until I, alone at last, the id, the one, the new.
©Gerry Tully 2022
Youth
In the night time rituals of youth
The smell of cider in the wood
We laughed at foolish high achievers
We scoffed the doers and their good
Pretending to be infinite and deep
Unshakable as our resolve
We talked of all we would become
How the world around us will revolve
The heights that we’d already reached
We’d conquer all, and they’d find out
We were hard men fighting for a reason
Fighting through a haze of doubt
But something else awaits us
More than apple tasting drinks
False gods are quite appealing
But not enough, me thinks
©Gerry Tully 2022
Time, Within And On The Outside
Thoughts rise amid the electricity of being.
A vision that one might bring to an ideal
Conjured from a separate intellect
Between the nothing and the circumspect
Decides and does as Occam’s Razor
More true than truth, a cosmic laser
Proof, if it was needed, of a single chance
Millenniums pass in a single glance
But where does all the energy reside
when body separates from mind
to dust, organically ending as it must.
Those elements have their own agenda
Manifested ‘round what really is
tornado energy spins them in
What am I then if not this thing I see
The universe has every element of me
Everything and all at once
from the mighty strata? How?
The thing you’re searching for is now
The end point of all
You’re the proof, if that was needed,
A fractal of the vast and surging skies
Looking at yourself through your own eyes
While reflecting all the world
You are all that’s necessary – just be
©Gerry Tully 2022
The Banshee
‘Twas November, and the rain-packed clouds
Seen off the precious light.
From the dogwood heavy laden lane,
What harm for I had walked its course
And my house was just in sight.
An unearthly cry besieged my ears,
And I shook there in the fen
‘Tis on the promise of my life
I’ll never go that way again.
‘Twas not the dogs at Hackett’s house,
Nor a pheasant shrieking shrill,
But at Moore’s a little woman sat
Upon their window sill.
Eyes gaunt, secreting endless pain
Legs tucked beneath her chin,
Instilled a sword of fright in me,
‘Tis a fear that stays within.
I could see her nails, outgrown their stay,
As she toyed with matted hair,
And November’s added atmosphere
Had heightened up my fear.
So I ran and ran for fear of death
That she was surely to employ,
The fear remains since first I heard
The haunting Banshee’s cry.
©Gerry Tully 2022