Una hora menos

  February 24th 19.00 hours.   Irish people are invited To sit in darkness  And to pray in silence For every mother Who has lost a child In battle-torn Ukraine.  Let all families  Sit as long as they are able In the darkness  On the last Friday leaving winter And heading into Spring.  No hope will be abandoned  As the year turns toward the light Let the Russian mothers See their sons again As they lay down their arms Weeping for their brothers.  It’s time for all these guns To be put back in their cases Time for ail the dead  To be mourned at their cold graves Time to plough the land And leave a narrow furrow  Where the seed of peace is sown Beginning on this night  When the lights are dimmed  And the flickering candles  In our windows greet the stranger.  Is it too much to ask To turn the lights off For an hour  As we remember  Those in Kyiv in the shelters When the sirens sound tonight? 

  Between the cries Between the cries from crowds In the football stadium And from the bull ring  We try to catch some fitful sleep Unsure of which direction The sound of life and passion  Hijacks a summer evening A Saturday in Salamanca  In July nineteen seventy five.  As novices we sleep in virgin bunks Fifty to a dormitory  Separated by chaste curtains Boasting simple single beds and wash basins  That can only spray cold water For Baptismal showers every morning  At five a.m.  when even revellers are home And snoring off the noise of yesterday.  Alone each one in lonely crib Exiled from warmth of woman Or smells of old - Strangers in the harshest land Further than the moon, because There is no place on earth This restless spirit can call home.  Years that pass and yet the page Will not turn over and belief Is challenged to the core  Reality seems to crush the mild For time is mocking Our every sacrifice  For whom? For w...

  Forget your heroes   Forget your heroes, be it Jesus or a sage, Just hold close the words that speak to you Truth speaks with its own authority Without support from creed or cannon.  Truth speaks in its eternal voice The heart knows best at the core of things A language that speaks to Everyman Of every time and land.  In the end, the heart and mind Know the lines of just one song Sung badly or in tune is all the same It’s the message, not the name.