Poetry: Arthur Broomfield

Arthur Broomfield

The Bee Woman works at her hive

After ‘The Bee Woman’ a painting by Mansfield

During lulls in the natural order,

when the dead have been buried

and the laws of seed time and harvest

are reinstated, look on me as the

the landlady with the right tenants,

popular in business in quiet times.

In concord with the will of the world

I pose in white suit and visor

as I record the verve of the hive,

the stash of its riches:

propolis, pollen,

royal jelly, eternal honey,

nectar and beeswax,

as any concern would,

while   Queen Bee, entrusted

to her particular space and time,

desirous, mates and breeds,

builds, convicts the unwanted.

In normal time I emerge,

when the whiff of ordnance in the air

sets the lines buzzing with rumours of wars,

and the forest flora and ferocious winds

snarl in tremendous arguments,

scattering the indecisive rhododendron,

accommodating what the land will allow.

Now I am the ethereal one returned

from the debacle of maternal earth,

of it and on it, the calm in the storm.

I am here in the hum and whirr

of these zips and zooms, visible,

as a pallid robe and medieval yellow gloves,

the infinite spirit that assumes presence,

laying hands on the pollinating hive.

October evening Clonreher

The sky hung high above the silent moon

beyond Venus and Duffin’s Cross.

It was time, before The Archers

and ‘Radio Newsreel’,

to run across the yard

toward the horsefield gate,

past the sleeping hens, the hushed ducks,

the munching cowhouse and hay-filled haggard

teeming with countrified rats and mice,

themselves fulfilling the narrative that made them,

each believing in its particular

subterranean crevice,

to clutch the tingle from the expected,

the cameo appearance of the beet train,

performing its drive-on part

to the chug chug impromptu

of cymbal clashes regulating the belches of steam

and hissed acknowledgements of love

to an audience of one,

staged to a backdrop of glittered stars

in Mrs Delaney’s field.

We too have our Martyrs

      We have reduced the grand narratives -

      to our elder’s irritation–

      passed to us from Israel and Greece,

      to an a la carte way of doing 

      that frees us to delight in

      a meal with friends, a rock concert,

      or a football game.

       

      We elect our rulers.

      When they betray our expectations

      we exercise our right to censure them in a free press,

      If we feel the urge to torture 

      we express our feelings through satire.

       

      From time to time

      the tediously intense among us

      believe they can correct

      the defects in our system.

      We smile and shake our heads, knowingly.

      Our ways accommodate such vagaries.

      We call them Western Values.

       

      Our menus and match programmes are as sacred to us

      as your scriptures are to you.

      Though we do not feel the need to sing it

      from the rooftops we too, the people, are believers.

              

      You who grieve for your martyrs of long ago,

      you of a heightened sense of your persecution

      carried down the ages, best be aware

      of who you are taking on.

      We are not the pampered, guilt ridden liberals,

      you suppose us to be, soft targets on a night out

      in the decadent West.

      We too can match hurt for hurt.

      We too have our martyrs,

      those who died by your hand

      not in the heat of battle,

      but in the savagery of cold blooded slaughter.

       

      They inspire us.

       Our hearts bleed with their hearts.

      They died because of what we are,

      their beliefs live in us.

He ponders on his reality

So, after weeks of walking into Costa

wearing my jacket, chinos and shirt –

top two buttons open –

and experiencing the stares and the silences,

the smirks and embarrassed shuffles,

the discomfort of a clientele uneasy with a freak in their midst,

I made the grandiloquent choice to dress normally

to facilitate the coffee drinking public.

It wasn’t an easy decision,

to fit in with the crowd,

to revert to what I had been,

but sometimes the pressure to conform

can be as persuasive as an ant who succeeds

in navigating a block of margarine up the Rock of Dunamaice.

So, I descended to the reality

of my lived-out alt-verse, donned the tedious

garb of everyday, white gown trailing the ground,

burning cross painted on back, swastika on chest -

I think Hitler was a bad artist, but that’s what they expect,

I’m a liberal when it comes to taste –

and settled the seasoned jags of my crown of thorns

in the appropriate scars around my head.

I wondered should I lead my pet rat in

as I usually do at weddings and funerals,

but that would be banal, even the boring can be exiled,

consider the fate of Fintan.

I fell into my normal gait, the relaxed one I keep for Tesco

where the aisles are wide and long,

having checked that my jackboots were free of flesh and blood,

and joined the goose-stepping throng merrily marching for their morning coffee.

Setu, January 2018