Anton Floyd – Where there is no hope, we must invent it*

In his poem Snow Storm, Du Fu,

the 8th century Chinese poet,

broods on the uselessness

of letters to ameliorate his world.

Despair prowls through his lines.

It lingers over ordinary things

the detritus of a stilled life –

an empty bottle, a spilled cup,

the empty grate. People talk

but are secretive. He is wearied,

heartsore, haunted, alone.

Even if we could reach across time

what comfort could we offer him?

Tell him his words resonate today?

That would hardly satisfy.

All I know is that our son,

in his fearless concern once

led a runaway, hoof-mad bull

by the nose back to his field.

There is something mythic about that.

---

Sestina for Alanna Maeve

born 31st May 2023

When did other people give up the idea of being a poet? William Stafford

Leaving Kinsale we drive home. It is a starless night.
Except for our headlamps, the countryside is pitch.
It feels like a deep-delving dark. Some might say
it feels menacing. The motor, its undertow of sound,
is a kind of mantra. My sense of being comes easy
as breathing – a somatic tuning. I breathe in. I breathe out.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out.
The image of our new-born grandchild fills the night.
The sense of her and love for her come as easy
as the eye drawn to a pinprick of light in a pitch
black sky. Her name, Alanna Maeve, is an ecstasy of sound –
something more than thought or words can say.

Human voices disturb the spell. I hear one say
and she, soon to be a grandmother, speaks out
her genuine concern, Is it right? I mean, morally sound,
to have a child now with the future bleak as night
and everywhere the screech of politics at fever pitch?
Silence, then, fills the car, deep-delving and uneasy.

I’d be wary to think that way, my heart replies. It’s easy
to cede the ground, believe what cynics say –
they’d have us dig our apathetic graves. They’d pitch
us into the maw of hell. But ah, as Virgil said, climb out,
reclaim the upper air or pilot permanent night
where the uncommitted howl giving horror a sound.

Yet here in the upper air we weep at the sound
of hope denied while fanatics make easy
excuse the sacrifice of innocence; make night
of day heedless of what the tears of Guernica say.
As for the future they’d have us blot it out,
would smear the sanctity of life with pitch.

And pity those who fall for the cynical pitch
to compromise. Better by far the stirring sound
of any child’s tears and blisses. Promise out-
shines all in the infant; is natural and easy
from birth. So, we, in the infancy of race, say
welcome that age when day’s not followed by night.

Alanna Maeve, I sing out your future worthy of perfect pitch.
I wish your nights free from fear and your sleeps sound.
May happiness come easy and love stir all you do and say.

---

Ne’er Cast A Clout

for Marcas Mac an Tuairneir

When the hedgerows stirred out of a long sleep,
warm light welcomed all manner of birds
territorial, wary, and noisy, building and foraging.
Small life on the move.
Everywhere smelled moist, fecund, ceremonial.
Sharp things pushed out of the dark ground,
Rainbow colours carried in green juices.
Everything was making ready for summer.
Everywhere sang the world afresh.
And we sang with it.

But war like a late frost ambushed us.
Winter was in its breath like a virus,
a cruel cold hand to cover our mouths,
would mute our voices.

---

© Anton Floyd

Anton Floyd was born in Cairo, Egypt, a Levantine mix of Irish, Maltese, English and French Lebanese. Raised in Cyprus, he lived through the struggle for independence and the island remains close to his heart. Educated in Ireland, he studied English at Trinity College, Dublin and University College Cork. He has lived and worked in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Now retired from teaching, he lives in West Cork. Poems published and forthcoming in Ireland and elsewhere. Poetry films selected for the Cadence Poetry Film Festival (Seattle, 2023) and the Bloomsday Film Festival (James Joyce Centre 2023), another, Woman Life Freedom, dedicated to the women of Iran, was commissioned by IUAES.

Several times prize-winner of the Irish Haiku Society International Competitions; runner-up in Snapshot Press Haiku Calendar Competition. Awarded the DS Arts Foundation Prize for Poetry (Scotland 2019). Poetry collections, Falling into Place (Revival Press, 2018) and Depositions (Doire Press, 2022); a special, illustrated edition of Depositions translated into Irish, Scots Gaelic, Welsh, and Scots with an introduction by Professor Emeritus Seosamh Watson (Gloír, 2024).

New collections On the Edge of Invisibility and Singed to Blue are in preparation. Newly appointed UNESCO – RILA affiliate artist at the University of Glasgow. He is an Associate at the Centre for Poetry Innovation at the University of St Andrews, Scotland.