George Moore
Notes from Iona
“To every cow its calf and to every book its copy.”
King Diarmait
Books once carried their own names
like the Cathach of Ulster. The crime then
was to copy a text for one’s own pleasure
for each possessed an original magic
spun in the fabric of its creation.
When St Columba stole this book
his sentence was banishment.
Not for theft but for the war he used
to cover it. His homeland can’t be seen
from this shore nor my great grandfather’s.
His punishment was never to read
the lines of the Irish coast again
and he took up a mission among the Picts.
The originary power of words has become
more of an imitation. The book in hand
trembles in a kind of nervous anticipation
of the persistence of memory
but without vellum or illuminated wings
without the letters in a fine embroidery.
And yet it survives the lightning of the screen
the magic of totems and the sacred space
of the shelf where each word waits
suspended in the presences of dreams.
The Screen
The computer screen speaks to us now
of the terrors of the self
it is the great lake of the Paleocene
the clouds of the Palestinian sky
an African savanna and steppe and glacial cave
a Nordic aurora borealis on the sea line
The screen washes us clean of ourselves for ourselves
and we run out like mud in the currents of flood
The surface of a tree
has more texture than we with our screens
more colors per pixel more depth of vision
more worms and bugs and fall colors and dead limbs
that drop to the ground and are picked up again
by the quick changing unchanged stream
The face disappears into the lake of the eye
and the mind is the raft without rudder
and it floats into the void or the picture of the void
gathered from a million seconds of a night camera
but we live here in the belly of the whale
the room like the rib cage of a giant skeleton
death running its streams through the ear
hearing only the whirl and the whiz and the shy
and the bing as the universe begins
and dies at the rough edge of a single white eye
Deep Field Image
Hello? Is there anybody out there?
Moody Blues
The camera captures an instant in time
the smaller instant of a million sub-seconds spread
into the deep field image of the universe
on any particular day
aligning the stars with our sense of neglect
or pricking the void with half-trained eyes
living by the light that has died a thousand deaths
coming to this point in what we call time
So much more hope
the day begins with the light of one sun
on the edge of one planet fashioned out of stone
cooled to the touch and toasted again
with chemical climate
and we evolve
into stars without anything more to say
at the edge of creation at the end of the day
out on the limits of hope and just beyond sense
a speck in the universe re-specked but dense.
Notes from Iona
“To every cow its calf and to every book its copy.”
King Diarmait
Books once carried their own names
like the Cathach of Ulster. The crime then
was to copy a text for one’s own pleasure
for each possessed an original magic
spun in the fabric of its creation.
When St Columba stole this book
his sentence was banishment.
Not for theft but for the war he used
to cover it. His homeland can’t be seen
from this shore nor my great grandfather’s.
His punishment was never to read
the lines of the Irish coast again
and he took up a mission among the Picts.
The originary power of words has become
more of an imitation. The book in hand
trembles in a kind of nervous anticipation
of the persistence of memory
but without vellum or illuminated wings
without the letters in a fine embroidery.
And yet it survives the lightning of the screen
the magic of totems and the sacred space
of the shelf where each word waits
suspended in the presences of dreams.
The Screen
The computer screen speaks to us now
of the terrors of the self
it is the great lake of the Paleocene
the clouds of the Palestinian sky
an African savanna and steppe and glacial cave
a Nordic aurora borealis on the sea line
The screen washes us clean of ourselves for ourselves
and we run out like mud in the currents of flood
The surface of a tree
has more texture than we with our screens
more colors per pixel more depth of vision
more worms and bugs and fall colors and dead limbs
that drop to the ground and are picked up again
by the quick changing unchanged stream
The face disappears into the lake of the eye
and the mind is the raft without rudder
and it floats into the void or the picture of the void
gathered from a million seconds of a night camera
but we live here in the belly of the whale
the room like the rib cage of a giant skeleton
death running its streams through the ear
hearing only the whirl and the whiz and the shy
and the bing as the universe begins
and dies at the rough edge of a single white eye
Deep Field Image
Hello? Is there anybody out there?
Moody Blues
The camera captures an instant in time
the smaller instant of a million sub-seconds spread
into the deep field image of the universe
on any particular day
aligning the stars with our sense of neglect
or pricking the void with half-trained eyes
living by the light that has died a thousand deaths
coming to this point in what we call time
So much more hope
the day begins with the light of one sun
on the edge of one planet fashioned out of stone
cooled to the touch and toasted again
with chemical climate
and we evolve
into stars without anything more to say
at the edge of creation at the end of the day
out on the limits of hope and just beyond sense
a speck in the universe re-specked but dense.
George Moore has published poems for a number of years internationally as well as here on the continent. They include Poetry, Orbis, Arc, Fiddlehead, Diagram, Otoliths, American Aesthetic, and others. His most recent collections are Children's Drawings of the Universe (Salmon Poetry 2015) and Saint Agnes Outside the Walls (FurureCycle 2016). Recently shortlisted for the Bailieborough Poetry Prize, and long listed for the Gregory O'Donoghue Poetry Prize. Moore now writes from the south shore of Nova Scotia.