AUDIO READING FROM THE COLLECTION: ‘RED’

‘Moyra Donaldson’s poetry has grown to ignite unexpected perceptions and magnify them. Betrayals, personal and political; excavations, historical and psychic; correspondences of temperament and object; innocences pristine and varied and very much in power. The Goose Tree shows a poet treading on her own footprints; the considerable themes of her career advanced in perspective and colour and with the happy skills of a poet both accomplished and mature but alert stil to surprise, both in form and substance; like her ‘village women whi/waited in their beds for the sound of wings’ A joyous collection.’

Damian Smyth

Red

Comb of cockerel,

oriental poppies, winter

berries, robin’s breast.

Speck of life in the yolk.

Blood beetle rubies

crushed for crimson,

death in it;

mordant alum fix.

The hand of Ulster,

hand of history.

Red rag to a bull.

Caught red-handed.

Years of sky warnings

and delights.

Blood-letting,

pressure

thicker than water,

not thick enough

to carry the weight of us.

Soaked. Flowing.

Lips with wine, desire,

remembered rhythms,

the first rill

down a pale leg,

a sigh of relief.

The stain life makes.

Blood thickens. Slows.

Dries. Rust. Clot.

Touches

of red into the house

in compensation.

A vase, two cushions,

red frames

for five black

dancing herons

and one black horse.