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.