Free Essential Poems from the Staying Alive Trilogy by Neil Astley

harmless fires drifts to my eyes. 
    This is plenty. This is more than enough.
    GEOFFREY HILL

All of These People
    Who was it who suggested that the opposite of war
    Is not so much peace as civilisation? He knew
    Our assassinated Catholic greengrocer who died
    At Christmas in the arms of our Methodist minister,
    And our ice-cream man whose continuing requiem
    Is the twenty-one flavours children have by heart.
    Our cobbler mends shoes for everybody; our butcher
    Blends into his best sausages leeks, garlic, honey;
    Our cornershop sells everything from bread to kindling.
    Who can bring peace to people who are not civilised?
    All of these people, alive or dead, are civilised.
    MICHAEL LONGLEY

The Red and the Black
    We sat up late, talking –
    thinking of the screams of the tortured
    and the last silence of starving children,
    seeing the faces of bigots and murderers.
    Then sleep.
    And there was the morning, smiling
    in the dance of everything. The collared doves
    guzzled the rowan berries and the sea
    washed in, so gently, so tenderly.
    Our neighbours greeted us
    with humour and friendliness. 
    World, why do you do this to us,
    giving us poison with one hand
    and the bread of life with another? 
    And reason sits helpless at its desk,
    adding accounts that never balance,
    finding no excuse for anything. 
    NORMAN MACCAIG

Try to Praise the Mutilated World
    Try to praise the mutilated world.
    Remember June’s long days,
    and wild strawberries, drops of wine, the dew.
    The nettles that methodically overgrow
    the abandoned homesteads of exiles.
    You must praise the mutilated world.
    You watched the stylish yachts and ships;
    one of them had a long trip ahead of it,
    while salty oblivion awaited others.
    You’ve seen the refugees heading nowhere,
    you’ve heard the executioners sing joyfully.
    You should praise the mutilated world.
    Remember the moments when we were together
    in a white room and the curtain fluttered.
    Return in thought to the concert where music flared.
    You gathered acorns in the park in autumn
    and leaves eddied over the earth’s scars.
    Praise the mutilated world
    and the gray feather a thrush lost,
    and the gentle light that strays and vanishes
    and returns.
    ADAM ZAGAJEWSKI
translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh

Sweetness
    Just when it has seemed I couldn’t bear
        one more friend
    waking with a tumor, one more maniac 
    with a perfect reason, often a sweetness
        has come
    and changed nothing in the world 
    except the way I stumbled through it,
        for a while lost
    in the ignorance of loving 
    someone or something, the world shrunk
        to mouth-size,
    hand-size, and never seeming small. 
    I acknowledge there is no sweetness
        that doesn’t leave a stain,
    no sweetness that’s ever sufficiently sweet… 
    Tonight a friend called to say his lover
        was killed in a car
    he was driving. His voice was low 
    and guttural, he repeated what he needed
        to repeat, and I repeated
    the one or two words we have for such grief 
    until we were speaking only in tones.
        Often a sweetness comes
    as if on loan, stays just long enough 
    to make sense of what it means to be alive,
        then returns to its dark
    source. As for me, I don’t care 
    where it’s been, or what bitter road
        it’s traveled
    to come so far, to taste so good. 
    STEPHEN DUNN

Though There Are Torturers
    Though there are torturers in the world
    There are also musicians.
    Though, at this moment,
    Men are screaming in prisons
    There are jazzmen raising storms
    Of sensuous celebration
    And orchestras releasing
    Glories of the Spirit.
    Though the image of God
    Is everywhere defiled
    A man in West Clare
    Is playing the concertina,
    The Sistine Choir is levitating
    Under the dome of St Peter’s
    And a drunk man on the road
    Is singing for no reason.
    MICHAEL COADY

It’s This Way
    I stand in the advancing light,
    my hands hungry, the world beautiful. 
    My eyes can’t