Iona

By Martin Lahiff

BY THE SAME WRITER


His Way (1996)New Testament Notes
To Build a Cross (1997)Foreign Service Notes
Two Histories (1998)Gibbon vs. Hughes
Rancho Minovi (2001)Autobiography
Cien Poemas (2003)Translated Spanish poetry

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 4, 2013
• ISBN: 9781493101290

Martin Lahiff

Martin Lahiff can’t explain why he has spent over eighty years under what William Shakespeare might have called the Spell of the Muse. That spell continues to bother us, writers and readers alike, who waste valuable time looking for worth in a world that knows otherwise. His book, Iona, records the raids of the Muse over the course of his lifetime, from his early college enlightenments at a school by that name in New Rochelle, New York, through the civil rights and hippie movements of the Sixties in San Francisco, the misery of Communist Europe, the emergence of Moslems in the East, thirty years deep in Mexico due to another kind of spell that has lasted 53 years, and his job as a U.S. consul.

Book preview

PART I

IONA

Iona is a small island off the southwest coast of Scotland. I found it north of New York City when I needed an island.

The island gleamed amid the Dark Ages, a light that flickered as Rome died and wild tribal men struggled with the puzzling signals brought from Jerusalem by Jews like Paul and the Christians who followed him.

From Iona, a handful of Celtic men, saints Columba and Swithun among them, walked alone with sticks across the time’s dark continent, carrying the new and different message brought to Ireland a century before by Patrick.

My Iona grew from all of that at a small college in New Rochelle, where the Christian Brothers of Ireland tried to make us better than we were.

Driven there by the discovery of poets Rupert Brooke and Gilbert K. Chesterton and later overpowered by Shakespeare and Kipling, I became a regular contributor to the college quarterly magazine.

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A Heaven for Loves

There hides a world within that shrouded wood

That sparkles with bright pendant drops of mist.

Dark forest groves like that conceal amid

Their somber shades many a hidden land,

And many long-lost and forgotten homes.

Trees, tessellated with an eerie rhythmic beauty,

Intone among their hollowed, dripping leaves

Dead songs of a day that is long by,

And through the throbbing threnody we only seem to hear

The chants of elfin figures dancing there.

Yet silence strangely seems to be the monarch

Where the sound is only beauty, lilting, laughing,

Tinkling quiet on autumnal saturated leaves

That still fall somehow from the verdant limbs.

Houses, huts, and funny faerie dwellings lean

Against a cool, wet, quiet breeze; their tinsel

Roofs aglisten in a constant, imperceptible rain.

You cannot hear the creaking of the ropes that pull

The buckets from deep wells filled up to their brims,

Their ancient hand-hewn oak smooth with mossy green.

Pools and ponds, enveloped in a furtive guise of gray,

Ripple though there is no way of knowing that they do;

Perplexed but more enchanted, one just wanders through,

Aimless, undisturbing, and nearly just as tranquil

As the quizzical, whimsical faeryland itself.

And as you tread, you ask yourself, where are

The sounds—the noise of laughter or dispute,

Or even the sound of peace? Where are

The noises that belong to faeryland?

If this be spirit land, if this be Heaven, where are

All the sanctified? If this be Paradise … where …

There must be others here than merely spirits!

To which the elfin creatures sprightly answer,

Calling lightly through their misty shroud:

We are your homes; we are your lands;

We are your haunts, your ways!

We are the only loves you hold forever—

Is a heaven to be denied your loves?

April 1952

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Deskwood Love

It was your name I chiseled in my desk

And cut until my pencil dulled and broke,

Then hacked at it, engraving there my heart,

The faint impression of your lovely name.

The figures clear, my fingers worked anew

And dented deep the places I had hewn,

So that you, my love, forever would remain

A monument to later lovers-new.

And to this day your name resides as fair,

Ensconced in myriads of other hearts—

Rough cut, hard hewn, and clumsy in its form,

But never faltering as approaches made …

My chisel clings forever to that wood,

And so my heart, if you had said it could.

October 1952

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Cover Them

Cover them! Cover those leaves, those

Mossy rocks, those screaming brooks

With marble, granite, steel, and slate!

Mantle those clouds and blow them away

To make room for a roof instead of the sky!

And in place of your trees, use the wood

From their boughs to make lamps from,

To take the place of the sun in your huge encasement!

Have all about you that which you

Have made by power, force, and fear,

And then, when you look to the heavens

And want to call and raise your arms to them,

You will have nothing to call to, and your arms

Will ache and go limp in despair.

And your dead will lie about in your streets

And litter your walks, and their stench

Will rise to your roof and stifle your ardor

As you chisel your granite and ply your steel

As you look for some ground, you know

You need to bury them.

November 1952

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To the Virgin

I hear the rustle of your garment

And see the sunlight silhouetted

In the brilliance of your raiment.

I know the heaviness of tresses

And the loveliness of moments

In the folds of your caresses.

I