The Joys of a Second Rattle at Life

By William Tiernan

The Joys of a Second Rattle at Life by William Tiernan is the author’s third volume of poetry and, arguably, his most ambitious to date. Whether addressing himself to issues such as pandemics or the war in Ukraine, to more universal themes of redemption and rebirth, battles of the body and the bullying of the mind, Tiernan’s observations go straight to the human heart, breaking down the distance between what is right from what is wrong, conveying it all in his unique and inimitable lyrical style, conveyed here by just a few excerpts from his poetry, chosen at random:

Mine is a hard hammering against the wall of flame.
The demon we must come to terms with and tame.

A new day brings a new, raw hunger and thirst.

I must give the world my poem and my word,
Without having to fall on my sword.

The heart can be touched by crying,
But the soul knows not of dying.

It's smiles we give and tears we fall.
We belong to the universal call.

I’m sick and tired of war and dying.
Sick and tired of hunger and homelessness crying.

I'm into me and I’m the whole world's lover,
And I know there are many mysterious things to discover.

The road less travelled is the road best left behind
And the better one, perhaps, is the one we've yet to find.

Existence is forever so short
But life, at times, too long.

Old fashioned I might be, but most of the poetry nowadays doesn't turn me on. I like the stuff to rhyme, while this thing of survival gets on my bloody nerves.

About the Author

William Tiernan is an Irish poet and author who resides in rural Galway, close to the Roscommon border. His writings reflect his personal experiences and convictions as well as strong ties to the community in which he lives, his identification with the place where he grew up.

Three collections of poetry have been published to date: Greetings from Guilka, Ballymoe: Poems from the Head and the Heart (2016), Bluesy Ballymoe: Pulse and Hearts above Zero (2018) and The Joys of a Second Rattle at Life (2022).

In 2014, he was National Winner in the poetry category at the Hanna Greally International Literary Awards, organised as part of the annual SiarScéal Festival in Co. Roscommon.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Manuscript Publisher
• Release date: Mar 19, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224731961

William Tiernan

William Tiernan is a poet and author who resides in rural Galway, close to the Roscommon border. His writings reflect his personal experiences and convictions, as well as strong ties to the community in which he lives, his identification with the place where he grew up. He has published two collections of poems and, in 2014, he was National Winner in the poetry category at the Hanna Greally International Literary Awards, organised as part of the annual SiarScéal Festival in Co. Roscommon.

Book preview

William Teardrops Tiernan

Look quietly, Dear William,

Upon us now within our mould.

Your score, it is one million

But, not a man nor woman cold.

It’s when you’re lonely I can hear you

And, them bells do in your head.

Rise up again, Dear William.

Rise up again – you’re dead.

Through your pages, you have shown me

Where your passion and secrets lie

But, tell someone before you go, Dear.

Tell someone before you die.

I’d love to walk there with you,

To where the blunted mountains speak.

Is it the hooded one to show you?

Is it the hooded one you seek?

Or is it Brigid that can cure you,

Amongst those fields of May?

Is it something that you’re sure you can do?

Is it something that you say?

So cast out all of them demons

Through your spells and weaves of mind.

Is there something I could show you?

Is there something you could find?

So alas, dear friend, we are near the end

And you’ve shown us through the time.

That orange you were peeling –

Did you not know the skin was mine?

A View of Life

Time sitting but, never still in our shadow.

Lying here beside me; keep both our bodies warm.

Her breath is as peaceful as warm wind through a willow.

In all my other lifetimes, the world seemed unchanged and cold.

Through reincarnation, I seemed to have finally caught up with my soul.

All those things we all must leave behind –

Only things that make us blind.

Waves of her soft hair caress

The room like a flower,

While I sentence myself to the bathroom,

To cleanse my body in the shower.

Beauty, when finally broken down and then touched by words.

Maturity will only be found in a forehead furrow

Or inquisitive facial frown

Or, eyes that search like a torch through the world:

Like she wants to be your friend and companion

But, you still keep unopen in your subconscious

The unpeeled layers of an onion.

Maybe it’s those driving forces of lives

Lived in those isolated figures of the past

That has sentenced me to mistrust

And, that nothing really lasts

But time, moving always swiftly onwards

And still in the presence, the fear of looking outwards

Before the skies of this town that is now down and broken.

For it was your word that can be trusted in blood and stone and script

That raises all the dead through the intervention of your spirit.

Scatter flesh, dressed and undressed,

Left with only faith of a new day that can be only blessed.

Where carnage can turn to courage.

Where anger can be dissolved of all its rage.

Where hope can turn over a brand-new page.

Where the opening wounds of hatred and hurt

Will no longer fester

And blind indifference will no longer linger.

Where the nostril of the world will no longer have to smell the stench of dying

Or, the ears of those who dwell in the corridors of power

To listen to voices of children crying.

There is a harp that lies in the hall.

There is a red hand on the wall

But, the red hand can pull the string of music,

Each and for all.

History is nothing more than a hose

Still peeping through the darkness of the universe door.

‘Forgive the murderers,’ a holy man

Called, hanging on to his cross,

As angry bereaved mere mortals,

Dressed in flesh and loss,

Astonished in their space,

Clouded in a black pail of rising smoke.

‘Forgive them,’ he said

As the nation listened, as his voice started to choke.

Mere mortals cannot forgive murderers

Who killed off their past

And drew falling clouds of tear upon their future.

Only God can forgive murderers

And only Mother Mary can nurture.

Let each living being feel the warmth and shudder at the cold,

For we all came from the womb

But, we soon return to the soul.

And again and again, the world keeps turning cold.

Angel of God

If I was a panic searcher,

I’d become a non-believing preacher.

I’d sit stone faced at the confused crowd,

Praying for hope and their voices loud.

The forcing breath of the calling shadow.

Drink in the light and open up your window

For, it is never we who live

And it’s forever we live,

Pressed against the decades of craving to give.

Pass through the mouthpiece of the fool’s hollow horn,

Ravaged by anger and being born.

The empty skeletal jog

That throws shadows to the wood.

An examining of conscience

Of the hearts of bad and good,

Swallowed home by the truth.

Our parched wallets are opened up to the youth,

Who live between reality and promised fantasy

From our tongue so free,

With curiosity and the Godless among the ruins

Of the godless city.

The hands of Christ, they pray forever more.

We all have sinned.

We all have cursed and swore.

We’ve worn our skin out in the rain.

We’ve knotted our guts in pain.

We’ve knotted and allowed slavery to gain.

We’ve allowed false idols to reign.

We’ve mocked the drunk of staggery feet,

The Liffey ladies patrolling the streets,

The belly of every fiery night

That swings the plebs of dust in flight.

Allow me please to be present

In the company of your gentle heart

And, allow me please to tie up my ass and cart.

My old hands have crevices and cracks.

My roads still twist and turn

But, there’s no going back.

For the first time in my lifetime,

I can talk to you about things

And places of time.

Fireworks above us on this haunted, dusty trail.

The shame and the sorrow of hopelessly

Fearing we may fail.

For pride can be cursed

And uncured if bruised,

Like the many women who worked hard

And were badly used.

I see those clouds spitting their anger down on the frozen eye

And, all the passed-by dreamers with their notions of an open sky,

Will be made to kill

And crawl and then die

And, no one will care

Or even hear them cry.

I’ve lit you a lovely green light

Though, absent in truth, it might

Never be enough to lie

On the shine of your skin

Or, we to become the prisoner twin.

Listen to nature and the river

Or, to any prayer said in shiver.

Dark are the hollows of this sunken night

And you, now only a shadow in the half-slit light.

Your sunken cheekbones

Mock you in many ways.

We probably will never know

Of what courage is needed

To see out the journey of the show,

The flesh that’s weak and the desire to like it slow.

We can only need passing

When we are forced to bend and bow

And, the little girls can play with their ribbons and bows

And, every little boy, in the seashore, can dip their toes.

The force is still so strong within me.

I was born too early; I cannot be.

I can take my eyes and write my poem

And, my tired heart will

No longer have to roam

And, maybe your drooping spirit can finally rise.

Sisters and brothers, let me tell