Five poems from Mark Murphy’s “The Invisible Woman”

Lost Poem, Found Poem

for Nora

This isn’t a memory of iniquity, lost things, found things,

aberrations, people and places we’ve shared.

This isn’t a diary of our years in exile, years without

going home. This isn’t a guide to invert

your own heartbeat (sometimes a scream) as you fight

for your life. This isn’t the song of an eye

for an eye or the child of fact alone. This isn’t tactful

or tactless as coughing up planets in your sleep.

This isn’t a sermon or prayer. Life is fragile and full

of monsters. This isn’t just melancholia–

we’ve been planting this garden for many years.

This is the lexicon of our future selves. A homecoming

authored by two. These are chronicles of the night

garden, the gathering place of strangers that never sleep.

They found a naked body in the old mill pond.

This body does not belong to you.

And that is all.

Cosmic Cradle

i

What shall we do with the nameless child –

so much a part of us? So much more, than loss of hope

for Moheme and Mohr, or the burial record

of an invisible girl? She who holds both dissonance

and harmony (rose and wreath

in her tiny hands) as we lay her to rest

under indifferent skies, but no one knows why 

a dying girl’s face tilts

towards the moon.

ii

Last night, the girl we already grieve

as a lost galaxy – crawled from her crib to sing

as a star –spreading her wings

in exquisite poverty. Here at the world’s edge,

her breath leaves semitones of light

on the latticed glass.

Here, nothing is more important

than music and moonlight.

Last Straws

for my brother, “Dutch” Murphy

If revolutions take place according to certain laws,

can we take the Spartacus revolt,

which almost toppled the Roman Empire

as the stuff of dreams?

If we take the peasant’s revolt of 1381

against Richard II

as the stuff of imagination, can we take hope,

which lives and moves by revolution

as the stuff of contradictions?

If we take the beheading of Charles Stuart,

and Louis XVI,

or the shooting of Tsar Nicholas

and his family

as the stuff of revolutions,

is it safe to say, that despotism is the victim of hope?

And if hope is emotion, and emotion is the enemy

of facts, can we take solace

in the Gigantes’ revolt against the gods?

Dare we anticipate the odds

in our favour?

Heart Light

for Rob Horrocks

i

Praise the heart that listens to the sorrows of the world.

Remember the wild mushrooms turning their heads

towards the keyhole in a disused shed

in County Wexford. Clamoring for the moon

like children in a freak show

you do not blame or count. Pleading for pennies

with bloodshot eyes as if to shine a light on the obvious.

Praise the heart that lets go of its own vices

wishing for what’s best out of the worst misfortune

when the age of lust decrees another bloodbath.

Remember the falcon always remembers

the falconer (not out of blind obedience but love)

because love is the only excuse for doing the same thing

and expecting different results.

ii

In the land of the dead, let the dead bury the dead,

turn his master’s voice into creature comfort,

even in the hesitation the outstaying night drags over it.

In the land of the living, praise the heart that hopes

(in spite of nothingness) because love

is the only destiny that outsmarts death.