Martin Burke was born in Limerick. Burke is a long term resident of Flanders where he is active as poet and playwright (and sometimes actor) and from where he has published sixteen books of his work in the USA, UK, Ireland, and Belgium -the latest work being BLAKE/LONDON/BLAKE published by the Feral Press, New York
VINCENT TO THEO
1
The soul like a white grub,
The instinctive necessity to eat
To paint the grub of my own withinness,
Yet can we, earth grubs surfacing,
Judge the life within ourselves
And remove its pre-conditions?
My answer may be ambiguous
But is accurate to the life I live –
This life, and perhaps there is some other
But it is always this life and this life only.
Now I am further south –hardly a docile servant
To this ages’ expectations
Who among colour and colour
Works towards the worlds’ intensity
Like a grub on the plants of nourishment
2
This life, defined by blues and burnished yellows
I can neither live nor want some other
Nor is there a hearts’ cry, even spoken in French,
I might embrace as mine.
Even as a rock renews itself to live another thousand years
So I adopt this process to my eye –
A necessity, a duty, a solace and a torment
As I succeed or fail
Working as a digger in a mine-shaft
Mole dark but unerring, aiming for the Atlantis of Japan
Moving from the paint to the worlds withinness
By the flurried swirls of a brush
3
And now this new beginning in yellow stone
In a knot of olive trees – studies, possibilities
Responsibilities to the world I have entered
Degree by startled degree.
An almond tree in flower –how not have faith in it?
How not believe the world as it is
And if I use triumphant colours why should I not use
Triumphant words? I’m on fire with the thought
Of what I’ll bequeath and my mind outpaces my flesh
With the air opening before me like water for a prophet.
Snow in Paris? I’ll take the burning sun as my true brother.
4
Lungfuls of air –how can I give them to you?
How breath a breath into a canvas
A viewer will be unable to resist?
Hitting the canvas with irregular strokes
The edges unfinished to perfection,
Working towards the core of purest yellow
Where stars give me the only life I can live.
Everything is said and there is nothing to justify
Yet already I’m writing in the retrospective tense
So what does my hand know that my mind does not
Or not yet? Read this and burn it –
I’m only as childless as the stars are.
5
My mind outpaces my wretched flesh
Yet my blood re-circulates
This is the world I am entering degree by startled degree
So how not believe the world as it is and say it is something else?
This good blood is better than any I inherited
And I’m on fire with what I’ll bequeath to restless veins
Working this faith as a digger does a mine-shaft
Mole-dark but with the flurried swirl of a brush
Yet the weight of a franc and the stroke of a brush –
How bring them to a balance which says
The one is worth two or five of the other?
Too often what’s offered is no different than
Thirty pieces of silver yet I’m in a hurry,
Trees are in blossom, the orchards fantastic
and I’d include the wind if I could.
I am betrayed?
It is the world which is betrayed
Even the haystacks are crucified for a commercial salvation
The Galway Review 