The Empty Dance

If this muck should ever clear
And morrow's scholars' civil quest
Unearth these forms who wallow here,
What catch would time invest?

Gone men, millions, cast in stone
Along this soulless killing lode,
Perverted forms of hoary bone
With arms in common circled pose.

Five hundred miles of seeping land
Barren of an inch to rest
Where wire barbs carve brow and hand
As bullets flail the chest.

Entrenched illusions fill with rain,
While last deceptions drown in gluts
Of flesh gone rotten peeled with pain,
A mud of human blood and guts.

Rifles fall,
As vapors rise
From entrails, twisting forms disguised
As far away and overdue
Pleasures, in this squalid stew
Of men in masks, of mustard gas,
And flies that shroud dead eyes from view.

How I survived...

No,

That's  not  true.


Lonely,
Lonely men away from her,
Little else within them stirs.
Away, away,
Away from home,
She is all they' ve ever known.

She was all I ever knew.

Such lonely men to hold a line
Away from hearth along some weir
Fall to vicious killing times
Which starve hope and feed despair.

Mute, unmoved, and coldly distant,
She faced about, as I endeavored
To engage a loving instant
Eluding me forever.

Embraced, her glance avoids my gaze.
Her ear evades my hungered lips.
She coldly lets my dead hands graze
The slopes that grace her fertile hips.

This meadow of my darling rises
Soft ingrained of nature's prizes
Up her supple rolling hills
From which her loving suckling fills.

On the top, in no man's land,
Along the lines from trench to trench
We chains of dismal wretches stand
With arms around this phantom wench.

As terror dies, so undiscerning
Exhausted men
Exhume their buried yearnings.

Thus embracing
Spirits, gracing
Vacant circled arms enhance
The lonely soldier's empty dance.

Here are a few more McGuiness poems from another source, the Reilly collection. Written for Captain Reilly, as the story goes, a soldier turned military historian, the content, as with 'Empty Dance', reflects material related by Reilly and his veteran friends. These verses are considered tribute to the man who hid McGuiness from the authorities for so many years. Reilly went off to war having not connected with an unattainable girl he loved from afar. She was under the spell of a handsome and shallow playboy.

After he retired, he introduced himself to her and they married.

• To the Violins of Autumn

• Editor's note: The title is based on
  Paul Verlaine
  [ Song of Autumn - first verse ]
   

 Les sanglots longs des violons de l'automne
 Blessent mon coeur d'une langueur monotone


  The long sobs of  the violins of autumn
  Wound my heart with a monotonous languor.
 

The 1944 BBC radio announcement, heard across France, that 'Autumn Song' would be read in an upcoming broadcast was a code to listen closely for a brief sample (the first line) in following announcements. If the reading reached the second line "Blessent mon coer...", the allied sea invasion of France had begun. Landings would occur within hours. French resistance was, by this signal, to immediately destroy rail lines, key roads, communications, and German targets. Invasion ! Normandy !

Old Scratch sends proxies
Time to time
With gifts of bane, of pox,
And crime.
From his nether oozing slime
 Sounds an eerie vox humana.

Moloch's barbara voices chilled
The few not left behind, as killed,
Ripped red by vicious hounds who sought 'em,
Hell hardened to the tones of autumn.

Rabid curs upset the still,
Bloating on defiled land.
Poisoned offspring, bent to ill,
Gripping disaffected strand.

Columns lock-stepped, stiff salutes,
Heads snapped tight in grave attention,
Seasoned SS-ence, stomping boots,
Hoist the fall of man's ascension.

Who are they
To be so eager,
Sullied hearts of ends so meager?


Yet, who are we?

Dare we dare to spare, while, they not us!
Bayonets!
Prepare to pare them!

They will grieve our thrust and see
More of trust to learn than we.

From our surge will they perceive,
Through clouds as these which roll the waves,
Vision granted, to their graves.

For strings have tuned
Whose harp aligns
Ranks torn to knots to cordon crime.

As we as violins are played.
Each saddened note invokes accord
All men to God if we have strayed
Before we climb aboard.

Our souls may gather yet today
In teeming fields, as men who've grown
From boys, uprooted in the fray,
Unraveled in the throe.

Packed bodies back to front entombed,
Mortal millions in this plan,
Ride as fog in steely wombs
Berthed to rake the land.

Steel enfertiled, carried thus,
Fetal roe of she who brought them
Lull to pulsing waves which rush
On monotonic strings of autumn,

Or, yet, her spit across the breach
A killer whale whose vented anger
Lashes out from blood stained beach
To violins once played in languor?

Of war the eyes of Satan whet
For none will live who would forget.
Save saints ordained of murder's quest,
The devil takes the rest.

Looming shadow of the past
Summoned from antiquity
Pearled old stallion charging fast
To the bridge!

To the bridge across the See' !
A gantry to a future bet
Of purpose, inclination set.
Avaranches, Mortain and on,
Knowing not of what would come.

On this bridge I held faith's hand
Beholding secrets of my life
For duty's worth I took her stand
As though she were my wife.

She was my own bridge to cross.
I made a cross and charged head on,
Unafraid of options lost,
Doubtful any more would come.

Bleating fete of mayhem,
Bounding trodden hearts of souls who brought them,
Tolls of rounds well spent, resounding,
Echos of the strings of autumn.

From Avranche her tresses shook me
To the strains. I felt no pain
As her sorrow lifted, through me.
We kissed and I moved on again.

That Kluge of monsters sent to stop us
Slain in kind as fury propped us.
From taken grounds we disinterred
The songs of life that once were heard.



Devils deaf to music's voices
Favored ill in nature's choices,



As bleak autumnal changing winds
Played out on sobbing violins.

Faded Memories

Memories.

Fantasy
Of me as dear to you
Mulled too long.

At last,
Fading fast.

Dream
Was the means
By which I could attain shadows
Failing substance cast,
Simply conjured,
Simply passed,
Past unclaimed.


Your face,
A glance,
Dread and dream
Embraced in dance.

A flat or sharp of love returned,
Prefers to symphonies of hope
Unearned.

Songs of passion singed these lips
Until illusion's joy was stripped
Away with youth.

In truth,
Lost in wishes, not to be,
Dreams by day are not for free.

As logs
Ablaze
Are we consumed with change?
We can blight,
Or
We can warm the night.

In that glow, we glean
From fields we've never sewn
Yields of pleasure's fire thrown
In play as vapors drift astray.

And
When, spent, our shadows call
Watch them lift
For who we are becomes the gift.


Rest your head on my lap.
Drowse as whispered snaps
Of what's spent
Sparks away.

Should we care
That we have never really loved,
Till now?

Sustaining fire is reached
As older ash is breached.

Inflamed of love
And care expended,

Ill fated memory

Is
Ended.

He Winked
    At All the Pretty Girls
 

Thinking back to younger days
Which seen from here
Are masked in haze
Of one slick fellow so uncouth
In mannerism borne of youth.

He winked at all the pretty girls.

Just the pretty ones, for sure,
From aspect of their face and form
The twinkle of his eye inured
Of momentary storm.

Torpedoes launched from glance
Were aimed
At ships of dreams which we contrived.
Heartless marked
Were heedless maimed
As more were stilled
Than sparse survived.


I, uncertain in my hour,
Destitute by faith of doubt,
Reluctant witness to that power,
Learned what life is all about.

From what was just
A simple wink
I watched my dream ship
Sink.

His willing harem did not prepared him.
He went on in that manner
For a while.

Or, so I'm told,
As they grew colder
He grew bolder.

Now he winked at every mention
Of any female, maid, or bitch.
Perverted long of lost intention
Winking crooked into a twitch.

As his fleet of time sailed by
Alone
Ignored
Undocked
He died.

Not a creature cried.


I don't doubt that wink was etched
Deep into the bony socket,
Rotted, dropping free of flesh
Where flirting had it's wanton locket.

Still a deeper brand is found.
Which women carry on their souls
Virile condescension
Damning spirit as it's goal.

An indiscreet and hurtful scar
Struck at juvenility.
Is not each gem a guiding star
Of some lone vessel on this sea?

To balms of time
Such wounds were healed
But not before his coffin sealed.

Sailing over every wave
I brood for them and not his grave,

For those who loved
And waited,
Cared,

As I,


Whose ship repaired.

Toast

I guess it falls upon me most
To raise a voice in final toast
To the clay that was this man
The kiln, the fire, and Artful Hand
Which formed him thus for us.

Salute!


As beauty trapped in this bouquet,
Could each leaf of want be sound
Enough to free and pull away
Intact to flee the mortal bound?
His life defined, our love inclined.

Salute!


I raise my hand to venerate
The lowered taking soul to flight.
In his arms was once our fate.
Our hands in tribute to this knight
In armor shining, self declining.

Salute!