"Jerusalem Maybe" - A poem by Padraig De Brún

Jerusalem Maybe 

"I wrote some of this on a ladder. It didn't wobble."

I made Britain from what I saw,

Sanding paint, breathing toxic dust.

It shaped before me by chance hand,

Stubborn remains of what had been.

And its edges, coloured and ragged,

Jutted from land into a sea 

Of cold, clean, sand-smooth, grey plaster.

And then the island shape was gone,

Cleansed from sight, like imaginings.

And I painted anew, slow, white,

Deliberate strokes, spread even,

Equally flat, smooth edge to smooth.

And what I created as God,

King, painter, was a plain, white wall.

I wondered then, my labours done,

If this new land, formed above dust,

Perfect, Jerusalem Maybe,

Was the space we might occupy,

If one day, all that makes us real,

Different and original,

Is allowed forever to pass.

Lovely poem by E.E. Cummings

maggie and milly and molly and may

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles, and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing

which raced sideways while blowing bubbles: and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea