Everything
is Going to be All Right
How
should I not be glad to contemplate
the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window
and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?
There will be dying, there will be dying,
but there is no need to go into that.
The poems flow from the hand unbidden
and the hidden source is the watchful heart.
The sun rises in spite of everything
and the far cities are beautiful and bright.
I lie here in a riot of sunlight
watching the day break and the clouds flying.
Everything is going to be all right.
the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window
and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?
There will be dying, there will be dying,
but there is no need to go into that.
The poems flow from the hand unbidden
and the hidden source is the watchful heart.
The sun rises in spite of everything
and the far cities are beautiful and bright.
I lie here in a riot of sunlight
watching the day break and the clouds flying.
Everything is going to be all right.
The Mute
Phenomena (after Nerval)
Your great mistake is to disregard the satire
Bandied among the mute phenomena
Be strong if you must, your brisk hegenomy
Means fuck-all to the somnolent sunflower
Or the extinct volcano. What do you know
Of the revolutionary theories advanced
By turnips, or the sex-life of cutlery?
Everything's susceptible, Pythagoras said so.
An ordinary common-or-garden brick wall, the kind
For talking to or banging your head on,
Resents your politics and bad draftsmanship.
God is alive and lives under a stone;
Already in a lost hub-cap is conceived
The ideal society which will replace our own.
Rage For
Order
Somewhere beyond the scorched gable end and the burnt-out buses
there is a poet indulging
his wretched rage for order-
or not as the case may be; for his
is a dying art,
an eddy of semantic scruples
in an unstructurable sea.
He is far from his people,
and the fitful glare of his high window is as
nothing to our scattered glass.
His posture is grandiloquent and deprecating, like this,
his diet ashes,
his talk of justice and his mother
the rhetorical device
of an etiolated emperor-
Nero is you prefer, no mother there.
'...and this in the face of love,
death, and the wages of the poor...'
If he is silent, it is the silence of enforced humility;
if anxious to be heard, it is the anxiety
of a last word
when the drums start;
for his is a dying art.
Now watch me as I make history.
Watch as I tear down
to build up with a desperate love,
knowing it cannot be
long now till I have need of his
desperate ironies.
Somewhere beyond the scorched gable end and the burnt-out buses
there is a poet indulging
his wretched rage for order-
or not as the case may be; for his
is a dying art,
an eddy of semantic scruples
in an unstructurable sea.
He is far from his people,
and the fitful glare of his high window is as
nothing to our scattered glass.
His posture is grandiloquent and deprecating, like this,
his diet ashes,
his talk of justice and his mother
the rhetorical device
of an etiolated emperor-
Nero is you prefer, no mother there.
'...and this in the face of love,
death, and the wages of the poor...'
If he is silent, it is the silence of enforced humility;
if anxious to be heard, it is the anxiety
of a last word
when the drums start;
for his is a dying art.
Now watch me as I make history.
Watch as I tear down
to build up with a desperate love,
knowing it cannot be
long now till I have need of his
desperate ironies.
A
Refusal to Mourn
He lived
in a small farm-house
At the edge of a new estate.
The trim gardens crept
To his door, and car engines
Woke him before dawn
On dark winter mornings.
All day there
was silence
In the bright house. The clock
Ticked on the kitchen shelf,
Cinders moved in the grate,
And a warm briar gurgled
When the old man talked to himself;
But the
door-bell seldom rang
After the milkman went,
And if a shirt-hanger
Knocked in an open wardrobe
That was a strange event
To be pondered on for hours.
While
the wind thrashed about
In the back garden, raking
The roof of the hen-house,
And swept clouds and gulls
Eastwards over the lough
With its flap of tiny sails.
Once a
week he would visit
An old shipyard crony,
Inching down to the road
And the blue country bus
To sit and watch sun-dappled
Branches whacking the windows
While
the long evening shed
Weak light in his empty house,
On the photographs of his dead
Wife and their six children
And the Missions to Seamen angel
In flight above the bed.
"I'm
not long for this world,"
Said he on our last evening,
"I'll not last the winter,"
And grinned, straining to hear
Whatever reply I made;
And died the following year.
In time
the astringent rain
Of those parts will clean
The words from his gravestone
In the crowded cemetery
That overlooks the sea
And his name be mud once again
And his
boilers lie like tombs
In the mud of the sea bed
Till the next ice age comes
And the earth he inherited
Is gone like Neanderthal Man
And no records remain.
But the
secret bred in the bone
On the dawn strand survives
In other times and lives,
Persisting for the unborn
Like a claw-print in concrete
After the bird has flown.
At the edge of a new estate.
The trim gardens crept
To his door, and car engines
Woke him before dawn
On dark winter mornings.
In the bright house. The clock
Ticked on the kitchen shelf,
Cinders moved in the grate,
And a warm briar gurgled
When the old man talked to himself;
After the milkman went,
And if a shirt-hanger
Knocked in an open wardrobe
That was a strange event
To be pondered on for hours.
In the back garden, raking
The roof of the hen-house,
And swept clouds and gulls
Eastwards over the lough
With its flap of tiny sails.
An old shipyard crony,
Inching down to the road
And the blue country bus
To sit and watch sun-dappled
Branches whacking the windows
Weak light in his empty house,
On the photographs of his dead
Wife and their six children
And the Missions to Seamen angel
In flight above the bed.
Said he on our last evening,
"I'll not last the winter,"
And grinned, straining to hear
Whatever reply I made;
And died the following year.
Of those parts will clean
The words from his gravestone
In the crowded cemetery
That overlooks the sea
And his name be mud once again
In the mud of the sea bed
Till the next ice age comes
And the earth he inherited
Is gone like Neanderthal Man
And no records remain.
On the dawn strand survives
In other times and lives,
Persisting for the unborn
Like a claw-print in concrete
After the bird has flown.
Consolations
of Philosophy
for
Eugene Lambe
And the rotten boards fall from us, and the ribs
Crack under the constriction of tree roots
And the seasons slip from the fields unknown to us,
From citizens who had never dreamt of this -
Who, shaken to the bone in their stout boxes
By the latest bright cars, will not inspect them
Will not be there to comment. When the broken
Wreath bowls are speckled with rain-water
And the grass grows wild for want of a caretaker,
The lives we might have led, and get them right;
To lie in silence listening to the wind
Call for the living through the livelong night.
A
Portrait of the Artist
(for Colin Middleton)
(for Colin Middleton)
Shivering
in the darkness
Of pits, slag-heaps, beetroot fields,
I gasp for light and life
Like a caged bird in spring-time
Banging the bright bars.
Like a glow-worm I move among
The caged Belgian miners,
And the light on my forehead
Is the dying light of faith.
God gutters down to metaphor—
A subterranean tapping, light
Refracted in a glass of beer
As if through a church window,
Or a basin ringed with coal-dust
After the ritual evening bath.
Theo, I am discharged for being
Over-zealous, they call it,
And not dressing the part,
In time I shall go south
And paint what I have seen—
A meteor of golden light
On chairs, face and old boots,
Setting fierce fire to the eyes
Of sun-flowers and fishing boats,
Each one a miner in disguise.
Of pits, slag-heaps, beetroot fields,
I gasp for light and life
Like a caged bird in spring-time
Banging the bright bars.
Like a glow-worm I move among
The caged Belgian miners,
And the light on my forehead
Is the dying light of faith.
God gutters down to metaphor—
A subterranean tapping, light
Refracted in a glass of beer
As if through a church window,
Or a basin ringed with coal-dust
After the ritual evening bath.
Theo, I am discharged for being
Over-zealous, they call it,
And not dressing the part,
In time I shall go south
And paint what I have seen—
A meteor of golden light
On chairs, face and old boots,
Setting fierce fire to the eyes
Of sun-flowers and fishing boats,
Each one a miner in disguise.
An Image
from Beckett
In that
instant
There was a sea, far off,
As bright as lettuce,
A northern landscape
(Danish?) and a huddle
Of houses along the shore.
Also, I think, a white
Flicker of gulls
And washing hung to dry -
The poignancy of those
Back-yards - and the gravedigger
Putting aside his forceps.
Then the hard boards
And darkness once again.
Oh, I migh have proved
So many heroes!
Sorel, perhaps, or
Kröger, given the time.
For in that instant
I was struck by the sweetness and light,
The sweetness and light,
Imagining what grave
Cities, what lasting monuments,
Given the time.
But even my poor house
I left unfinished;
And my one marriage
Was over as soon as it started,
Its immanence so brief as to be
Immeasurable.
They will have buried
My great-grandchildren, and theirs,
Beside me by now
With a subliminal
Batsquek of reflex lamentation.
Our hair and excrement
Litter the rich earth
Changing, second by second,
To civilizations.
It was good while it lasted;
And if it only lasted
The Biblical span.
Required to drop six feet
Through a glitter of wintry light,
There is No-one to blame.
Still, I am haunted
By that landscape,
The soft rush of it winds,
The uprightness of its
Utilities and schoolchidren –
To whom in my will,
This, I have left my will.
I hope they had time, and light
Enough to read it.
There was a sea, far off,
As bright as lettuce,
A northern landscape
(Danish?) and a huddle
Of houses along the shore.
Also, I think, a white
Flicker of gulls
And washing hung to dry -
The poignancy of those
Back-yards - and the gravedigger
Putting aside his forceps.
Then the hard boards
And darkness once again.
Oh, I migh have proved
So many heroes!
Sorel, perhaps, or
Kröger, given the time.
For in that instant
I was struck by the sweetness and light,
The sweetness and light,
Imagining what grave
Cities, what lasting monuments,
Given the time.
But even my poor house
I left unfinished;
And my one marriage
Was over as soon as it started,
Its immanence so brief as to be
Immeasurable.
They will have buried
My great-grandchildren, and theirs,
Beside me by now
With a subliminal
Batsquek of reflex lamentation.
Our hair and excrement
Litter the rich earth
Changing, second by second,
To civilizations.
It was good while it lasted;
And if it only lasted
The Biblical span.
Required to drop six feet
Through a glitter of wintry light,
There is No-one to blame.
Still, I am haunted
By that landscape,
The soft rush of it winds,
The uprightness of its
Utilities and schoolchidren –
To whom in my will,
This, I have left my will.
I hope they had time, and light
Enough to read it.
The
Seasons
For Matthew Geden
1.
Day-stars like daisies on a field of sky.
The nuclear subs are keeping sinister watch
while sun heat focuses on the cabbage-patch.
What weird weather can we expect this July?
Tornado, hail, some sort of freak tempest?
The bonfire month, and another storm brewing:
I hear it sing I' th'wind, and among the leaves.
But out here in the hot pastures of the west,
no Google goggling at our marginal lives,
there are still corners where a lark can sing.
2.
We prospered and made hay while the sun shone.
Now autumn skies, yellow and grey, sow rain
on summer debris, Ambre Solaire, crushed bracken,
we clear the dead leaves from a blocked drain
and tap barometers since the weather's taken
a sudden turn for the worse. Contentious crows
congregate of an evening at St Multose';
the harvest hymns float out from Gothic windows
on Maersk, docked sailing-boats and guesthouses
closed for the winter now the guests have gone.
3.
The reading period, and on the writing desk
quarto and lamplight in the early dusk.
If we don't travel now we hibernate
with other locals at the Tap Tavern
beside an open hearth, our winter haven.
Glowing cinders nuzzle the warm grate
while outside, ghostly in a starlit street,
creaking signs and a novelistic breeze.
Urgent footsteps fade into the night
leaving us to our pub talk and reveries.
4.
A fly-dazzling disc in the open door,
hung on a ribbon, catches the light and blinks
as the sun spokes on gardens and seascapes,
drawing up dew, exposing hidden depths,
old shipwrecks visible from the air. A northern
For Matthew Geden
1.
Day-stars like daisies on a field of sky.
The nuclear subs are keeping sinister watch
while sun heat focuses on the cabbage-patch.
What weird weather can we expect this July?
Tornado, hail, some sort of freak tempest?
The bonfire month, and another storm brewing:
I hear it sing I' th'wind, and among the leaves.
But out here in the hot pastures of the west,
no Google goggling at our marginal lives,
there are still corners where a lark can sing.
2.
We prospered and made hay while the sun shone.
Now autumn skies, yellow and grey, sow rain
on summer debris, Ambre Solaire, crushed bracken,
we clear the dead leaves from a blocked drain
and tap barometers since the weather's taken
a sudden turn for the worse. Contentious crows
congregate of an evening at St Multose';
the harvest hymns float out from Gothic windows
on Maersk, docked sailing-boats and guesthouses
closed for the winter now the guests have gone.
3.
The reading period, and on the writing desk
quarto and lamplight in the early dusk.
If we don't travel now we hibernate
with other locals at the Tap Tavern
beside an open hearth, our winter haven.
Glowing cinders nuzzle the warm grate
while outside, ghostly in a starlit street,
creaking signs and a novelistic breeze.
Urgent footsteps fade into the night
leaving us to our pub talk and reveries.
4.
A fly-dazzling disc in the open door,
hung on a ribbon, catches the light and blinks
as the sun spokes on gardens and seascapes,
drawing up dew, exposing hidden depths,
old shipwrecks visible from the air. A northern
draught
blows flower scents to the blue horizon;
a yawl, Bermuda-rigged, shakes out its linen
watched by the yachties, blow-ins, quiet drunks
and the new girls with parasols in their drinks.
Springs gush in a shower of flowering hawthorn.
a yawl, Bermuda-rigged, shakes out its linen
watched by the yachties, blow-ins, quiet drunks
and the new girls with parasols in their drinks.
Springs gush in a shower of flowering hawthorn.
Courtyards
in Delft
(for Gordon Woods)
Oblique light on the trite, on brick and tile-
Immaculate masonry, and everywhere that
Water tap, that broom and wooden pail
To keep it so. House-proud, the wives
Of artisans pursue their thrifty lives
Among scrubbed yards, modest but adequate.
Foliage is sparse, and clings. No breeze
Ruffles the trim composure of those trees.
No spinet-playing emblematic of
The harmonies and disharmonies of love;
No lewd fish, no fruit, no wide-eyed bird
About to fly its cage while a virgin
Listens to her seducer, mars the chaste
Perfection of the thing and the thing made.
Nothing is random, nothing goes to waste.
We miss the dirty dog, the fiery gin.
That girl with her back to us who waits
For her man to come home for his tea
Will wait till the paint disintegrates
And ruined dikes admit the esurient sea;
Yet this is life too, and the cracked
Out-house door a verifiable fact
As vividly mnemonic as the sunlit
Railings that front the houses opposite.
I lived there as a boy and know the coal
Glittering in its shed, late-afternoon
Lambency informing the deal table,
The ceiling cradled in a radiant spoon.
I must be lying low in a room there,
A strange child with a taste for verse,
While my hard-nosed companions dream of fire
And sword upon parched veldt and fields of rain-swept gorse.
(for Gordon Woods)
Oblique light on the trite, on brick and tile-
Immaculate masonry, and everywhere that
Water tap, that broom and wooden pail
To keep it so. House-proud, the wives
Of artisans pursue their thrifty lives
Among scrubbed yards, modest but adequate.
Foliage is sparse, and clings. No breeze
Ruffles the trim composure of those trees.
No spinet-playing emblematic of
The harmonies and disharmonies of love;
No lewd fish, no fruit, no wide-eyed bird
About to fly its cage while a virgin
Listens to her seducer, mars the chaste
Perfection of the thing and the thing made.
Nothing is random, nothing goes to waste.
We miss the dirty dog, the fiery gin.
That girl with her back to us who waits
For her man to come home for his tea
Will wait till the paint disintegrates
And ruined dikes admit the esurient sea;
Yet this is life too, and the cracked
Out-house door a verifiable fact
As vividly mnemonic as the sunlit
Railings that front the houses opposite.
I lived there as a boy and know the coal
Glittering in its shed, late-afternoon
Lambency informing the deal table,
The ceiling cradled in a radiant spoon.
I must be lying low in a room there,
A strange child with a taste for verse,
While my hard-nosed companions dream of fire
And sword upon parched veldt and fields of rain-swept gorse.
For the
pale light of that provincial town
Will spread itself, like ink or oil,
Will spread itself, like ink or oil,
Over the
not yet accurate linen
Map of the world which occupies one wall
And punish nature in the name of God.
If only, now, the Maenads, as of right,
Came smashing crockery, with fire and sword,
We could sleep easier in our beds at night.
Map of the world which occupies one wall
And punish nature in the name of God.
If only, now, the Maenads, as of right,
Came smashing crockery, with fire and sword,
We could sleep easier in our beds at night.
A
Disused Shed in Co. Wexford
Let them
not forget us, the weak souls among the asphodels.
—Seferis, Mythistorema
(for J.
G. Farrell)
—Seferis, Mythistorema
Peruvian mines, worked out and abandoned
To a slow clock of condensation,
An echo trapped for ever, and a flutter
Of wildflowers in the lift-shaft,
Indian compounds where the wind dances
And a door bangs with diminished confidence,
Lime crevices behind rippling rain barrels,
Dog corners for bone burials;
And in a disused shed in Co. Wexford,
Deep in the grounds of a burnt-out hotel,
Among the bathtubs and the washbasins
A thousand mushrooms crowd to a keyhole.
This is the one star in their firmament
Or frames a star within a star.
What should they do there but desire?
So many days beyond the rhododendrons
With the world waltzing in its bowl of cloud,
They have learnt patience and silence
Listening to the rooks querulous in the high wood.
They have been waiting for us in a foetor
Of vegetable sweat since civil war days,
Since the gravel-crunching, interminable departure
Of the expropriated mycologist.
He never came back, and light since then
Is a keyhole rusting gently after rain.
Spiders have spun, flies dusted to mildew
And once a day, perhaps, they have heard something —
A trickle of masonry, a shout from the blue
Or a lorry changing gear at the end of the lane.
There have been deaths, the pale flesh flaking
Into the earth that nourished it;
And nightmares, born of these and the grim
Dominion of stale air and rank moisture.
Those nearest the door grow strong —
‘Elbow room! Elbow room!’
The rest, dim in a twilight of crumbling
Utensils and broken pitchers, groaning
For their deliverance, have been so long
Expectant that there is left only the posture.
A half century, without visitors, in the dark —
Poor preparation for the cracking lock
And creak of hinges; magi, moonmen,
Powdery prisoners of the old regime,
Web-throated, stalked like triffids, racked by drought
And insomnia, only the ghost of a scream
At the flash-bulb firing-squad we wake them with
Shows there is life yet in their feverish forms.
Grown beyond nature now, soft food for worms,
They lift frail heads in gravity and good faith.
They are begging us, you see, in their wordless way,
To do something, to speak on their behalf
Or at least not to close the door again.
Lost people of Treblinka and Pompeii!
‘Save us, save us,’ they seem to say,
‘Let the god not abandon us
Who have come so far in darkness and in pain.
We too had our lives to live.
You with your light meter and relaxed itinerary,
Let not our naive labours have been in vain!’
The
Terminal Bar
(for Philip Haas)
The television set hung
in its wire-net cage,
protected from the flung
bottles of casual rage,
is fetish and icon
providing all we want
of magic and redemption,
routine and sentiment.
The year-old tinsels hang
where an unclaimed no-hoper
trembles; fly-corpses cling
to the grimy flypaper.
Manhattan snows swarm
on star-boxed waters,
steam trails from warm
subway ventilators . . .
Welcome to the planet,
its fluorescent beers
buzzing in the desolate
silence of the spheres.
Slam the door and knock
the snow from your shoe,
admit that the vast dark
at last defeated you.
Nobody found the Grail
or conquered outer space;
join the clientele
watching itself increase.
(for Philip Haas)
The television set hung
in its wire-net cage,
protected from the flung
bottles of casual rage,
is fetish and icon
providing all we want
of magic and redemption,
routine and sentiment.
The year-old tinsels hang
where an unclaimed no-hoper
trembles; fly-corpses cling
to the grimy flypaper.
Manhattan snows swarm
on star-boxed waters,
steam trails from warm
subway ventilators . . .
Welcome to the planet,
its fluorescent beers
buzzing in the desolate
silence of the spheres.
Slam the door and knock
the snow from your shoe,
admit that the vast dark
at last defeated you.
Nobody found the Grail
or conquered outer space;
join the clientele
watching itself increase.
Achill
im chaonaí uaigneach nach mór go bhfeicim an lá
im chaonaí uaigneach nach mór go bhfeicim an lá
I lie and imagine a first light gleam in the bay
After one more night of erosion and nearer the grave,
Then stand and gaze from the window at break of day
As a shearwater skims the ridge of an incoming wave;
And I think of my son a dolphin in the Aegean,
A sprite among sails knife-bright in a seasonal wind,
And wish he were here where currachs walk on the ocean
To ease with his talk the solitude locked in my mind.
I sit on a stone after lunch and consider the glow
Of the sun through mist, a pearl bulb containèdly fierce;
A rain-shower darkens the schist for a minute or so
Then it drifts away and the sloe-black patches disperse.
Croagh Patrick towers like Naxos over the water
And I think of my daughter at work on her difficult art
And wish she were with me now between thrush and plover,
Wild thyme and sea-thrift, to lift the weight from my heart.
The young sit smoking and laughing on the bridge at evening
Like birds on a telephone pole or notes on a score.
A tin whistle squeals in the parlour, once more it is raining,
Turf-smoke inclines and a wind whines under the door;
And I lie and imagine the lights going on in the harbor
Of white-housed Náousa, your clear definition at night,
And wish you were here to upstage my disconsolate labour
As I glance through a few thin pages and switch off the light.
A Siren
(after Saba)
Anyone
watching you in the water would think: ‘A siren!’
Winner in the women’s swimming event, you seem
strange on the screen of my inglorious life.
While you smile in triumph I tie a thread,
a thin unbreakable thing, to your toe
but you stride past without noticing me.
Your friends, young like yourself, crowd round
and make a noise in the bar; and then
just for a moment cloud-shadow, a grave
motherly shadow shivers down from your
eyebrows to the proud, beautiful chin
and joins your rising to my own setting sun.
Winner in the women’s swimming event, you seem
strange on the screen of my inglorious life.
While you smile in triumph I tie a thread,
a thin unbreakable thing, to your toe
but you stride past without noticing me.
Your friends, young like yourself, crowd round
and make a noise in the bar; and then
just for a moment cloud-shadow, a grave
motherly shadow shivers down from your
eyebrows to the proud, beautiful chin
and joins your rising to my own setting sun.
Aphrodite's
Pool
I dive
and rise in an explosion of spindrift
and drift to a turtle-faced inflatable raft -
evening, Cyclades, one cloud in the azure,
a brain-scan light-show swarming on blue tiles,
and drift to a turtle-faced inflatable raft -
evening, Cyclades, one cloud in the azure,
a brain-scan light-show swarming on blue tiles,
a
flickering network of vague energies
as on dolphin murals and docked caique bows,
a murmuring hosepipe where the pool fills,
snatches of music from a quiet house,
the wash-house like a temple to the Muses;
on a marble slab flipper and apple core,
straw hat and wristwatch in a deckchair,
sandal and white sock. Nymphs have been here;
water nymphs have been here printing the blind
nap-time silence with supernatural toes
and casting magic on the ruffled water
still agitated by a dry seasonal wind.
A last plane fades beyond the glittering sound,
its wild surf-boards and somnolent fishing-boats,
as the air fills with cicadas and mosquitoes,
the sky with sunset and astronomy; goats
and donkeys nod in the god-familiar hills
among spaceship vertebrae and white asphodels.
The prone body is mine, that of a satyr,
a fat, unbronzed, incongruous visitor
under the fairy lights and paper frills
of a birthday party I was too late to attend.
Aloof from the disco ships and buzzing bikes
the pool ticks faintly among quiet rocks;
rose petals on the surface and in the air,
mimosa and jasmine fragrance everywhere,
I flirt like some corrupt, capricious emperor
with insects dithering on the rim; for this
is the mythic moment of metamorphosis
when quantitive becomes qualitative and genes
perform their atom-dance of mad mutation . . .
I climb out, shower off chlorine and sun-lotion,
and a hot turquoise underwater light
glows like Atlantis in the Aegean night;
network, stars-of-the-sea, perpetual motion,
a star-net hums in the aphrodisiac sea-lanes.
as on dolphin murals and docked caique bows,
a murmuring hosepipe where the pool fills,
snatches of music from a quiet house,
the wash-house like a temple to the Muses;
on a marble slab flipper and apple core,
straw hat and wristwatch in a deckchair,
sandal and white sock. Nymphs have been here;
water nymphs have been here printing the blind
nap-time silence with supernatural toes
and casting magic on the ruffled water
still agitated by a dry seasonal wind.
A last plane fades beyond the glittering sound,
its wild surf-boards and somnolent fishing-boats,
as the air fills with cicadas and mosquitoes,
the sky with sunset and astronomy; goats
and donkeys nod in the god-familiar hills
among spaceship vertebrae and white asphodels.
The prone body is mine, that of a satyr,
a fat, unbronzed, incongruous visitor
under the fairy lights and paper frills
of a birthday party I was too late to attend.
Aloof from the disco ships and buzzing bikes
the pool ticks faintly among quiet rocks;
rose petals on the surface and in the air,
mimosa and jasmine fragrance everywhere,
I flirt like some corrupt, capricious emperor
with insects dithering on the rim; for this
is the mythic moment of metamorphosis
when quantitive becomes qualitative and genes
perform their atom-dance of mad mutation . . .
I climb out, shower off chlorine and sun-lotion,
and a hot turquoise underwater light
glows like Atlantis in the Aegean night;
network, stars-of-the-sea, perpetual motion,
a star-net hums in the aphrodisiac sea-lanes.
Heraclitus
on Rivers
Nobody
steps into the same river twice.
The same river is never the same
Because that is the nature of water.
Similarly your changing metabolism
Means that you are no longer you.
The cells die, and the precise
Configuration of the heavenly bodies
When she told you she loved you
Will not come again in this lifetime.
You will
tell me that you have executed
A monument more lasting than bronze;
But even bronze is perishable.
Your best poem, you know the one I mean,
The very language in which the poem
Was written, and the idea of language,
All these things will pass away in time.
The same river is never the same
Because that is the nature of water.
Similarly your changing metabolism
Means that you are no longer you.
The cells die, and the precise
Configuration of the heavenly bodies
When she told you she loved you
Will not come again in this lifetime.
A monument more lasting than bronze;
But even bronze is perishable.
Your best poem, you know the one I mean,
The very language in which the poem
Was written, and the idea of language,
All these things will pass away in time.
Leaves
The prisoners of infinite choice
Have built their house
In a field below the wood
And are at peace.
It is autumn, and dead leaves
On their way to the river
Scratch like birds at the windows
Or tick on the road.
Somewhere there is an afterlife
Of dead leaves,
A stadium filled with an infinite
Rustling and sighing.
Somewhere in the heaven
Of lost futures
The lives we might have lived
Have found their own fulfilment.
The prisoners of infinite choice
Have built their house
In a field below the wood
And are at peace.
It is autumn, and dead leaves
On their way to the river
Scratch like birds at the windows
Or tick on the road.
Somewhere there is an afterlife
Of dead leaves,
A stadium filled with an infinite
Rustling and sighing.
Somewhere in the heaven
Of lost futures
The lives we might have lived
Have found their own fulfilment.
Please
I built my house
in a forest far
from the venal roar.
Somebody please
beat a path
to my door.
The Last
of the Fire Kings
I want to be
Like the man who descends
At two milk churns
With a bulging
String bag and vanishes
Where the lane turns,
Or the man
Who drops at night
From a moving train
And strikes out over the fields
Where fireflies glow
Not knowing a word of the language.
Either way, I am
Through with history --
Who lives by the sword
Dies by the sword.
Last of the fire kings, I shall
Break with tradition and
Die by my own hand
Rather then perpetuate
The barbarous cycle.
Five years I have reigned
During which-time
I have lain awake each night
And prowled by day
In the sacred grove
For fear of the usurper,
Perfecting my cold dream
Of a place out of time,
A palace of porcelain
Where the frugivorous
Inheritors recline
In their rich fabrics
Far from the sea.
But the fire-loving
People, rightly perhaps,
Will not countenance this,
Demanding that I inhabit,
Like them, a world of
Sirens, bin-lids
And bricked-up windows—
Not to release them
From the ancient curse
But to die their creature and be thankful.
I want to be
Like the man who descends
At two milk churns
With a bulging
String bag and vanishes
Where the lane turns,
Or the man
Who drops at night
From a moving train
And strikes out over the fields
Where fireflies glow
Not knowing a word of the language.
Either way, I am
Through with history --
Who lives by the sword
Dies by the sword.
Last of the fire kings, I shall
Break with tradition and
Die by my own hand
Rather then perpetuate
The barbarous cycle.
Five years I have reigned
During which-time
I have lain awake each night
And prowled by day
In the sacred grove
For fear of the usurper,
Perfecting my cold dream
Of a place out of time,
A palace of porcelain
Where the frugivorous
Inheritors recline
In their rich fabrics
Far from the sea.
But the fire-loving
People, rightly perhaps,
Will not countenance this,
Demanding that I inhabit,
Like them, a world of
Sirens, bin-lids
And bricked-up windows—
Not to release them
From the ancient curse
But to die their creature and be thankful.
Lives
(for Seamus Heaney)
First time out
I was a torc of gold
And wept tears of the sun.
That was fun
But they buried me
In the earth two thousand years
Till a labourer
Turned me up with a pick
In eighteen fifty-four.
Once I was an oar
But stuck in the shore
To mark the place of a grave
When the lost ship
Sailed away. I thought
Of Ithaca, but soon decayed.
The time that I liked
Best was when
I was a bump of clay
In a Navaho rug,
Put there to mitigate
The too god-like
Perfection of that
Merely human artifact.
I served my maker well —
He lived long
To be struck down in
Denver by an electric shock
The night the lights
Went out in Europe
Never to shine again.
So many lives,
So many things to remember!
I was a stone in Tibet,
A tongue of bark
At the heart of Africa
Growing darker and darker . . .
It all seems
A little unreal now,
Now that I am
An anthropologist
With my own
Credit card, dictaphone,
Army-surplus boots
And a whole boatload
Of photographic equipment.
I know too much
To be anything any more;
And if in the distant
Future someone
Thinks he has once been me
As I am today,
Let him revise
His insolent ontology
Or teach himself to pray.
(for Seamus Heaney)
First time out
I was a torc of gold
And wept tears of the sun.
That was fun
But they buried me
In the earth two thousand years
Till a labourer
Turned me up with a pick
In eighteen fifty-four.
Once I was an oar
But stuck in the shore
To mark the place of a grave
When the lost ship
Sailed away. I thought
Of Ithaca, but soon decayed.
The time that I liked
Best was when
I was a bump of clay
In a Navaho rug,
Put there to mitigate
The too god-like
Perfection of that
Merely human artifact.
I served my maker well —
He lived long
To be struck down in
Denver by an electric shock
The night the lights
Went out in Europe
Never to shine again.
So many lives,
So many things to remember!
I was a stone in Tibet,
A tongue of bark
At the heart of Africa
Growing darker and darker . . .
It all seems
A little unreal now,
Now that I am
An anthropologist
With my own
Credit card, dictaphone,
Army-surplus boots
And a whole boatload
Of photographic equipment.
I know too much
To be anything any more;
And if in the distant
Future someone
Thinks he has once been me
As I am today,
Let him revise
His insolent ontology
Or teach himself to pray.
Afterlives
(for James Simmons)
1
I wake in a dark flat
To the soft roar of the world.
Pigeons neck on the white
Roofs as I draw the curtains
And look out over London
Rain-fresh in the morning light.
This is our element, the bright
Reason on which we rely
For the long-term solutions.
The orators yap, and guns
Go off in a back street;
But the faith doesn’t die
That in our time these things
Will amaze the literate children
In their non-sectarian schools
And the dark places be
Ablaze with love and poetry
When the power of good prevails.
What middle-class shits we are
To imagine for one second
That our privileged ideals
Are divine wisdom, and the dim
Forms that kneel at noon
In the city not ourselves.
2
I am going home by sea
For the first time in years.
Somebody thumbs a guitar
On the dark deck, while a gull
Dreams at the masthead,
The moon-splashed waves exult.
At dawn the ship trembles, turns
In a wide arc to back
Shuddering up the grey lough
Past lightship and buoy,
Slipway and dry dock
Where a naked bulb burns;
And I step ashore in a fine rain
To a city so changed
By five years of war
I scarcely recognize
The places I grew up in,
The faces that try to explain.
But the hills are still the same
Grey-blue above Belfast.
Perhaps if I’d stayed behind
And lived it bomb by bomb
I might have grown up at last
And learnt what is meant by home.
(for James Simmons)
1
I wake in a dark flat
To the soft roar of the world.
Pigeons neck on the white
Roofs as I draw the curtains
And look out over London
Rain-fresh in the morning light.
This is our element, the bright
Reason on which we rely
For the long-term solutions.
The orators yap, and guns
Go off in a back street;
But the faith doesn’t die
That in our time these things
Will amaze the literate children
In their non-sectarian schools
And the dark places be
Ablaze with love and poetry
When the power of good prevails.
What middle-class shits we are
To imagine for one second
That our privileged ideals
Are divine wisdom, and the dim
Forms that kneel at noon
In the city not ourselves.
2
I am going home by sea
For the first time in years.
Somebody thumbs a guitar
On the dark deck, while a gull
Dreams at the masthead,
The moon-splashed waves exult.
At dawn the ship trembles, turns
In a wide arc to back
Shuddering up the grey lough
Past lightship and buoy,
Slipway and dry dock
Where a naked bulb burns;
And I step ashore in a fine rain
To a city so changed
By five years of war
I scarcely recognize
The places I grew up in,
The faces that try to explain.
But the hills are still the same
Grey-blue above Belfast.
Perhaps if I’d stayed behind
And lived it bomb by bomb
I might have grown up at last
And learnt what is meant by home.
My
Wicked Uncle
It was
my first funeral.
Some loss of status as a nephew since
Dictates that i recall
My numbness, my grandfather's hesitance,
My five aunts busy in the hall.
I found
him closeted with living souls-
Coffined to perfection in the bedroom
Death had deprived him of his mustache,
His thick horn-rimmed spectacles,
The easy corners of his salesman dash
(Those things by which I had remembered him)
And sundered him behind unnatural gauze.
His hair was badly parted on the right
As if for Sunday school. That night
I saw my uncle as he really was.
The
narrative he dispensed was mostly
Wicked avuncular fantasy-
He went in for waistcoats and haircream.
But something about him
Demanded that you picture the surprise
Of the chairman of the board, when to
'What will you have with your whiskey?' my uncle replies-
'Another whiskey, please.'
Once he
was jailed in New York
Twice on the same day-
The crookedest chief steward in the Head Line.
And once (he affected communism)
He brought the whole crew out on strike
In protest at the loss of a day's pay
Crossing the international date line.
The
buried him slowly above the sea,
The young Presbyerian minister
Rumpled and windy in the sea air.
A most absorbing ceremony-
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
I saw
sheep huddled in the long wet grass
Of the golf-course, and the empty freighters
Sailing for ever down Belfast Lough
In a fine rain, their sirens going,
As the gradual graph of my uncle's life and
Times dipped precipitately
Into the bowels of Carnmoney Cemetery.
His
teenage kids are growing horns and claws-
More wicked already than ever my uncle was.
Some loss of status as a nephew since
Dictates that i recall
My numbness, my grandfather's hesitance,
My five aunts busy in the hall.
Coffined to perfection in the bedroom
Death had deprived him of his mustache,
His thick horn-rimmed spectacles,
The easy corners of his salesman dash
(Those things by which I had remembered him)
And sundered him behind unnatural gauze.
His hair was badly parted on the right
As if for Sunday school. That night
I saw my uncle as he really was.
Wicked avuncular fantasy-
He went in for waistcoats and haircream.
But something about him
Demanded that you picture the surprise
Of the chairman of the board, when to
'What will you have with your whiskey?' my uncle replies-
'Another whiskey, please.'
Twice on the same day-
The crookedest chief steward in the Head Line.
And once (he affected communism)
He brought the whole crew out on strike
In protest at the loss of a day's pay
Crossing the international date line.
The young Presbyerian minister
Rumpled and windy in the sea air.
A most absorbing ceremony-
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Of the golf-course, and the empty freighters
Sailing for ever down Belfast Lough
In a fine rain, their sirens going,
As the gradual graph of my uncle's life and
Times dipped precipitately
Into the bowels of Carnmoney Cemetery.
More wicked already than ever my uncle was.
Spring
in Belfast
Walking
among my own this windy morning
In a tide of sunlight between shower and shower,
I resume my old conspiracy with the wet
Stone and the unwieldy images of the squinting heart.
Once more, as before, I remember not to forget.
There is
a perverse pride in being on the side
Of the fallen angels and refusing to get up.
We could all be saved by keeping an eye on the hill
At the top of every street, for there it is,
Eternally, if irrelevantly, visible —
But
yield instead to the humorous formulae,
The spurious mystery in the knowing nod;
Or we keep sullen silence in light and shade,
Rehearsing our astute salvations under
The cold gaze of a sanctimonious God.
One part
of my mind must learn to know its place.
The things that happen in the kitchen houses
And echoing back streets of this desperate city
Should engage more than my casual interest,
Exact more interest than my casual pity.
In a tide of sunlight between shower and shower,
I resume my old conspiracy with the wet
Stone and the unwieldy images of the squinting heart.
Once more, as before, I remember not to forget.
Of the fallen angels and refusing to get up.
We could all be saved by keeping an eye on the hill
At the top of every street, for there it is,
Eternally, if irrelevantly, visible —
The spurious mystery in the knowing nod;
Or we keep sullen silence in light and shade,
Rehearsing our astute salvations under
The cold gaze of a sanctimonious God.
The things that happen in the kitchen houses
And echoing back streets of this desperate city
Should engage more than my casual interest,
Exact more interest than my casual pity.
After
the Titanic
And humbled me at the inquiry. I tell you
I sank as far that night as any
Hero. As I sat shivering on the dark water
I turned to ice to hear my costly
Life go thundering down in a pandemonium of
Prams, pianos, sideboards, winches,
Boilers bursting and shredded ragtime. Now I hide
In a lonely house behind the sea
Where the tide leaves broken toys and hatboxes
Silently at my door. The showers of
April, flowers of May mean nothing to me, nor the
Late light of June, when my gardener
Describes to strangers how the old man stays in bed
On seaward mornings after nights of
Wind, takes his cocaine and will see no one. Then it is
I drown again with all those dim
Lost faces I never understood, my poor soul
Screams out in the starlight, heart
Breaks loose and rolls down like a stone.
Include me in your lamentations.
The
Thunder Shower
A blink
of lightning, then
a rumor, a grumble of white rain
growing in volume, rustling over the ground,
drenching the gravel in a wash of sound.
Drops tap like timpani or shine
like quavers on a line.
It rings
on exposed tin,
a suite for water, wind and bin,
plinky Poulenc or strongly groaning Brahms'
rain-strings, a whole string section that describes
the very shapes of thought in warm
self-referential vibes
and
spreading ripples. Soon
the whispering roar is a recital.
Jostling rain-crowds, clamorous and vital,
struggle in runnels through the afternoon.
The rhythm becomes a regular beat;
steam rises, body heat—
and now
there's city noise,
bits of recorded pop and rock,
the drums, the strident electronic shock,
a vast polyphony, the dense refrain
of wailing siren, truck and train
and incoherent cries.
All
human life is there
in the unconfined, continuous crash
whose slow, diffused implosions gather up
car radios and alarms, the honk and beep,
and tiny voices in a crèche
piercing the muggy air.
Squalor
and decadence,
the rackety global-franchise rush,
oil wars and water wars, the diatonic
crescendo of a cascading world economy
are audible in the hectic thrash
of this luxurious cadence.
The
voice of Baal explodes,
raging and rumbling round the clouds,
frantic to crush the self-sufficient spaces
and re-impose his failed hegemony
in Canaan before moving on
to other simpler places.
At
length the twining chords
run thin, a watery sun shines out,
the deluge slowly ceases, the guttural chant
subsides; a thrush sings, and discordant thirds
diminish like an exhausted concert
on the subdominant.
The
angry downpour swarms
growling to far-flung fields and farms.
The drains are still alive with trickling water,
a few last drops drip from a broken gutter;
but the storm that created so much fuss
has lost interest in us.
a rumor, a grumble of white rain
growing in volume, rustling over the ground,
drenching the gravel in a wash of sound.
Drops tap like timpani or shine
like quavers on a line.
a suite for water, wind and bin,
plinky Poulenc or strongly groaning Brahms'
rain-strings, a whole string section that describes
the very shapes of thought in warm
self-referential vibes
the whispering roar is a recital.
Jostling rain-crowds, clamorous and vital,
struggle in runnels through the afternoon.
The rhythm becomes a regular beat;
steam rises, body heat—
bits of recorded pop and rock,
the drums, the strident electronic shock,
a vast polyphony, the dense refrain
of wailing siren, truck and train
and incoherent cries.
in the unconfined, continuous crash
whose slow, diffused implosions gather up
car radios and alarms, the honk and beep,
and tiny voices in a crèche
piercing the muggy air.
the rackety global-franchise rush,
oil wars and water wars, the diatonic
crescendo of a cascading world economy
are audible in the hectic thrash
of this luxurious cadence.
raging and rumbling round the clouds,
frantic to crush the self-sufficient spaces
and re-impose his failed hegemony
in Canaan before moving on
to other simpler places.
run thin, a watery sun shines out,
the deluge slowly ceases, the guttural chant
subsides; a thrush sings, and discordant thirds
diminish like an exhausted concert
on the subdominant.
growling to far-flung fields and farms.
The drains are still alive with trickling water,
a few last drops drip from a broken gutter;
but the storm that created so much fuss
has lost interest in us.
Noon at
St. Michael's
Nurses
and nuns —
their sails whiter than those
of the yachts in the bay, they come and go
on winged feet, most of them, or in sensible shoes.
July, and I should be climbing among stones
or diving, but for broken bones,
from the rocks below.
I try to
read
a new novel set aside;
but a sword-swift pain
in the left shoulderblade, the result
of a tumble in Sheridan Square, makes reading difficult:
writing you can do in your head.
It starts to rain
on the
sea,
suddenly dark, the pier,
the gardens and the church spires of Dun Laoghaire.
You would think it was suddenly October
as smoke flaps, the yachts tack violently
and those caught in the downpour
run for cover.
But in a
few
minutes the sun shines again,
the leaves and hedges glisten as if with dew
in that fragrant freshness after rain
when the world seems made anew
before confusion, before pain;
and I think of you,
a
funny-face
but solemn, with the sharpest mind I know,
a thoughtful creature of unconscious grace
bent to your books in the sun or driving down
to New York for an evening on the town.
Doors open wherever you go
in that furious place;
for you
are the light
rising on lost islands, the spéir-bhean
the old poets saw gleam in the morning mist.
When you walk down Fifth Avenue in your lavender suit,
your pony eyes opaque, I am the one
beside you, and life is bright
with the finest and best.
And I
have seen,
as you have not, such is your modesty,
men turn to watch your tangle of golden hair,
your graceful carriage and unhurried air
as if you belonged to history
of ‘her story', that mystery.
You might have been
a saint
or a great
courtesan, anachronistic now
in some ways, in some ways more up-to-date
than the most advanced of those we know.
While you sit on your sun-porch in Connecticut
re-reading Yeats in a feminist light
I am there with you.
their sails whiter than those
of the yachts in the bay, they come and go
on winged feet, most of them, or in sensible shoes.
July, and I should be climbing among stones
or diving, but for broken bones,
from the rocks below.
a new novel set aside;
but a sword-swift pain
in the left shoulderblade, the result
of a tumble in Sheridan Square, makes reading difficult:
writing you can do in your head.
It starts to rain
suddenly dark, the pier,
the gardens and the church spires of Dun Laoghaire.
You would think it was suddenly October
as smoke flaps, the yachts tack violently
and those caught in the downpour
run for cover.
minutes the sun shines again,
the leaves and hedges glisten as if with dew
in that fragrant freshness after rain
when the world seems made anew
before confusion, before pain;
and I think of you,
but solemn, with the sharpest mind I know,
a thoughtful creature of unconscious grace
bent to your books in the sun or driving down
to New York for an evening on the town.
Doors open wherever you go
in that furious place;
rising on lost islands, the spéir-bhean
the old poets saw gleam in the morning mist.
When you walk down Fifth Avenue in your lavender suit,
your pony eyes opaque, I am the one
beside you, and life is bright
with the finest and best.
as you have not, such is your modesty,
men turn to watch your tangle of golden hair,
your graceful carriage and unhurried air
as if you belonged to history
of ‘her story', that mystery.
You might have been
courtesan, anachronistic now
in some ways, in some ways more up-to-date
than the most advanced of those we know.
While you sit on your sun-porch in Connecticut
re-reading Yeats in a feminist light
I am there with you.
The others nod, pretending not to know.
At the heart of the ridiculous, the sublime.
goading his ghost into the howling snow;
He is just going outside and may be some time.
And frostbite is replaced by vertigo:
At the heart of the ridiculous, the sublime.
This numb self-sacrifice of the weakest? No,
He is just going outside and may be some time –
Though the night yield no glimmer there will glow,
At the heart of the ridiculous, the sublime.
Quietly, knowing it is time to go:
‘I am just going outside and may be some time.’
At the heart of the ridiculous, the sublime.
The facts of life conspired
to block action, tie tongue; nothing
came out as I intended.
in the lost grin,
the poker-faced elision.
I shall act and speak
with a freedom denied me
by the life we know.
Derek Mahon, * Belfast, November 23, 1941 - Cork, † October 1, 2020
About the poet and his work.
Derek
Mahon. Poetry Foundation
On Derek
Mahon. By Declan Ryan. Los Angeles Review of Books, December 5, 2020.
Derk
Mahon Obituary. By Sean O ’Brien. The Guardian, October 9, 2020
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