Then patter in and out of airless rooms;
Trip stairs; slam door; and stamp along the street,
Slapping the solid reticence of day.
Tomorrow forgotten, in the often gay
Visit of night, I thankfully retreat
Into a gloomy hazard, like the tomb’s.
Art
Imagination is off paddling among rocks
while thought is pulling on its morning socks
or rummaging for words in drawer and box.
Give over. Art is easy. All awards –
(out of the fog, the bog, and the slaughter yards) –
no going back to those masks, those muddy discards;
finished the novitiate in dank jungles of terrestrial
fevers, where lightnings mocked what thunder guessed at.
Crazed, self-entangled, whither have I not fled –
In dark tumble-down ablution houses of the dead
at wild sudden recognitions hung my head.
But art has escaped – to holy colour, close music, power –
to grace and virtue,
to the far-come dew
on the precise flower.
JAMES JOYCE
Buy a book in brown paper
Buy a book in brown paper
From Faber and Faber
To see Annie Liffey trip, tumble and caper.
Sevensinns in her singthings,
Plurabells on her prose,
Seashell ebb music wayriver she flows.
from Finnegans Wake
The Ondt and the Gracehoper
He larved ond he larved on he merd such a nauses
The Gracehoper feared he would mixplace his fauces.
I forgive you, grondt Ondt, said the Gracehoper, weeping,
For their sukes of the sakes you are safe in whose keeping.
Teach Floh and Luse polkas, show Bienie where’s sweet
And be sure Vespatilla fines fat ones to heat.
As I once played the piper I must now pay the count
So saida to Moyhammlet and marhaba to your Mount!
Let who likes lump above so what flies be a full ’un;
I could not feel moregruggy if this was prompollen.
I pick up your reproof, the horsegift of a friend,
For the prize of your save is the price of my spend.
Can castwhores pulladeftkiss if oldpollocks forsake ’em
Or Culex feel etchy if Pulex don’t wake him?
A locus to loue, a term it t’embarass,
These twain are the twins that tick Homo Vulgaris.
Has Aquileone nort winged to go syf
Since the Gwyfyn we were in his farrest drewbryf
And that Accident Man not beseeked where his story ends
Since longsephyring sighs sought heartseast for their orience?
We are Wastenot with Want, precondamned, two and true,
Till Nolans go volants and Bruneyes come blue.
Ere those gidflirts now gadding you quit your mocks for my gropes
An extense must impull, an elapse must elopes,
Of my tectucs takestock, tinktact, and ail’s weal;
As I view by your farlook hale yourself to my heal.
Partiprise my thinwhins whiles my blink points unbroken on
Your whole’s whercabroads with Tout’s trightyright token on.
My in risible universe youdly haud find
Sulch oxtrabeeforeness meat soveal behind.
Your feats end enormous, your volumes immense,
(May the Graces I hoped for sing your Ondtship song sense!),
Your genus its worldwide, your spacest sublime!
But, Holy Saltmartin, why can’t you beat time?
AUSTIN CLARKE
(1896–1974)
The Lost Heifer
When the black herds of the rain were grazing
In the gap of the pure cold wind
And the watery hazes of the hazel
Brought her into my mind,
I thought of the last honey by the water
That no hive can find.
Brightness was drenching through the branches
When she wandered again,
Turning the silver out of dark grasses
Where the skylark had lain,
And her voice coming softly over the meadow
Was the mist becoming rain.
The Planter’s Daughter
When night stirred at sea
And the fire brought a crowd in,
They say that her beauty
Was music in mouth
And few in the candlelight
Thought her too proud,
For the house of the planter
Is known by the trees.
Men that had seen her
Drank deep and were silent,
The women were speaking
Wherever she went –
As a bell that is rung
Or a wonder told shyly,
And O she was the Sunday
In every week.
The Straying Student
On a holy day when sails were blowing southward,
A bishop sang the Mass at Inishmore,
Men took one side, their wives were on the other
But I heard the woman coming from the shore:
And wild in despair my parents cried aloud
For they saw the vision draw me to the doorway.
Long had she lived in Rome when Popes were bad,
The wealth of every age she makes her own,
Yet smiled on me in eager admiration,
And for a summer taught me all I know,
Banishing shame with her great laugh that rang
As if a pillar caught it back alone.
I learned the prouder counsel of her throat,
My mind was growing bold as light in Greece;
And when in sleep her stirring limbs were shown,
I blessed the noonday rock that knew no tree:
And for an hour the mountain was her throne,
Although her eyes were bright with mockery.
They say I was sent back from Salamanca
And failed in logic, but I wrote her praise
Nine times upon a college wall in France.
She laid her hand at darkfall on my page
That I might read the heavens in a glance
And I knew every star the Moors have named.
Awake or in my sleep, I have no peace now,
Before the ball is struck, my breath has gone,
And yet I tremble lest she may deceive me
And leave me in this land, where every woman’s son
Must carry his own coffin and believe,
In dread, all that the clergy teach the young.
Penal Law
Burn Ovid with the rest. Lovers will find
A hedge-school for themselves and learn by heart
All that the clergy banish from the mind,
When hands are joined and head bows in the dark.
Martha Blake at Fifty-one
Early, each morning, Martha Blake
Walked, angeling the road,
To Mass in the Church of the Three Patrons.
Sanctuary lamp glowed
And the clerk halo’ed the candles
On the High Altar. She knelt
Illumined. In gold-hemmed alb,
The priest intoned. Wax melted.
Waiting for daily Communion, bowed head
At rail, she hears a murmur.
Latin is near. In a sweet cloud
That cherub’d, all occurred.
The voice went by. To her pure thought,
Body was a distress
And soul, a sigh. Behind her denture,
Love lay, a helplessness.
Then, slowly walking after Mass
Down Rathgar Road, she took out
Her Yale key, put a match to gas-ring,
Half filled a saucepan, cooked
A fresh egg light
ly, with tea, brown bread,
Soon, taking off her blouse
And skirt, she rested, pressing the Crown
Of Thorns until she drowsed.
In her black hat, stockings, she passed
Nylons to a nearby shop
And purchased, daily, with downcast eyes,
Fillet of steak or a chop.
She simmered it on a low jet,
Having a poor appetite,
Yet never for an hour felt better
From dilatation, tightness.
She suffered from dropped stomach, heartburn
Scalding, water-brash
And when she brought her wind up, turning
Red with the weight of mashed
Potato, mint could not relieve her.
In vain her many belches,
For all below was swelling, heaving
Wamble, gurgle, squelch.
She lay on the sofa with legs up,
A decade on her lip,
At four o’clock, taking a cup
Of lukewarm water, sip
By sip, but still her daily food
Repeated and the bile
Tormented her. In a blue hood,
The Virgin sadly smiled.
When she looked up, the Saviour showed
His Heart, daggered with flame
And, from the mantle-shelf, St Joseph
Bent, disapproving. Vainly
She prayed, for in the whatnot corner,
The new Pope was frowning. Night
And day, dull pain, as in her corns,
Recounted every bite.
She thought of St Teresa, floating
On motes of a sunbeam,
Carmelite with scatterful robes,
Surrounded by demons,
Small black boys in their skin. She gaped
At Hell: a muddy passage
That led to nothing, queer in shape,
A cupboard closely fastened.
Sometimes, the walls of the parlour
Would fade away. No plod
Of feet, rattle of van, in Garville
Road. Soul now gone abroad
Where saints, like medieval serfs,
Had laboured. Great sun-flower shone.
Our Lady’s Chapel was borne by seraphs,
Three leagues beyond Ancona.
High towns of Italy, the plain
Of France, were known to Martha
As she read in a holy book. The sky-blaze
Nooned at Padua,
Marble grotto of Bernadette.
Rose-scatterers. New saints
In tropical Africa where the tsetse
Fly probes, the forest taints.
Teresa had heard the Lutherans
Howling on red-hot spit,
And grill, men who had searched for truth
Alone in Holy Writ.
So Martha, fearful of flame lashing
Those heretics, each instant,
Never dealt in the haberdashery
Shop, owned by two Protestants.
In ambush of night, an angel wounded
The Spaniard to the heart
With iron tip on fire. Swooning
With pain and bliss as a dart
Moved up and down within her bowels
Quicker, quicker, each cell
Sweating as if rubbed up with towels,
Her spirit rose and fell.
St John of the Cross, her friend, in prison
Awaits the bridal night,
Paler than lilies, his wizened skin
Flowers. In fifths of flight,
Senses beyond seraphic thought,
In that divinest clasp,
Enfolding of kisses that cauterize,
Yield to the soul-spasm.
Cunning in body had come to hate
All this and stirred by mischief
Haled Martha from heaven. Heart palpitates
And terror in her stiffens.
Heart misses one beat, two … flutters … stops.
Her ears are full of sound.
Half fainting, she stares at the grandfather clock
As if it were overwound.
The fit had come. Ill-natured flesh
Despised her soul. No bending
Could ease rib. Around her heart, pressure
Of wind grew worse. Again,
Again, armchaired without relief,
She eructated, phelgm
In mouth, forgot the woe, the grief,
Foretold at Bethlehem.
Tired of the same faces, side-altars,
She went to the Carmelite Church
At Johnson’s Court, confessed her faults,
There, once a week, purchased
Tea, butter in Chatham St. The pond
In St Stephen’s Green was grand.
She watched the seagulls, ducks, black swan,
Went home by the 15 tram.
Her beads in hand, Martha became
A member of the Third Order,
Saved from long purgatorial pain,
Brown habit and white cord
Her own when cerges had been lit
Around her coffin. She got
Ninety-five pounds on loan for her bit
Of clay in the common plot.
Often she thought of a quiet sick-ward,
Nuns, with delicious ways,
Consoling the miserable: quick
Tea, toast on trays. Wishing
To rid themselves of her, kind neighbours
Sent for the ambulance,
Before her brother and sister could hurry
To help her. Big gate clanged.
No medical examination
For the new patient. Doctor
Had gone to Cork on holidays.
Telephone sprang. Hall-lock
Proclaimed the quarters. Clatter of heels
On tiles. Corridor, ward,
A-whirr with the electric cleaner,
The creak of window cord.
She could not sleep at night. Feeble
And old, two women raved
And cried to God. She held her beads.
O how could she be saved?
The hospital had this and that rule.
Day-chill unshuttered. Nun, with
Thermometer in reticule,
Went by. The women mumbled.
Mother Superior believed
That she was obstinate, self-willed.
Sisters ignored her, hands-in-sleeves,
Beside a pantry shelf
Or counting pillow-case, soiled sheet.
They gave her purgatives.
Soul-less, she tottered to the toilet.
Only her body lived.
Wasted by colitis, refused
The daily sacrament
By regulation, forbidden use
Of bed-pan, when meals were sent up,
Behind a screen, she lay, shivering,
Unable to eat. The soup
Was greasy, mutton, beef or liver,
Cold. Kitchen has no scruples.
The Nuns had let the field in front
As an Amusement Park,
Merry-go-round, a noisy month, all
Heltering-skeltering at darkfall,
Mechanical music, dipper, hold-tights,
Rifle-crack, crash of dodgems.
The ward, godless with shadow, lights,
How could she pray to God?
Unpitied, wasting with diarrhea
And the constant strain,
Poor Child of Mary with one idea,
She ruptured a small vein,
Bled inwardly to jazz. No priest
Came. She had been anointed
Two days before, yet knew no peace:
Her last breath, disappointed.
A Strong Wind
All day a strong wind blew
Across the green and brown from Kerry.
The leaves hurrying, two
By three, over the road, collected
In chattering groups. New ber
ry
Dipped with old branch. Careful insects
Flew low behind their hedges.
Held back by her pretty petticoat,
Butterfly struggled. A bit of
Paper, on which a schoolgirl had written
‘Máire loves Jimmy’, jumped up
Into a tree. Tapping in haste,
The wind was telegraphing, hundreds
Of miles. All Ireland raced.
New Liberty Hall
Higher than county lark
Can fly, a speck that sings,
Sixteen-floored Liberty Hall
Goes up through scaffoldings
In memory of Larkin,
Shot Connolly. With cap
On simple head, hallmark
Of sweat, new capitalists
Rent out expensive suites
Of glassier offices,
Babel’d above our streets,
The unemployed may scoff, but
Workers must skimp and scrape
To own so fine a skyscraper,
Beyond the dream of Gandon,
Shaming the Custom House
The giant crane, the gantries.
Labour is now accustomed
To higher living. Railing
Is gone that I leaned against
To watch that figure, tall and lean,
Jim Larkin, shouting, railing.
Why should he give a damn
That day for English grammar,
Arm-waving, eloquent?
On top, a green pagoda
Has glorified cement,
Umbrella’d the sun. Go, da,
And shiver in your tenement.
F. R. HIGGINS
(1896–1941)
Song for the Clatter-bones
God rest that Jewy woman,
Queen Jezebel, the bitch
Who peeled the clothes from her shoulder-bones
Down to her spent teats
As she stretched out of the window
Among the geraniums, where
She chaffed and laughed like one half daft
Titivating her painted hair –
King Jehu he drove to her,
She tipped him a fancy beck;
But he from his knacky side-car spoke,
‘Who’ll break that dewlapped neck?’
And so she was thrown from the window;
Like Lucifer she fell
Beneath the feet of the horses and they beat
The light out of Jezebel.
That corpse wasn’t planted in clover;
Ah, nothing of her was found
Save those grey bones that Hare-foot Mike
Gave me for their lovely sound;
The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry Page 55
