What we should do. He said: Take the ferry
Faute de mieux. We flicked the flashlight
And there was the ferryman just as Virgil
And Dante had seen him. He looked at us coldly
And his eyes were dead and his hands on the oar
Were black with obols and varicose veins
Marbled his calves and he said to us coldly:
If you want to die you will have to pay for it.
The Introduction
They were introduced in a grave glade
And she frightened him because she was young
And thus too late. Crawly crawly
Went the twigs above their heads and beneath
The grass beneath their feet the larvae
Split themselves laughing. Crawly crawly
Went the cloud above the treetops reaching
For a sun that lacked the nerve to set
And he frightened her because he was old
And thus too early. Crawly crawly
Went the string quartet that was tuning up
In the back of the mind. You two should have met
Long since, he said, or else not now.
The string quartet in the back of the mind
Was all tuned up with nowhere to go.
They were introduced in a green grave.
W. R. RODGERS
(1909–69)
The Net
Quick, woman, in your net
Catch the silver I fling!
O I am deep in your debt,
Draw tight, skin-tight, the string,
And rake the silver in.
No fisher ever yet
Drew such a cunning ring.
Ah, shifty as the fin
Of any fish this flesh
That, shaken to the shin,
Now shoals into your mesh,
Bursting to be held in;
Purse-proud and pebble-hard,
Its pence like shingle showered.
Open the haul, and shake
The fill of shillings free,
Let all the satchels break
And leap about the knee
In shoals of ecstasy.
Guineas and gills will flake
At each gull-plunge of me.
Though all the Angels, and
Saint Michael at their head,
Nightly contrive to stand
On guard about your bed,
Yet none dare take a hand,
But each can only spread
His eagle-eye instead.
But I, being man, can kiss
And bed-spread-eagle too;
All flesh shall come to this,
Being less than angel is,
Yet higher far in bliss
As it entwines with you.
Come, make no sound, my sweet;
Turn down the candid lamp
And draw the equal quilt
Over our naked guilt.
MÁIRTÍN Ó DIREÁIN
(1910–88)
End of an Era
My grief on the men of the stories
And the death that fells them!
The shawled women following
And I still alive
Anonymous amid the throng,
Without ‘Who’s he?’ on their lips
Or knowledge of my surname.
Never again will I try
To press friendship on grey stones!
There’s no welcome for me on the rock,
Hunting my youth on the way
Like Oisín on the crags,
Nor again along the foreshore
Lamenting the host of the dead.
PC
Sunday Memory
I see the Sunday sun beating
Down on the face of the ground
In the beloved island all afternoon;
Much stone, little clay
That’s the bleak island’s testimony,
The wretched inheritance of my people.
I see how the stone has cast each man,
And bruised him into its own shape.
And I see the crowd who forsook forever
Stone and clay and wretched inheritance,
And I see too each put-upon mother
Composing her brood like a poem to memorize.
PC
Strong Beams
Stand your ground, soul:
Hold fast to everything that’s rooted,
And don’t react like some pubescent boy
When your friends let you down.
Often you’ve seen a redshank
Lonely on a wet rock;
If he won no spoil from the wave
That was no cause for complaint.
You brought from your dark kingdom
No lucky caul on your head
But protective beams were placed
Firmly round your cradle.
Withered beams they placed round you,
Iron tongs above you,
A piece of your father’s clothes beside you
And a poker in the fire below.
Put your weight to your strong oar-beams
Against neap-tide and low water;
Preserve the spark of your vision –
Lose that and you’re finished.
PC
SEÁN Ó RÍORDÁIN
(1917–77)
Switch
‘Come here,’ said Turnbull, ‘till you see the sadness
In the horse’s eyes,
If you had such big hooves under you there’d be sadness
In your eyes too.’
It was clear that he understood so well the sadness
In the horse’s eyes,
And had pondered it so long that in the end he’d plunged
Into the horse’s mind.
I looked at the horse to see the sadness
Obvious in its eyes,
And saw Turnbull’s eyes looking in my direction
From the horse’s head.
I looked at Turnbull one last time
And saw on his face
Outsize eyes that were dumb with sadness –
The horse’s eyes.
PC
Despair
No dead men will leave the tomb
to seek out the confines of night or day.
Abandon your designs on them;
humble your bare head to the clay.
Don’t think you can put flesh on a wraith.
The beautiful was never true.
I know that My Redeemer lieth.
No pennies will fall from heaven for you.
You want a pooka to breathe down your neck,
and all the heavenly lies he’d spin.
You’ve settled for the hump on your back;
don’t let it spread to your brain.
Amidst your pooka shadowmancy
find the pooka truth and way.
Cast a hunchshadow all can see
and humble your bare head to the clay.
Make a show of yourself. The critic rates
the hunchshadowself you hide in
that once was laid between the sheets
to kiss while deafness blew from heaven.
And a gentle hand entombed and rotting,
a dream in a separate tomb imprisoned,
the dearest dream, the rarest thing,
in a deep tomb inside the mind,
and the black chalice of night drained low,
and a crooked sleep, tossed left and right,
while Veronica mopped His brow,
while the hunchback stripped bare in the night.
Hypocrite lecteur who read
the poem I beget on sickness,
try judging that and then decide
what failure is and what success.
David Wheatley
Claustrophobia
Next to the wine
Stand a candle and terror,
The statue of my Lord
Bereft of its power;
What�
�s left of the night
Is massing in the yard,
Night’s empire
Is outside the window;
If my candle fails
Despite my efforts
The night will leap
Right into my lungs,
My mind will collapse
And terror engulf me,
Taken over by night,
I’ll be darkness alive:
But if my candle lasts
Just this one night
I’ll be a republic of light
Until dawn.
PC
Fever
The mountains of the bed are high,
The sick-valley sultry with heat,
It’s a long way down to the floor,
And miles and miles further
To a world of work and leisure.
We’re in a land of sheets
Where chairs have no meaning,
But there was a time before this levelled time,
A walking time long ago,
When we were high as a window.
The picture on the wall is heaving,
The frame has liquefied,
Without faith I can’t hold it at bay,
Everything’s driving at me
And I feel the world falling away.
A whole district’s arriving from the sky,
A neighbourhood’s set up on my finger,
Easy now to grab a church –
There are cows on the northern road
And the cows of eternity are not so quiet.
PC
MÁIRE MHAC AN TSAOI
(b.1922)
Mary Hogan’s Quatrains
I
If I once got free of this net –
And God grant that won’t take too long –
I could maybe live on the memory
Of the ease I found in your arms.
When I learn again how to pray,
Hear Mass and go to Communion,
Who’ll say then it’s not right
To storm heaven for you and for me?
But a bit of advice in the meantime –
Don’t get too fondly attached;
For I am intent on breaking
Every bond there could ever be between us.
II
A fig for people’s opinions,
A fig for the priest’s interdictions,
For everything but lying stretched
Between you and the wall –
The freezing night is nothing,
And nothing the driving rain
To the secret world of warmth that spans
From one side of the bed to the other.
No need to think of the future
Nor of what has gone before –
Now is the hour, dear heart:
It will last until morning.
III
A whole year now I’ve spent
Stretched beneath your quilt,
It’s difficult at this stage to say
What I was hoping to gain!
Your feet trod all over
What was given so freely at first,
While you had never a thought for
What trampled flesh must endure.
And still the body submits
For the sake of an ancient promise,
But now that the song has been stilled in my heart
Delight ebbs from our love-making.
IV
The child of jealousy is suckling my breast
– He demands it by day and by night –
He’s an ugly whelp and he’s cutting his teeth,
Their grip fills my veins with poison.
Don’t let the little wretch divide us, love,
So wholesome and healthy was our mating;
Skin to skin our union’s guarantee,
Its seal a hand granted every freedom.
Look, I’ve no wish to deny affection,
Even if doubt’s roots have driven deep;
Don’t force a reliable mare, and she’ll
Serve you well in the future.
V
Pain is a wonderful thing!
How it wears out the rib-cage,
And gives no relief nor respite
By day or night –
The person in pain like me
Can never be solitary,
Carrying an eternal companion
Like a mother carrying her unborn child.
VI
‘I don’t sleep at night’ –
An easy boast, but who can measure
The weight of the night
On open eyes?
VII
How long tonight is!
There was once a night
We did not think long –
If I dare to remember.
The road I’d follow
Would be no hard road –
If return were permitted
After repentance.
Lying down for pleasure
And rising with delight
Such was our practice –
If I could only resume it.
PC
PEARSE HUTCHINSON
(b.1927)
Petition to Release
for Bert Achong
And they all go winding assiduously watches –
tiny, jewelled informers, time-jailers
(for time walked round, whipped round a prison-yard,
must find it hard, never achieving oblivion,
telling the world: Wait! and patting pillows).
And they all go winding deciduously watches –
for every twist of the wrist is a leaf loosened,
a life lessened, a lesson learnt, a letter burnt;
the tick-talk may gloss across the losing,
but not the loss. Who can fasten back the leaf?
relive the life? or forget the lesson?
or look at the letter unsigned as it puzzled the anguish
of the angry or penitent lover, while his watch
muttered warnings of late mornings, the witch?
I don’t know who the hell could get me to work,
a black boy goes boasting beside Mayaro Bay.
They may all go winding aciduously watches,
but I don’t know who the hell could get me to work,
for I’m sweet, not bitter – nor the sea to work,
for it’s strong, not petty. But the princess-pretty
thoughts you wear, singer, in your soft blue hair
we share behind our chained wrists and
our winding, assiduous, bitter, brittle days.
For someone stupid like a station-master,
a competent rebel, or a duck-faced emperor,
invented once in a wicked whoopee
espionage and prison against our friend –
el tiempo: amigo mio, nuestro amado.
And all the little ingredients went winding
themselves assiduously up, and finding fun.
Tempus Tyrannus, Tempus Rex,
only wears a crown upon his soft blue hair
(to hide it, so that wise-men declare him decrepit)
when the glass dungeons close out the sun
and the river and the white white girl with a rose
in her soft gold hair and the grinning beggar;
and they all go (the jewelled and brainless jailers),
winding
assiduously
watches
deciduously
chuckling.
RICHARD MURPHY
(b.1927)
Sailing to an Island
The boom above my knees lifts, and the boat
Drops, and the surge departs, departs, my cheek
Kissed and rejected, kissed, as the gaff sways
A tangent, cuts the infinite sky to red
Maps, and the mast draws eight and eight across
Measureless blue, the boatmen sing or sleep.
We point all day for our chosen island,
>
Clare, with its crags purpled by legend:
There under castles the hot O’Malleys,
Daughters of Granuaile, the pirate queen
Who boarded a Turk with a blunderbuss,
Comb red hair and assemble cattle.
Across the shelved Atlantic groundswell
Plumbed by the sun’s kingfisher rod,
We sail to locate in sea, earth and stone
The myth of a shrewd and brutal swordswoman
Who piously endowed an abbey.
Seven hours we try against wind and tide,
Tack and return, making no headway.
The north wind sticks like a gag in our teeth.
Encased in a mirage, steam on the water,
Loosely we coast where hideous rocks jag,
An acropolis of cormorants, an extinct
Volcano where spiders spin, a purgatory
Guarded by hags and bristled with breakers.
The breeze as we plunge slowly stiffens:
There are hills of sea between us and land,
Between our hopes and the island harbour.
A child vomits. The boat veers and bucks.
There is no refuge on the gannet’s cliff.
We are far, far out: the hull is rotten,
The spars are splitting, the rigging is frayed,
And our helmsman laughs uncautiously.
What of those who must earn their living
On the ribald face of a mad mistress?
We in holiday fashion know
This is the boat that belched its crew
Dead on the shingle in the Cleggan disaster.
Now she dips, and the sail hits the water.
She luffs to a squall; is struck; and shudders.
Someone is shouting. The boom, weak as scissors,
Has snapped. The boatman is praying.
Orders thunder and canvas cannonades.
She smothers in spray. We still have a mast;
The oar makes a boom. I am told to cut
Cords out of fishing-lines, fasten the jib.
Ropes lash my cheeks. Ease! Ease at last:
She swings to leeward, we can safely run.
Washed over rails our Clare Island dreams,
With storm behind us we straddle the wakeful
Waters that draw us headfast to Inishbofin.
The bows rock as she overtakes the surge.
The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry Page 59
