The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry

by Patrick Crotty (ed)

  Seems camped on before.

  The bogholes might be Atlantic seepage.

  The wet centre is bottomless.

  MICHAEL LONGLEY

  (b.1939)

  In Memoriam

  My father, let no similes eclipse

  Where crosses like some forest simplified

  Sink roots into my mind; the slow sands

  Of your history delay till through your eyes

  I read you like a book. Before you died,

  Re-enlisting with all the broken soldiers

  You bent beneath your rucksack, near collapse,

  In anecdote rehearsed and summarized

  These words I write in memory. Let yours

  And other heartbreaks play into my hands.

  Now I see in close-up, in my mind’s eye,

  The cracked and splintered dead for pity’s sake

  Each dismal evening predecease the sun,

  You, looking death and nightmare in the face

  With your kilt, harmonica and gun,

  Grow older in a flash, but none the wiser

  (Who, following the wrong queue at The Palace,

  Have joined the London Scottish by mistake),

  Your nineteen years uncertain if and why

  Belgium put the kibosh on the Kaiser.

  Between the corpses and the soup canteens

  You swooned away, watching your future spill.

  But, as it was, your proper funeral urn

  Had mercifully smashed to smithereens,

  To shrapnel shards that sliced your testicle.

  That instant I, your most unlikely son,

  In No Man’s Land was surely left for dead,

  Blotted out from your far horizon.

  As your voice now is locked inside my head,

  I yet was held secure, waiting my turn.

  Finally, that lousy war was over.

  Stranded in France and in need of proof

  You hunted down experimental lovers,

  Persuading chorus girls and countesses:

  This, father, the last confidence you spoke.

  In my twentieth year your old wounds woke

  As cancer. Lodging under the same roof

  Death was a visitor who hung about,

  Strewing the house with pills and bandages,

  Till he chose to put your spirit out.

  Though they overslept the sequence of events

  Which ended with the ambulance outside,

  You lingering in the hall, your bowels on fire,

  Tears in your eyes, and all your medals spent,

  I summon girls who packed at last and went

  Underground with you. Their souls again on hire,

  Now those lost wives as recreated brides

  Take shape before me, materialize.

  On the verge of light and happy legend

  They lift their skirts like blinds across your eyes.

  MICHAEL HARTNETT

  (1941–99)

  For My Grandmother, Bridget Halpin

  Maybe morning lightens over

  the coldest time in all the day,

  but not for you. A bird’s hover,

  seabird, blackbird, or bird of prey,

  was rain, or death, or lost cattle.

  The day’s warning, like red plovers

  so etched and small the clouded sky,

  was book to you, and true bible.

  You died in utter loneliness,

  your acres left to the childless.

  You never saw the animals

  of God, and the flower under

  your feet; and the trees change a leaf;

  and the red fur of a fox on

  a quiet evening; and the long

  birches falling down the hillside.

  Bread

  Her iron beats

  the smell of bread

  from damp linen,

  silver, crystal,

  and warm white things.

  Whatever bird

  I used to be,

  hawk or lapwing,

  tern, or something

  wild, fierce or shy,

  these birds are dead,

  and I come here

  on tiring wings.

  Odours of bread …

  from Notes on My Contemporaries

  1 The Poet Down

  for Patrick Kavanagh

  He sits between the doctor and the law.

  Neither can help. Barbiturate in paw

  one, whiskey in paw two, a dying man:

  the poet down, and his fell caravan.

  They laugh and they mistake the lash that lurks

  in his tongue for the honey of his works.

  The poet is at bay, the hounds baying,

  dig his grave with careful kindness, saying:

  ‘Another whiskey, and make it a large one!’

  Priests within, acolytes at the margin

  the red impaled bull’s roar must fascinate –

  they love the dead, the living man they hate.

  They were designing monuments – in case –

  and making furtive sketches of his face,

  and he could hear, above their straining laughs,

  the rustling foolscap of their epitaphs.

  DEREK MAHON

  (b.1941)

  Glengormley

  Wonders are many and none is more wonderful than man

  Who has tamed the terrier, trimmed the hedge

  And grasped the principle of the watering can.

  Clothes-pegs litter the window-ledge

  And the long ships lie in clover; washing lines

  Shake out white linen over the chalk thanes.

  Now we are safe from monsters, and the giants

  Who tore up sods twelve miles by six

  And hurled them out to sea to become islands

  Can worry us no more. The sticks

  And stones that once broke bones will not now harm

  A generation of such sense and charm.

  Only words hurt us now. No saint or hero,

  Landing at night from the conspiring seas,

  Brings dangerous tokens to the new era –

  Their sad names linger in the histories.

  The unreconciled, in their metaphysical pain,

  Dangle from lamp-posts in the dawn rain;

  And much dies with them. I should rather praise

  A worldly time under this worldly sky –

  The terrier-taming, garden-watering days

  Those heroes pictured as they struggled through

  The quick noose of their finite being.

  By Necessity, if not choice, I live here too.

  Ecclesiastes

  God, you could grow to love it, God-fearing, God-

  chosen purist little puritan that,

  for all your wiles and smiles, you are (the

  dank churches, the empty streets,

  the shipyard silence, the tied-up swings) and

  shelter your cold heart from the heat

  of the world, from woman-inquisition, from the

  bright eyes of children. Yes, you could

  wear black, drink water, nourish a fierce zeal

  with locusts and wild honey, and not

  feel called upon to understand and forgive

  but only to speak with a bleak

  afflatus, and love the January rains when they

  darken the dark doors and sink hard

  into the Antrim hills, the bog meadows, the heaped

  graves of your fathers. Bury that red

  bandana and stick, that banjo; this is your

  country, close one eye and be king.

  Your people await you, their heavy washing

  flaps for you in the housing estates –

  a credulous people. God, you could do it, God

  help you, stand on a corner stiff

  with rhetoric, promising nothing under the sun.

  EAVAN BOLAND

  (b.1944)

  From the
Painting Back from Market by Chardin

  Dressed in the colours of a country day –

  Grey-blue, blue-grey, the white of seagulls’ bodies –

  Chardin’s peasant woman

  Is to be found at all times in her short delay

  Of dreams, her eyes mixed

  Between love and market, empty flagons of wine

  At her feet, bread under her arm. He has fixed

  Her limbs in colour and her heart in line.

  In her right hand the hindlegs of a hare

  Peep from a cloth sack. Through the door

  Another woman moves

  In painted daylight. Nothing in this bare

  Closet has been lost

  Or changed. I think of what great art removes:

  Hazard and death. The future and the past.

  A woman’s secret history and her loves –

  And even the dawn market from whose bargaining

  She has just come back, where men and women

  Congregate and go

  Among the produce, learning to live from morning

  To next day, linked

  By a common impulse to survive, although

  In surging light they are single and distinct

  Like birds in the accumulating snow.

  VIII

  * * *

  TRANSFORMATIONS: 1971–2009

  Another day when they were sitting on the headland in the Small Fields, the men discussed the changes they had seen and a debate arose about what was the greatest change had happened in their lifetime.

  ‘What do you think?’ my father asked Dan-Jo.

  Maurice Riordan, ‘Idyll 2’

  AUSTIN CLARKE

  from Tiresias

  from II

  ‘Strolling one day, beyond the Kalends, on Mount Cyllene,

  What should I spy near the dusty track but a couple of sun-spotted

  Snakes – writhen together – flashen as they copulated,

  Dreamily! Curious about the origin of species, I touched them.

  Tunic shrank. I felt in alarm two ugly tumours

  Swell from my chest. Juno, our universal mother, you

  Know how easily a child wets the bed at night. Pardon

  Frankness in saying that my enlarged bladder let go.

  “Gods,” it

  Lamented, “has he become an unfortunate woman, humbled by

  Fate, yes, forced twice a day, to crouch down on her hunkers?

  Leaf-cutting bee affrights me, Ariadne within her web-rounds.”

  Timidly hidden as hamadryad against her oak-bark,

  I dared to pull up resisting tunic, expose my new breasts –

  Saw they were beautiful. Lightly I fingered the nipples

  And as they cherried, I felt below the burning answer;

  Still drenched, I glanced down, but only a modesty of auburn

  Curlets was there. If a man whose limb has been amputated

  Still feels the throb of cut arteries, could I forget now

  Prickle of pintel? Hour-long I grieved until full moonlight,

  Entering the forestry, silvered my breasts. They rose up so calmly,

  So proud, that peace – taking my hand in gladness – led me

  Home, escorted by lucciole.

  My mother wept loudly,

  Crying, “Forgive me, Tiresias, the fault is

  Mine alone for when I carried you in my womb, I

  Prayed at the local temple that Our Lady Lucina

  Might bestow on me a daughter.” Tear-in-smile, she hugged me,

  Kissing my lips and breasts, stood back with little starts of

  Admiration, hugged me again, spread out our late supper:

  Cake, sweet resin’d wine, put me to bed, whispered:

  “Twenty-five years ago, I chose the name of Pyrrha

  For you. Now I can use it at last.” She tucked me in, murmured

  “Pyrrha, my latecome Pyrrha, sleep better than I shall.”

  Next morning

  Gaily she said:

  “I must instruct you in domestic

  Economy, show you, dear daughter, how to make your own bed, lay

  Table, wash up, tidy the house, cook every sort of

  Meal, sew, darn, mend, do your hair, then find a well-off

  Husband for you. As a young man you have spent too many

  Hours in the study of history and science, never frequented

  Dance-hall, bull-ring, hurried, I fear, too often to the stews.”

  Laughter-in-sigh, she handed me a duster.

  One fine day

  During siesta I gazed in reverence at my naked

  Body, slim as a nespoli tree, dared to place my shaving

  Mirror of polished silver – a birthday gift from my mother –

  Between my legs, inspected this way and that, the fleshy

  Folds guarding the shortcut, red as my real lips, to Pleasure

  Pass. Next day I awoke in alarm, felt a trickle of blood half-

  Way down my thigh.

  “Mother,” I sobbed.

  “Our bold Penates

  Pricked me during sleep.”

  “Let me look at it, Pyrrha.”

  She laughed, then

  Said:

  “Why it’s nothing to worry about, my pet, all women

  Suffer this shame every month.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “That you are

  Ready for nuptial bliss.”

  And saying this, she cleansed, bandaged,

  Bound my flowers.

  When I recovered, a burning sensation

  Stayed. Restless at night, lying on my belly, I longed for

  Mortal or centaur to surprise me.

  One day during

  Siesta, I put on my tanagra dress, tightly

  Belted, with flouncy skirt, and carrying a blue mantle,

  Tiptoed from our home by shuttered window, barred shopfront,

  Local temple, took the second turn at the trivium,

  Reached a sultriness of hills.

  I went up a mule-track

  Through a high wood beyond the pasturage: a shepherd’s

  Bothy was there before me. I peeped, saw a bed of bracken

  Covered with a worn sheep-skin. I ventured in: listened,

  Heard far away clink-clank, clink-clank as a bell-wether

  Grazed with his flock while master and dog were myrtled

  Somewhere in the coolness. By now I had almost forgotten

  Much of my past, yet remembered the love-songs that shepherds

  Piped among rock-roses to pretty boy or shy goat-girl.

  Was it a pastoral air that had led me to this bothy?

  Surely I was mistaken. Paper-knife, pumice, goose-quill,

  Manuscripts, had been piled untidily together,

  Inkstand, wax tablets, small paint-brushes on a rustic

  Table.

  “A student lives here,”

  I thought,

  and half-undressing,

  Wearily spreading my cloak along the sheepskin,

  Lay on blueness, wondered as I closed my eyelids,

  “What will he do when he sees me in my déshabillé?”

  Soon

  Morpheus hid me in undreaming sleep until dusk. I woke up –

  Not in the arms of softness but underneath the gentle

  Weight of a naked youth.

  Vainly I called out, “Almighty

  Jove,” struggled against his rigid will-power.’

  ‘And yielded?’

  ‘Yes, for how could I stop him when I burned as he did?

  In what seemed less than a minute, I had been deflowered

  Without pleasure or pang. Once more, the young man mounted.

  Determined by every goddess in high heaven to share his

  Spilling, I twined, but just as I was about to …’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘He spent.

  O why should the spurren pleasure of expect
ant

  Woman be snaffled within a yard of the grand stand?

  While he was resting, I asked him:

  “What is your name?”

  “Chelos,

  Third-year student in Egyptology. Later

  I’ll show you rolled papyri, hieroglyphics,

  Tinted lettering, sand-yellow, Nilus-brown, reed-green,

  Outlined with hawk, horn, lotus-bud, sceptre, sun-circles,

  Crescent.”

  He told me of foreign wonders, the Colossus

  Guarding the harbour of Rhodes, his cod bulkier than a

  Well-filled freighter passing his shins, unfloodable

  Temples beyond Assuan, rock-treasuries, the Mountains

  Of the Moon, Alexandria and the Pharos –

  Night-light of shipping.

  Soon in a grotto-spring under fern-drip,

  Knee-deep, we sponged one another, back and side, laughing.

  Chelos faggoted, tricked the brazier from smoke to flame,

  while I

  Found in a cupboard cut of ibex, stewed it with carob

  Beans, sliced apple, onion, thyme-sprig. And so we had supper,

  Sharing a skin of Aetnian wine until the midnight

  Hour, then tiptoed tipsily back to our mantled love-bed.

  Drowsily entwined, we moved slowly, softly, withholding

  Ourselves in sweet delays until at last we yielded,

  Mingling our natural flow, feeling it almost linger

  Into our sleep.

  Stirred by the melilot daylight, I woke up.

  Chelos lay asprawl and I knew that he must be dreaming of me

  For he murmured “Pyrrha”. I fondled his ithyphallus, uncapped it,

  Saw for the first time the knob, a purply-red plum, yet firmer.

  Covering him like a man, I moved until he gripped:

  Faster, yet faster, we sped, determined down-thrust rivalling

  Up-thrust – succus glissading us – exquisite spasm

  Contracting, dilating, changed into minute preparatory

  Orgasms, a pleasure unknown to man, that culminated

  Within their narrowing circles into the great orgasmos.’

  RICHARD MURPHY

  Seals at High Island

  The calamity of seals begins with jaws.

  Born in caverns that reverberate

  With endless malice of the sea’s tongue

  Clacking on shingle, they learn to bark back