the quiver, and beside it the straight new bow
with its unused string, the bird net
spread, the pannier upright,
he ate the last of his food
– all except, oddly, a sloe –
then lay on his uninjured side
in the best available shelter
and pillowed his head, while the snow
(which would lull and warm him)
spiralled out of the night and marked,
as I’ve said, a change in the Tyrol,
a climatic glitch which lasted 5,000 years
until the thaw on the glacier two summers ago
brought him to our attention,
then here to the Institute;
so that, although I can tell you
nothing of his gods or language,
almost nothing of his way of life,
whether he was shepherd, headman,
or shaman, the last of his village
or employed on some delicate embassy;
whether he moved in the forest
among spirits and shades
or was himself almost a shadow
who with a visceral roar
fell on a victim and bludgeoned
his brains, whether on a raid
he would satisfy his need with a woman or child
or, contrariwise, was himself
husband and father,
a tender of flocks in the epoch
of transhumance: gregarious, hierarchical,
a transmitter of geographical lore,
of trails, cloud changes, windbreaks,
who sang at the camp fire –
though I can tell you nothing of this
I can tell exactly
how he died, how in his plight
he couldn’t string the green yew stave,
he couldn’t ignite the tinder
to roast the songbirds
and, from the decalcified traces
on the humerus, I can tell
he kept, those last weeks, one arm
crooked, in a virtual sling,
thus giving the broken ribs time
to knit (as indeed they were doing)
and can guess, in the interim, he hoped
for an Indian summer of nuts, mushrooms, fruit,
a fire not quite dead,
even a maggot-ridden carcass;
and for a hand with the bow stave
he would have given in exchange his knife
or his coloured tassel with its marble bead,
that one inutile item polished
so spherical and white
it seems, like the sloe,
extraneous … but everything
comes down to the sloe, the uneaten sloe:
herders from Anatolia to the Ötzal,
even to the present day, pick
these sour, purplish almost pith-less fruits
and, like my Grandfather Bögelmann
when he dropped one in his fob,
they say ‘A frost will sweeten it’
– so it is grave goods, viaticum,
food for the soul on its journey,
in its flight from the tip
of the punctured heel or the slit
tattooed into the lumbar,
and when the temperature drops
and the body’s anaesthetized,
as the brain sinks into its reverie
of log fires and song,
of dripping fat and tree sap,
even as the skin adheres to the earth,
the tannins and acids disintegrate
so that now, as I put the sloe back in the ice,
I tell you it is edible,
that, by morning, it was sweet.
from The Idylls
2
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.
‘The steam tractor was a great change,’ the trucker answered. ‘And then the motor car. But the greatest of all to my mind was the cutter-and-binder.’
‘That was a great change,’ my father said. ‘And you, Alf, what would you say?’
‘When the dam was built at Ardnacrusha it flooded farmland in seven parishes,’ said the Gully.
‘Yes, that was a great and a terrible change,’ my father agreed. ‘Moss, you’ve seen more than any of us. What’s your opinion?’
‘Women’s fashion,’ the forester replied. ‘Girls these days in next to nothing at Mass.’
My father nodded, ‘That too is a great change.’ And the rest chipped in and everyone had a different opinion about what was the greatest change in their lifetime: television, the creamery, penicillin, Shannon airport, the price of stout, false teeth, tourists, the electric fence, plastic bags, weedkiller.
‘There are a lot of changes,’ my father said.
Moss turned to him, ‘Tell us, Martin, what you think.’
My father fished in his inside pocket and took out a small framed photo of a woman in a wide hat and veil, smiling happily.
‘That,’ he said, ‘is my mother on her honeymoon.’
DENNIS O’DRISCOLL
(b.1954)
from Churchyard View: The New Estate
Taking it all with us,
we move in.
*
On their side, inviolable silence.
On ours, hammering, pounding,
sawing, clawing out foundations
with the frenzy of someone buried alive.
*
We like our dead well-seasoned.
Newly-ground soil disturbs.
*
She could wind him round her little finger
that is now solid bone.
*
My halogen light with sensor
alert for resurrections.
*
Our houses, giant mausoleums,
dwarf their tombs to kennels.
*
Crab-apple windfalls
at the cemetery wall
no one collects for jelly.
*
The churchyard in shadow
like a north-facing garden.
*
A lip-puffed, ear-blocked, glow-nosed
head cold is what they feel nostalgia for.
*
How much it took to sustain their lives:
heaps of gravel, travel coupons, steel pads,
roll-on deodorants, bran flakes, tampons.
*
The dead seem more at ease in autumn
as the time to hibernate comes near.
*
In our pine bed, we hear them stirring
when floorboards creak, pipes cheep.
*
The prehensile clasp of the dead
grasping at prayer books
with straw-yellow claws.
*
Not a footprint dipped in churchyard snow.
*
The child’s coffin
like a violin case.
A pitch which parents’ ears
can hear through clay.
*
Scan the obit columns, uniform as war graves.
Check the maiden names, the regretting children.
Whole cities and towns wiped out.
A plague on all your houses.
*
Above prison-high walls,
the trees – up to their knees
in slaughter – protest their innocence
to the outside world.
*
Add the total suffering of these bodies.
Deduct their combined pleasure.
What doth it profit a man?
*
I stare at the graves
like a sailor gazing out to sea.
THOMAS MCCARTHY
(b.1954)
Ellen Tobin
McCarthy
You were as psychic as my father
was confused. Nowadays I am haunted
by you and the menagerie of ghosts –
they are wings of loneliness.
*
Life was a mystery to you –
domestic life was a form of magic:
you always watched the ring of a cooker
as if it was the aurora borealis.
*
A gun behind the picture of The Sacred Heart;
the fear of uniforms. Your half-brother
lost a foot in some Monaghan skirmish –
our poor Republic! The poor always cop it.
*
Why should I love this dead town?
You were humiliated unto death.
The Rich wouldn’t touch us with a ten-foot
pole, or even a number nine iron.
*
In moments of weakness when I believe in God
instead of the anarchist ideologue, Christ,
I recall the frightening of women by priests,
their Maria Corelli faces, their pitiful beads.
*
You are sitting in my father’s lap;
it is a cold day in late October –
you rediscovered each other near the end,
but not before you broke our hearts.
*
I watch the minutes passing away:
the minutes are like bark of olearia
blowing along the grass after a storm:
each bark a negative of your dead face.
*
There is a fire burning in the bedroom
the night before my First Communion.
You re-enter, again and again,
to absorb the anointed firelight.
*
To be lucky in love is the best thing,
you insisted. Better than all the wealth
in Dungarvan. Which is why
you switched fiancés at seventeen.
*
I must have seen you crying often
after a Friday morning deluge of bills;
but it is your girl’s infectious laugh
that reaches here through the years.
*
Leaves blown against the gutter,
bloodied leaves of Virginia creeper;
an untrained growth is void of conversation,
sterile as an unexamined life.
*
The Dáil assembles for a new session;
there’s a Deputy still in prison.
How quickly you would have lit candles
for Gregory, as you did for Noel Browne.
*
Suffering anointed you for death.
You were adored at seventeen;
at thirty-seven you had the weight of love –
you were Mary without Elizabeth.
*
I visit your grave for the first time,
Nel, mother. The hardened earth
brings countless humiliations to mind –
no mystical blackbirds, no sparrows.
The Standing Trains
… and I thought how wonderful to miss one’s connections; soon I shall miss them all the time.
Louis MacNeice, The Strings Are False
From the windows of a standing train
you can judge the artwork of our poor Republic.
The prominent ruins that make Limerick Junction
seem like Dresden in 1945
and the beaten-up coaches at Mallow Station,
the rusted side-tracks at Charleville,
have taken years of independent thought.
It takes decades to destroy a system
of stations. On the other hand, a few
well-placed hand-signals can destroy a whole
mode of life, a network of happiness.
This is our own Republic! O Memory,
O Patria, the shame of silenced junctions.
Time knew we’d rip the rails apart, we’d sell
emigrant tickets even while stripping
the ticket-office bare. The standing trains
of the future were backed against a wall.
Two hens peck seed from the bright platform,
hens roost in the signal-box.
Bilingual signs that caused a debate in the Senate
have been unbolted and used as gates:
it’s late summer now in this dead station.
When I was twelve they unbolted the rails.
Now there’s only the ghost of my father,
standing by the parcel-shed with his ghostly
suitcase. When he sees me walking towards him
he becomes upset. Don’t stop here! he cries.
Keep going, keep going! This place is dead.
RITA ANN HIGGINS
(b.1955)
Black Dog in My Docs Day
Your mother rings from your grave.
I say where are you?
She says, I’m at Michael’s grave
and it looks lovely today.
Duffy misses you,
Jennifer Lydon misses you.
You were grand until depression
slipped into your shoes –
after that you dragged your feet
big long giraffe strides. Slim-2 Speed.
When depression slept
you were up for anything,
go for it and you went for it –
times you got it, other times you lost it,
you didn’t play the lyre,
you played the horses,
lady luck was often with you
you never looked back
William and Lara miss you.
When you were a few months old
I went to see you in hospital,
you had meningitis.
The nurse told me that I had to leave,
I told her you were my nephew,
she said you still had meningitis.
You had days months and years to go,
the crowd in Maxwell’s miss you.
When your mother said,
Michael started school today
I thought you were too young,
you grew up without telling us,
you went to sleep small,
when you got up
you were kitchen-table tall,
you had fourteen years to go.
A messer in your Communion photos,
leaning against the wall in hidden valley
arms akimbo, one foot behind the other,
you were ready to trip the light fantastic
the body of Christ.
Odd times in Castle Park
when you were passing the house,
I’d said, Michael wait up
you’d say, no way José!
I’ve got the black dog in my shoes
I have to drag him half way across Ireland,
I have to do it today and it must be raining.
Our Jennifer misses you
Christy misses the long chats with you,
he wished you didn’t talk so much in the bookies,
Heather misses you,
Larry didn’t know you
but Larry misses you because Heather misses you.
Eleven years to go you dyed your hair,
your uncles didn’t know you,
they didn’t know what they were missing.
No school wanted you.
You wanted Nirvana, you wanted The Doors,
you wanted shoes you didn’t have to drag
you wanted hush puppies or Gandhi’s flip-flops
instead you got Docs with a difference
the joy-roy gang miss you.
For your Confirmation
you took Hercules as your middle name,
you wanted a sweatshirt and baggy pants,
you left your mother and George at the church,
kiss me there you said to your mother
pointing to your cheek
and you
were off with your friends,
soldier of Christ.
Auntie Mary and Aidan miss you,
Johnny misses you,
Caroline Keady misses you.
Móinín na gCiseach Tech said you failed maths,
you went in yourself to set the record straight.
Your mother has the letter of apology the school sent.
No school wanted the boy with blue hair
Dana C. and Caroline L. miss you.
You did the junior cert
with ‘Dóchas an Óige’,
we went down on open day,
you made us cranky buns,
real conversation stoppers.
Bobby and Shane miss you.
The day you and I filled in
your passport application
your shoes were empty
except for your long dreamy feet,
they matched your fanciful answers.
Name: Michael drop-dead-gorgeous Mullins.
Who do you want to be when you grow up?
A rolling fucking stone baby
Keith The Buckfast Kid misses you,
Margaret and John miss you.
The black dog came and went,
he didn’t answer to Lassie
but when you said, hey Cerberus!
an idiotic grin came over his dogface.
The tea-leaf who just got out misses you.
When I visited you in the Psych first
you were outside sitting next to
a bucketful of cigarette ends.
I said you’d need to cut down
on the fags or you’d end up killing yourself.
We laughed till we nearly cried.
Granny Bernie misses you
Alice and Brendan miss you
you had a year left give or take.
You talked a lot about your daughter Erin,
she was eighteen months you were eighteen years.
You were here she was over there.
You called to Father Frankie
and asked if one day you could have Erin baptized,
you were soaking to the skin that day,
you were always walking in the rain,
docs filled with despair day,
black dog in my Docs day.
Jackie from the Psych misses you.
The day you got out for the last time
you and I walked from our house to Carnmore.
We had a drink at the crossroads
You weren’t supposed to with the medication.
Fuck it you said if all those smarties I took
didn’t kill me a pint of pissie beer hardly will.
You showed me round the house,
you said it was spooky
and if you were going to top yourself
it would be here you’d do it, and you did.
Auntie Carmel in Florida misses you,
Jennifer said you had a girlfriend,
The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry Page 73
