first cousin once removed . . .”
We all mull over that, me looking out
at the incredible display of clouds
that jam up the Irish sky in ever
more complicated ways, creating that
just-before-a-storm-begins deep silvery
light I always loved when I was a kid
& still do & would always stop
whatever I was doing to sit and stare
as I’m doing now, this is me, doing
what I always loved to do, attracted
to this view as if I knew it & these
two men who seem to know it, & therefore,
maybe me, too—& finally our host says,
“You know, Michael lives out
in California near Hollywood
& works sometimes in the fill-im business”
& without missing a beat Paddy says “I
hear that business isn’t doing so good
these days” & then goes on to say “Maybe
you’d remember who said, after shaking
hands on a deal, ‘This contract isn’t
worth the paper it’s written on’” &
I smile & say “Sam Goldwyn,” having read
maybe the same source he had,
& Paddy nods into his gnarled & cupped
hands & the cigarette smoke they
seem to embrace “Aye, that’d be Mister
Goldwyn said that—would you like to
see where your grandfather lived?”
The place is called “Tallyho Cross”
because it’s where they once kept
the kennels for the hunting dogs
back when the landlords ruled
this land & my grandfather’s clan
lived in the thatched-roof cottage
Paddy grew up in & takes us to now—
someone else lived there until four
years ago, and now it’s on its way
to slow decay or what they call being
“knocked” for “knocked down” I guess,
like all the ruins that dot this
countryside, they don’t mean knocked
down by human hands, that would be
“tumbled,” an older term from harsher
times when that’s what the landlord
and British would do to those whose
meager potato crops might fail &
the law of the land would prevail,
being he who owns it gets to eat &
he who doesn’t gets to starve or
somehow get away to foreign lands—
But on this day I have returned from
one and as I stand before this ancient
peasant place where my grandfather
first faced the life he would live,
I remember a song my father would
sing as he shaved & gave himself his
morning “Jewish bath,” meaning splashing
water on himself from the stopped-up
tiny bathroom sink while we all waited
our turn, dreading the puddles we would
find but kind of digging the lines of
the music lilting our way from behind the
bathroom door, which were more or less:
“Oh my name is” I always thought he next
sang “Paddy Lee” but maybe it was “Pat
Lally” and went on “I’m an Irishman you
see, I was born in County Galway, Tallyho—”
I always thought that last was some
sort of exclamation, not a place, but
here it is, the ancestral home, not
even a bone’s throw from where the kennels
once stood & now I stand, & Paddy
explains how the old thatch roof cottage
won’t last much longer because when
the fire goes out—a flame that
may have burned unrelentingly for
centuries, can you imagine?—
the moisture seeps in and begins to
make the place uninhabitable &
slowly it begins to rot and then
cave in, but not before I made it
here to see it & to stand before it
on the dark green grass fed by these
manic clouds and it all feels so
familiar in ways I would have dismissed
if you’d told me all this just days
before—& then there was more.
More time just being ourselves, alone,
together there, in that damp crisp
brilliantly pure of pollution air,
until Paddy says “Would you like to
see the house where John Huston
lived?” & of course I say sure—
It’s nearby, one of the old “big
houses” that once was the landlords—
an Englishman lives there now but
that doesn’t stop my host from driving
up the long driveway as if it was
his own, or parking right before the
front door so we can get a good long
look—& Paddy tells a story of
the way it was in the days of the
landlords, when my grandfather was a
boy, when two boys, much like he
must have been, decide to ambush the
landlord on his way home, so they
wait by the road for him to pass
as he does every day, only two hours
after he should have come the one
turns to the other & says “I hope
the poor man hasn’t had an accident”
—& the humor in that, if you can’t
see it is, that he meant it, & so
did his friend, as Paddy said “That’s
the way they were then” & sometimes
still are, because they would shoot
the man just the same—oh what’s in
a name—
For the next few days Paddy takes me
around to meet others who might remember
my grandfather or more lore about the family
than he seems to care about but thinks I do—
like the 92-year-old woman whose memory
would be the longest in that small
place—her name is Rose like my
grandmother’s & she has a face that
glows with health & interest & a
sparkle in her eye that makes me think
she’s being flirtatious—she’s in
fine shape, as most of them seem to be,
despite the fatty ham they call bacon
& rashers & tons of bread & jam & quarts
of strong tea—in fact, she moves &
speaks & remembers local history like
the women back in L.A. who work out &
run & meditate half the day & are only
20- or 30-something—she lives alone
across the road from her daughter &
that daughter’s schoolaged farmer sons
& schoolteacher daughter & another one
who is a “scholar” too, as they call
all students here—they all seem
caught up in the details of their
history & more, the international farm &
political scene & their place in all that—
I’m surprised & delighted at how well
read they all seem to be—especially
Paddy—who is quiet, & much like a
man who lives alone, in the kitchens
of these homes he takes me to where
he is nonetheless treated with great
respect—as a “good man” a “decent
man” who never did anyone harm, but
sometimes did them good—& it seems
to be understood that dress &
appearance mean nothing in this
neighborhood—although the kids
look hip enough when they ge
t
dressed up to go dancing around 10—
that seems to be the style—
stay up late if you can & have a
good time & nobody will mind because
what else is life for but to sing
& dance & drink & eat & talk like
you didn’t care where the next dollar
or pound is coming from, even if some
of the talk would make you think
they do—although my host, a man
my age but with four kids still at
home, the one where I’m staying, says
“Ah, the rich don’t seem happy though,
now do they Michael?” & what can I say,
never really having been that way—
rich—myself, &—happy? I’m not
sure I even know what it means, though
it seems to be coming clearer as I sit
among these people maybe I can call my
own—
I could have stayed all night
in every country kitchen
Paddy took me to—or sat in the
car or waited out the rain in a
cow shed while he smoked & we
both lived in our heads & if I
spoke he would always reply with
a quote, not in any arrogant
show off way, but kind of shy,
as if to say, now what about
this, doesn’t this apply? that
somebody else said—& it always
did—the man quoted Bhudda
& Montezuma to me when I mentioned
stuff that had to do with peace
or Mexico—how did he know?—
this man who lived alone in the
middle of nowhere with no car,
just an old well-used bike, the few
neighborhood boys helping him out
by mowing the land around his
house so he could get in and out
to the road & him helping
others with this & that down in
the fields & the bogs in his old
dark-stained suit coat & unshaven
face & big gnarly hands & manly
smile—I fell in love with his
way & his manner & the fact that
he obviously was as addicted as I
am to words on the page as they
express worlds in the minds & the
lives of others so far from us—
I never knew—my father with his
seventh-grade education tried so hard
to be American he withdrew from
all that had to do with books,
except the Catholic ones, & I
somehow got the impression the people
I came from were illiterate & I
was the anomaly & would feel
fucked up for wanting to read &
write poetry & be who I am instead
of what my father thought America
wanted him to be—but now I know,
Paddy told me, that his grandfather,
my grandfather’s father Pat, loved
to read, & had a special fondness
for history, as so many here do,
not knowing who the latest “star”
in the USA might be, or caring,
but remembering some long gone
ancestral feat of only local renown
or the deeper nuances & subtleties of
the European story that never quite
reached this far, the very edge of
that world, facing the Atlantic that
I stick my hands into before I get
on the plane to go, the wind still
blowing & the rain coming & going,
and the water deep & dark with that
metallic hue, but it is unexpectedly
warm, as I am too despite the damp
& chill, I’m thinking of Paddy & the
moments spent alone, together, quiet,
or sharing some profound thought of his
he puts off on someone he has read—
& what he said when I asked if there
was anything I could send from “the
States” & he replied “what would I
need from there—” & I hesitatingly
suggest a book, and he lets me know,
as he already did a few days before,
that he’s only studying “the one book
now, for my final exam—” with that
manly smile, unafraid of who he is
or who I might be or am—ah, it was
a grand visit, as they might say, &
now I want to run away before I stay
forever . . .
OF
(Quiet Lion Press 1999)
from OF
People say things in their enthusiasm, and you
hear them in your need.
People—snow—the cold—
I forgot how the cold could heal you—
how soothing the snow can be—
I just want to live with true humility—
which somehow the snow falling teaches me—
I used to want to make you see
everything that mattered to me—
now—I just want to
let it be—
a part of—
I was a good looking man
I lived the life of a good looking man
sometimes that meant things—
some things—came easy—
sometimes that meant I was underestimated—
my anger—my fear—my need—my worth—
& sometimes that meant
I thought I had to do more than you
always
yeah sometimes is sometimes always—
& you are sometimes me—
& let it be means letting go—
& humility means be real & go slow—
& once is enough when it’s not even there
& sometimes everybody looks black
& everybody looks white—
& I’ve been a poet all my life
& it still means I have to
prove it—
People say things
from their enthusiasm
and I hear them
with my need
again & again
I miss the ones
I let go—of—
I wanted to be a man
with few regrets & no excuses
but but but but—
when I hear myself say
“my first wife”
it sounds like somebody
else’s life—I never meant
to be that kind of man—
I was this handsome
smart guy with an
eye for nothing that
wasn’t true romance
so how did I end up
alone with past lives
and ex-wives I never
intended to have—
& not even have any
good novels or plays
out of the whole deal—
yet—
yet—
I’m forty-fucking-seven
this ain’t no game—
this is heaven—
yes—
because the man said
“the kingdom of heaven is within”
& what’s coming out of there
is this so
this must be heaven or
the verbal expression
of
[ . . . ]
the other night
after our hike
in the new fallen snow
knee deep in places
across the pond
and up the hill to
the top and beyond
where she showed me
another of her special
places & we paused
to take in the
beauty & surrender to
the silence & the
<
br /> snow laden trees so
majestic & living hip—
accepting it all—even
their fall which can
only lead to ours—
their meditative presence
one day-long breath
& nightly exhalation
that frees us to breathe
that frees our breath—
the memory of what
that means, of what
that meant, left me
on the verge of tears
when we got back but
only because I felt so
grateful for my kids
& the overwhelming love
I feel for them I have
for them I am for them
no way to compare that
experience with any other
just the reality of the
love saying to myself
I love my children—now
grown—so much—the
world is not enough in
all its awesome calm &
beauty when approached
on days like this in
settings like these to
compare—it goes beyond
the new walls of galaxies
they keep finding out there—
beyond that sense of
wonder & gratitude that
makes us stand & stare
at natural gifts like
trees in winter snow
and the way a movie
star can glow even
in her own home
[ . . . ]
I couldn’t sleep til 3—
& when I woke I could see
the trees & hills we hiked in
out the window of the
room I’m in—& closer in
the biggest pines with
branches longer than this
room the lowest ones sweeping
the snow like edges of their
skirts reminding me of women
I never knew except in my head—
she calls them “the three sisters”
these majestic but sensual pines—
my heart climbs them like a
bird in love every time I look
at them in search of the word
to describe these ecstasies of—
“of”—
[ . . . ]
It’s January & outside there’s
still ten inches of snow but
in here there’s a fly that
just won’t go to sleep or
away—it keeps buzzing
& crashing into the lamp—
why?—why do I feel this
will be the year of more
death—in my family—the
one I grew up with at home
and in the home of my
heart—Barbara Stanwyck—
Ava Gardner—tough broads
who I should have known—
I thought I married one twice—
“tough broads”—but they weren’t
so tough—and they weren’t so
nice—sometimes—and neither
was I—and neither is she—
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