in his flesh a small revulsion, and held
*
hands against his crotch in fear. Paint the skin
a secret-linen white with a smart stubble of dirt. The first
fountain-pen, the paint-box, pristine tablets of Prussian Blue,
of Burnt Sienna – words
sounding in the soul like organ-music, Celeste and Diapason –
and that brush-tip, its animated bristles; he began at once
painting the dark night of grief, as if the squirrel’s tail
could empty the ocean onto sand. Life-
drawing, with naked girl, half-light of inherited faith,
colour it in, and rhyme it, blue. In the long library, stooped
over the desks, we read cosmology, the reasoning
of Aquinas; we would hold
the knowledge of the whole world within us. The dawn
chorus: laudetur Jesus Christus; and the smothered,
smothering answer: in aeternum. Amen. Loneliness
hanging about our frames, like cassocks. New
*
world, new day. It is hard to shake off darkness, the black
habit. The sky at sunset – fire-red, opening its mouth
to scream; questions of adulthood, exploration of the belly-flesh
of a lover. It was like
the rubbling of revered buildings, the moulding of words
into new shapes. In the cramped cab of a truck she, first time, fleshed
across his knees; the kiss, two separate, not singular,
alive. It was death already, prowling
at the dark edge of the wood, fangs bared, saliva-white.
Sometimes you fear insanity, the bridge humming to your scream
(oil, casein, pastel) but there is nobody to hear, the streaming river
only, and the streaming sky; soon
on a dark night, the woman tearing dumbly at her hair while you
gaze uselessly onto ashes. Helpless again you fear
woman: saint and whore and hapless devotee. Paint your words
deep violet, pale yellow,
*
the fear, Winter in Meath, Fugue, the Apotheosis of Desire.
The terror is not to be able to write. Naked and virginal
she embraced the skeleton and was gone. What, now,
is the colour of God is love
when they draw the artificial grass over the hole, the rains
hold steady, and the diggers wait impatiently under trees? Too long
disturbing presences were shadowing the page, the bleak
ego-walls, like old galvanize
round the festering; that artificial mess collapsing
down on her, releasing a small, essential spirit, secular
bone-structure, the fingers reaching out of need, no longer will.
Visceral edge of ocean,
wading things, the agitated ooze, women on the jetty
watching out to sea; at last, I, too, could look
out into the world again. The woman, dressed in blue, broke
from the group on the jetty and came
*
purposefully towards us, I watched through stained glass of the door,
and loved her. Mine the religion of poetry, the poetry
of religion, the worthy Academicians unwilling to realize
we don’t live off neglect. Is there
a way to understand the chaos of the human heart? our
slaughters, our carelessness, our unimaginable wars?
Without a God can we win some grace? Will our canvases,
their patterns and forms, their
rhymes and rhythms, supply a modicum of worth?
The old man dragged himself up the altar steps,
beginning the old rites; the thurible clashed against its chain;
we rose, dutifully, though they
have let us down again, holding their forts
against new hordes; I had hoped the canvas would be filled
with radiant colours, but the word God became a word
of scorn, easiest to ignore. We
*
came out again, our heartache unassuaged.
The high corral of the Academy, too, is loud with gossipers,
the ego-traffickers, nothing to be expected there. Self-
portrait, with grief
and darkening sky. Soon it will be the winter studio; a small
room, enclosed; you will sit, stilled, on a wooden chair, tweed
heavy about your frame, eyes focused inwards, where there is
no past, no future; you sit alone,
your papers in an ordered disarray; images stilled, like nests
emptied; the phone beside you will not ring; nor will the light
come on; everything depends on where your eyes
focus; when
the darkness comes, drawing its black
drape across the window, there will remain
the stillness of paint, words on the page, the laid down
instruments of your art.
EAVAN BOLAND
Mise Eire
I won’t go back to it –
my nation displaced
into old dactyls,
oaths made
by the animal tallows
of the candle –
land of the Gulf Stream,
the small farm,
the scalded memory,
the songs
that bandage up the history,
the words
that make a rhythm of the crime
where time is time past.
A palsy of regrets.
No. I won’t go back.
My roots are brutal:
I am the woman –
a sloven’s mix
of silk at the wrists,
a sort of dove-strut
in the precincts of the garrison –
who practises
the quick frictions,
the rictus of delight
and gets cambric for it,
rice-coloured silks.
I am the woman
in the gansy-coat
on board the ‘Mary Belle’,
in the huddling cold,
holding her half-dead baby to her
as the wind shifts East
and North over the dirty
waters of the wharf
mingling the immigrant
guttural with the vowels
of homesickness who neither
knows nor cares that
a new language
is a kind of scar
and heals after a while
into a passable imitation
of what went before.
PAUL DURCAN
(b.1944)
Ireland 1972
Next to the fresh grave of my belovèd grandmother
The grave of my first love murdered by my brother.
Ireland 1977
‘I’ve become so lonely, I could die’ – he writes,
The native who is an exile in his native land:
‘Do you hear me whispering to you across the Golden Vale?
Do you hear me bawling to you across the hearthrug?’
Give Him Bondi
Gerard enquires: ‘Is there anything you’d like to do
On your last day in Sydney?’
I reply: ‘I’d like to go to Bondi Beach.’
Too cautious to confess:
I’d like to swim at Bondi Beach.
Cautious not for fear of drowning in the sea
(I have been swimming since aged seven –
I’ve never thought of myself drowning –
Unseen, only other people drown)
But for fear of drowning in my own mortification –
An off-white northman in a sea of bronze loin-clothed men
With their bronze loin-clothed women.
As I step down onto the quartz sand of Bondi
I have t
o step around a young, topless virgin
Lying flat out on her back, eyes shut,
Each breast strewn askew her chest
Like a cone of cream gimleted with a currant
In a shock of its own slack:
Primeval Still Life awaiting the two Chardins,
Teilhard, Jean-Baptiste.
Will she one day
At the age of twenty-two
Not knowing she is not alone
With her infant twins in her arms
Commit suicide
On the newly carpeted staircase
Of her showcase home?
Please God open her closed eyes.
In our black slacks and long-sleeved white shirts
Gerard and I tip-toe up and down Bondi Beach
Like two corkscrewed, avid seminarians
On a day trip to the seaside.
Only that I, in a spasm of morning optimism,
Instead of underpants donned swimming briefs.
I feel – Gerard must also feel –
Estranged from our surroundings;
Teetering loners
Amid flocks of lovers,
Boys and girls
Skating precipices of surf.
In wistful exuberance resuscitating lives
Of priests, nuns, writers we have known –
Solvitur ambulando –
We promenade for an hour before
Gerard cries: ‘It’s nearly time to go.’
I am booked to recite to the pupils of his old school –
Robert Hughes’s old school, too –
And Mick Scott’s and Charlie Fraser’s –
St Ignatius’s at Riverview in North Sydney.
I gasp: ‘To hell with it – this is idiocy:
To be standing here at Bondi, not swimming.’
I yank down my trousers to expose black briefs –
Too brief, really –
Body-Glory briefs –
And Gerard coughs, smiles, splutters:
‘Well played, old chap –
Swim between the flags.’
He’ll stand guard over my little cache of manhood:
My wristwatch – my twentieth-century tag;
My white shirt folded in a sandwich;
My black slacks curled up in a chaste ball;
My black nylon socks twinned back to back;
My black leather slip-ons with fake gold studs.
I tumble out into the shallows where maybe twenty-five
Youths and maidens gay frolic
And I chin-dive and become a boy again –
A curly-headed blue-eyed fourteen year old
Leaping and whooping in the surf,
Romping into the rollers,
Somersaulting into the dumpers,
A surf-flirt in my element,
In the spray of the foliage of the sea.
Gerard patrols on the fringes of the foam
With his pants rolled up, snapping me
With a disposable Instamatic I’ve handed him.
I essay a breaststroke, but desist –
Being unfit, overweight, dead-beat.
Yesterday I flew in from Ayers Rock;
The day before alone in the low 30s
Humping five litres of water,
I trekked five miles in the Olgas.
Again I strike out, this time with an overarm
But after six or seven strokes flail up against
A barrage of exhaustion.
I spin over self-cossetingly on my spine,
My pudgy vertebrae,
And float, watching my toes:
Inspecting my toes
Strutting their stuff
On a catwalk of silver faucets,
Toenails pared and gleaming,
Their parings littering
A hotel bathroom floor
In the Northern Territory;
All ten toes of mine present and correct,
Pristine, pink, erect, perky,
Bouncing on a trampoline
Such is the buoyancy of Bondi.
This is my Theory of Floating
Which has served me well,
My Theory of Daydreaming.
If one may speak well of oneself
I may say I have not craved
Conquest or complacency
But exclusively
The existence of existence,
The survival of survival,
The dreaming of the day.
I did not climb Ayers Rock,
Not out of an excess of virtue
But out of a modicum of attention
To the signposts of the local people:
Please do not climb our sacred mountain.
It would have been a sin
Against the genetics
Of all the chromosomes of ethics
To have climbed Ayers Rock.
To float is to be on the whale’s back.
Gurgling to myself:
There she blows!
Only three weeks ago
In the company of Mary Clare Power
And Nicholas Shakespeare
On a motorboat off Fraser Island
In Queensland
From fifty yards away
I saw two humpback whales
Steeplechasing the waves, courting;
Rising up, cresting, plunging;
Flaunting their tattooed tails.
Toe-gazing, I go on chatting to myself:
Amn’t I a humpback too?
Mother shrieking at me: ‘Straighten up
Or you’ll get curvature of the spine
And you’ll be a humpback!’
She meant the Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Guy de Maupassant
Was her mother’s idol.
Why did my mother eat me?
Her mother minded me.
In my prime I could scoff
Back in one gulp
15,000 gallons of salt water
While continuing to speak
Ten to the dozen
About anything under the sun.
Never mind, this day is Elysium!
Alone to own and range
The bush of the sea.
How fortunate I am
Who in spite of all my loss and failure –
All my defeats quadrupling daily –
I find myself here floating at Bondi Beach –
A little, pale saffron, five-and-a-half dollar boomerang
In a black penis-purse.
I flip over my gaze upon the hard blue sky.
But I must not keep Gerard waiting.
Time to swim ashore, go on
With life’s obligation.
I flip over on my belly to swim
To see that I am twice as far out
As I should be! Pulled out to sea
While floating! Out of sight
Of the flags! But I’m an old hand
At swimming. Didn’t Uncle Mick
Teach all of us to swim
At the age of seven
Off the famine pier
At Enniscrone of the Seaweed Baths?
Out of our depth
On the deep, steep steps
And not, not, not
To be afraid?
By God he did!
I strike out for home.
Only to find myself swimming backwards!
Christ O Lord the sea
Is kidnapping me!
Like that man in the back lane
When I was nine
On my way home from school!
He asked me to climb over a wall
With him and I did. No!
I decline to believe it! No!
I go
Into denial!
Stop, sea, stop!
Into hysteria!
Stop it, stop it!
O save me, save me!
No! No!
O God, O God!
O save me, save me.
Of what use be these now –<
br />
All thy litanies of ejaculations?
All these cries aeons ago
Airbrushed into extinction.
Pounding forwards I am surging backwards.
Instead of me catching the waves,
The waves are dumping me backwards!
I who presume myself a porpoise
With fifty years of Floating Theory
Chalked up on my flippers
Am now a mouse being toyed with
By the tom-cat of the sea!
In this drifting micromoment
The stopwatch stops:
I behold my death eyeball me
Like a sadistic schoolmaster
Cornering me at the blackboard.
I wave, but no one sees me
And, as I wave, I begin to sink.
I’m being eaten alive.
Save me, O Christ, save me!
Your what? Your own death?
Your own end? Your own oblivion?
Death by drowning?
The fury of it!
The remorseless deep closing o’er your head!
Alone, alone, all, all alone!
Within seconds, to be but a swab –
A trace in water –
That scarcely decipherable but tell-tale trace
In the sea after a substance has sunk.
Fear frying your bones.
I thought I had known fear –
Oceans of fear – but I had not:
Not until now
This micromoment of 100-carat fear;
My body incapable of coping
But my psyche clear with fear
Not muddled or mesmerized,
But clarifed – a seer
Of the final second, seeing
The sea about to snatch,
Suck, swallow me.
The sea! Oh, the sea!
That stunning, wholly together She –
The one with her Mountain Passes
In all the right places.
You’ve flirted with her all your life
Having it both ways as always;
Your wife your mistress not your wife;
Your mistress your wife not your mistress;
Solitude your company;
Being mortal claiming immortality;
Every single time without exception
That the air hostess models the life jacket
You insouciantly ignore her,
Flaunting yourself a superior stoic
Who plumbs the secret of the voyage.
Voyager your voyage about to end
Faster than an airliner plummeting
How goes your voyaging?
Why are you standing in water
Out of your depth dying?
Far from your own bed?
Naught now between your legs
But disdainful water?
Being buried alive?
Dying, Durcan, dying
In your own standing?
Hanging on by one hand
From the sky’s yardarm
The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry Page 67