Monday, September 27, 2010

397. The Eblana Reel





Three burning castles shall no longer illumine
my Dublin dreams, nor will splintering glass
awake me, nor heavy knocks at the shuddering door.

THUNK

Sweety-pie, my Dove, my Love,
Pleeze, pu-leeze be true … ting!
Angelina, Angelina ...

THUNK-THUNK

carried her chest to Argentina …
both of them, by God, bazooms,
and a spare one in the baggage

THUNK-THUNK-THUNK

What?? But … but that’s outrageous!
You can’t possibly expect people to believe …
Omigod, you have the photographs?

All right, all right, I’ll do it.

Herr Hitler this is Senor Franco
No doubt you will wish to discuss the War
over a refreshing cup of Irish Coffee?

I’m in love with love and loveliness
myself. I cannot, Lord, quite help it:

Three sugars?

Tha buaidh air an uisge-bheath'
Tha buaidh air cha chòr e cleith
Tha buaidh air an uisge-bheath'
Gun òlainn teth is fuar i.

But you must tell me more, dear Adolf,
Well, yes, all right … Adi Baby,
Was Geli the Right Girl for you?

She was quite young, I believe?
Ahhhhh …. Hmmmm. Ah. Hmmmm.
Rotten luck she shot herself,

and now you do be with another young wan
in your big house there in the mountains?
Jolly piece, is she? Ah, that’s a step up, Adi.

She wants wha’? Kiss and make up with the Jews?
Fair play, but you can't allow that class of carry-on!
Step down hard, Adi, ship off another two million

and she's sure to come round, she'll be all over you,
sure, you'll be having to dig yourself outta her!
I crossed the frontier that evening just in time

not that the French had much going for them.
Dunno why nobody seems to like the French,
I’ve never had a problem with the bastards

apart from money, and that’s always the women,
great big fat craythurs with moustaches and abaci,
them clickety things, got up in their black bombazine,

eyes on them like gimlets, doing me bleedin head in
down in Mers-el-Kebir or wherever that place I was,
with the ocean, the Mediterranean, it must have been,

crashing on the shore, and the oul head none too steady
after those seven bottles of local plonk the night before
which I knew it was bad after the fifth, but carried on.

Soldiers, soldiers, such as we
Serve in the King’s Infanterie!
Bravely, bravely we’ll advance
Our Monarch’s fame we shall enhance!
Mister Cope do you have a hope
To shoot the head from off the Pope?

I’ve always had a fancy for that jolly little song
even as a Catholic, as if the Pope really needs me,
some oul' swarthy Italian git, I geeve you my blessssing,
my shhonn, I steek my finger up your …

That tune now, it’s so essentially English,
dunno how to express it rightly, it’s sprightly,
bouncy, so very jolly and profoundly stupid,
so English, expressing the genius of the race

who are without doubt gawky simpletons at play,
hee-hawing, dressing up with delight in silly costumes,
but hard as steel in business, harder still in war.

I do not think I love them.
I can't think of anyone who loves them.
And yet they seem to love themselves.

Hello, I am English. Do you love me?

Angelina, Angelina,
believes in things I no longer care about,
stalks me from a previous century.

God, I know, I can be stiff and boring!
Boring you, dear, when stiff, and poking fun
at the thrust of your missionary disposition:

you clutch a Bible in your left little hand
and a baby-pink (oiled & ribbed) in the other
and I fear you, my dear, your raw demand!

For now the wimp is limp,
half-hearted, garrulous,
what you might call Welsh.

Welshing.
O Darling!

You are the finest woman I have ever seen
(from a distance, anyway).
May we meet, my love, in Stephen’s Green.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

396. Vita summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam



O friend unseen, unborn, unknown,
Student of our sweet English tongue,
Read out my words at night, alone:
I was a poet, I was young.  

           -- James Elroy Flecker


Too much bone and blood
and fortitude, too much straining
for the evanescent: passing years
drip by, form streams, gurgling,
receding, all too rapidly draining
to where we are today. I must say
there were some bloody great parties,
helpless laughter, incandescent trysts
with ladies now of a certain age,
fresh and gorgeous in my memory.

Girls are lovely, they really are,
most of all when they are young,
coming up like fresh little flowers
in each generation: the young boys
never figure this out, thinking the present
will last forever. Sad. Sad, also silly.


Detached from our purblind monomania,
age executes its subtle daily attacks
on hairlines, jowls and bellies; we rarely
seem to pay much heed or attention,
until, after a sudden glance in a mirror,
or faced with a photo of a recent funeral,
(not so long ago we attended weddings)
we think, Jesus God, can that be me?
No, it is not me. It is a cruel parody
of the brave young man shining within.
-------------------------------------------------
 Original:

Too much bone and blood
and fortitude, too much straining
for the evanescent: how the years
drip-drip, creating streams, gurgling
down the diverse and the dreary drains
to where we are today. I must say
we had some bloody great parties!
Helpless laughter, incandescent clicks
with ladies now of a certain age,
fresh and gorgeous in my memory.
Girls are lovely, they really are,
most of all when they are young,
coming up like fresh little flowers
in each generation: the young boys
can’t figure this out, thinking the present
will last forever. Sad, but it never does.
For us non-gay boys it doesn’t matter;
automatically married, dazed, a bit
sidetracked, a bit blind to our senses,
a bit unaware in our purblind monomania
to how age executes its savage attacks
on hairlines, jowls, and bellies, we never
notice or pay attention to these things,
until with a sudden glance in a mirror,
or faced with a photo at so-and-so’s funeral
(until not so long ago it was weddings)
we think, Jesus God, can that be me?
No, it is not me. It is a parody.
I am the brave young man that shines within.

Monday, September 13, 2010

395. West Clare, August



The wind, rippling across unruly fields,
is chill, not warm, on this summer night,
and it runs in a rush down the narrow road
between tangled bushes of unripe berries.
A tall shape appears, dark from the darkness,
a bicycle of the sturdy kind, its dim light dancing,
of a type much admired by bachelor farmers.
A song, a sweet tenor, separates from the air,
and the clear heart-breaking song of youth
arises: it is the thrush-like throat of Dinny Joe,
who was all of eighty-four when the sister died,
his housekeeper, last year or the year before?
I retreat without words into silent shadows
for I would not for the world interrupt him
as he cycles into darkness, legend and death.
----------------------------------------------------
Original:

The wind that rustles the fields of grain
is chill, not warm, on summer nights,
as it runs in a rush down the narrow road
among tangled bushes of unripe berries.
A tall shape appears, dark from the darkness,
a bicycle of the sturdy kind, its dim light dancing,
of a type much admired by bachelor farmers.
A song, a sweet tenor, separates from the air,
and the clear heart-breaking song of youth
comes from the thrush-like throat of Dinny Joe,
who was all of eighty-four when his sister died,
his housekeeper, last year, or was it the year before?
I retreat without thinking into silent shadows
for I would not for the world interrupt him
as he cycles into darkness, legend and death.

Sunday, September 12, 2010

394. The Easter Rising


All is changed, changed utterly,
A terrible beauty is born

-- W.B. Yeats

Idiots, really,
drunk on oratory and illusions:
a poet's rebellion with real bullets.

I love how they went to the tailors,
taking fittings for fine new uniforms,
tunics and belts to be buried in.

It was the style of the thing --
sauntering out, sartorially splendid,
at lunchtime on a public holiday.

Christ is crucified.
Christ is risen.
Christ will live again.


A sidelong smirk, a furtive wave,
Jayzus, Jim, and what’s the craic?
Can’t talk, Joe, I’m on Parade!

The GPO. Left Wheel! Attack!
Look here, young fella, do you mind,
amn’t I next in the queue for stamps!

Kindly leave the premises, madam:
Volunteer Muldoon! On yer bike, missus,
G’wan, get away on out of it.

Run up the flag, the Plough and Stars!
Read out the lengthy Proclamation!
Ehh, ... hell's that fella after sayin’?

Look, here come the bloody Lancers!
Clippety-clopping along the cobblestones:
Volunteers! Five rounds rapid … Fire!

O God, dey do be dead!
Bear up, Muldoon, they are the enemy.
Feck the sojers, dem lubbly horses!

Agnus Dei
qui tollis peccata mundi


The English are capitalists, says Connolly,
they would never destroy public property!
Soon shells rain down on the central city.

Machine guns, snipers, rake the roadsteads,
and in little heaps, in shapeless huddled rags,
stray civilians go down in the crossfire.

Explosions, the zing and ring and ping
of bullets caroming off the stonework:
Get away, ya bleedin' hoor, ya missed!

Fires take hold, walls glow, grow white-hot,
the ceiling burns, then sags, starts to collapse:
ammunition low, the lads keep banging away.

We must charge the barricades, cries Connolly,
Jayz, Muldoon, yeh shoulda stopped in the pub!
Ehh, could we not, like, crawl behind them, sorr?

Hippety-hop, out one of the side doors,
the bullets spark on the flags of Henry Street:
a skip and a jump and it’s into Henry Lane.

Fires all around, bullets at every crossroad,
sandbag redoubts at the end of each street:
The O’Rahilly leaps up and leads a charge

but they’re all knocked over, bowled like skittles,
bleeding, groaning, beside upturned market barrows
among the cabbage leaves and cauliflowers.

It’s then that a bemused Commandant Pearse,
after seven days of ceaseless noise and slaughter,
decides the time has come to pack things in.

But how to get the English to stop firing?
White flags have been no help to the poor civilians,
nor even the sad appeasement of Union Jacks.

The Army over time has gone wild and feral,
enraged by the sting of huge, unexpected losses,
it means to impose revenge on this rebel City.

Let me try, says the nurse, Elizabeth O’Farrell,
and with a great big wave of her Red Cross flag,
she boldly steps out in the street …

And the English hold their fire.
Silence: Christ is on the Cross.

What follows is a tale of the times:
General Lowe, the British Officer Commanding,
cannot accept surrender from a woman!

Three hours later, the whole thing’s over,
and we can see the blurred but famous photo:
Pearse surrenders to General Lowe.

It’s over, so quixotic, so silly,
such a desperate hopeless military fling
in the face of a furious Empire

(who were none too bloody pleased
at this stab in the back, as they saw it,
in the midst of a War they were losing!)

Comes the question of retribution,
and with it comes the turning point,
when England loses Ireland forever.

With their city thrown into flaming ruins,
the populace is enraged, and not with the English,
but with these home-grown damn'd fanatics!

When the prisoners are led to the docks
the whole city turns out to jeer and pelt them:
Look at yez now, yeh bleedin’ bowsies!

England has only to be calm and cool,
to be reassuring, play on the prevailing mood,
but opts instead for savage executions.

First there is silent and stunned disbelief,
whispered murmurings, a stirring of anger,
and then the photographs begin to appear.

Images of the executed leaders proliferate,
first in private homes, then in gathering places,
then in public places throughout the land.

When the troops go angrily tearing them down,
the well-known stubborn streak comes out,
and the mood of the whole country changes.

The lads fought a fair fight, stood up to them,
and were good clean-living boys, the most of them.
No need to go shooting them down like animals!

Christ is Crucified.
Christ is Risen.
Christ Will Live Again.


1916 was the blood sacrifice,
a purity of belief that stayed in our minds
and gave rise to Irish freedom.

When I think of the men of 1916
I wish I had been one among them,
racing down to the barricades

and fighting for Ireland, not actually dying,
(Muldoon muddled through, very glad to hear it)
just dodging the bullets, having the craic

and then boring the pants off people in the pub,
cadging drinks on the strength of a '16 Medal
for ever and ever and ever and ever. Amen.

Slideshow link: http://picasaweb.google.com/dedalus07/1916...feat=directlink




Pearse surrenders to General Lowe at the top of Moore Street. Elizabeth O'Farrell has been airbrushed out of the photo (one can see her feet and the hem of her skirt beside the feet of Pearse).