387. Feeling Sorry for the French

Come to think of it, I don't feel that sorry at all. The Irish team should have been there instead of you. They would have done better. They couldn't possibly have done worse. Somebody (not me) put a right good curse on the French team. Now it's the long trip home, if they'll have you, in shame and disgrace. That's what you get for cheating, Thierry me bhoy, with your double handball, and you Domenech, FIFA and all the rest of yez. None of my doing, as I said above, but these things have a way of working themselves out. I take no delight in it but confess to no surprise.

386. Holland-Japan and the Night

It was good craic for the night that was in it ... so let's get on to the visuals.

Fu'ball at Marty's Kitchen & at Mehmet's KK

Click on the title under the picture above and you get sent to the slideshow in two moves: you need to click on the "Slideshow" button in the top left corner when the next screen arrives.

385. The Lighter Side of Adolf Hitler

Having discovered the Internet Archives a short while ago, I have been happily listening to and downloading a wide range of music, audio books, and just recently, recorded speeches from the worldwide uninvited trauma of the Second World War, in which various nations in Europe and Asia went under and others seemed teetering on the brink.

It is eerie to listen to the tired dispirited voice of Neville Chamberlain as he informs his bemused countrymen that a Final Note sent through diplomatic channels has not been answered … “I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently, this country is at war with Germany.” He goes on to record his disappointment that all his efforts have come to nought, and that Herr Hitler had not been … well, quite honest with him. It comes as a relief to hear the infinitely more pugnacious tones of Winston Churchill who replaced him as Prime Minister in May, 1940. Churchill talks to the nation in a series of memorable, literate, punchy, well-phrased speeches in which his loathing of Hitler and the Nazis comes through loud and clear. It’s nearly impossible to listen to him without wanting to pick up a gun and go out and fight on the beaches, in the hills, on the landing grounds, in the fields, and never never surrender! If all else fails, pick up a club or a hammer or a sharpened stick ... and all this for Ireland’s ‘ould enemy’ England, mind you!

Then I started to listen to the Germans.

My German is not bad. I lived there as a child, many years after the war, and languages you pick up when you’re young often stay with you. I can still function in Germany, no problem: the fluency and speed comes back in a day or two.

Goebbels is easier to understand than Hitler. He speaks quickly but in a fairly standard educated accent (he was, after all, a Doctor of Letters). Hitler requires more time. I had plenty of time. My job requires me to drive long distances to various Japanese companies so I’ve long been in the habit of whiling away the driving time with Audiobooks. Now I listen to Hitler.

In the beginning it was difficult. His accent and his rhythms are hard to get accustomed to. In American terms it would be like listening to someone with a very pronounced Southern accent, much stronger than Jimmy Carter’s light Georgia drawl (for which he was much ridiculed). In British terms it would be like listening to a Geordie, if not quite a Scot. He doesn’t use dialect as such but the sounds are significantly different from ‘Hochdeutsch’, Standard German. The ‘r’s are very heavily rolled and the vowels are frequently swallowed. He speaks quickly, and when he gets excited his voice rises to a barking crescendo with what seems a hammer-fall of words. He seems to be literally banging on the side of your skull.

We all have an image of Hitler. He is widely believed to be the most evil leader the world has ever produced (Stalin was on our side) leaving behind the also-rans who people the modern world, those who nevertheless manage to ensure thousands of people – usually their own, sometimes foreigners -- die before their time or live in abject misery.

I think Hitler was a disaster, and not only for the neighbouring countries of Europe, but ultimately, as the war turned against him, for his own people. My lengthy subjection to the hours and hours of recorded material has not changed this opinion in any way. Keep this in mind as I wander into new and unfamiliar territory below!

Hitler can be funny. No, honestly. He doesn’t tell jokes, as such, but he is a very accomplished storyteller. This hardly ever comes across in his set-piece speeches when he is addressing the party congress at Nuremberg, or the Hitler Youth Congress, or when he justifies the murder of old comrades during the 1934 ‘Night of the Long Knives’, or, later, the annexation of the Sudetenland in September 1938. The annexation of Austria, earlier in the year, has a load of laugh lines. He lies brazenly to the nation about the reasons for the attack on Poland on September 1, 1939. After Stalingrad there are no more anecdotes and very few public speeches. Towards the end of the war there are no speeches at all – except one after the failed assassination attempt on 20 July, 1944.

Hitler is at his most relaxed when he is addressing the “Alte Kaempfer”, the Old Fighters, who were with him from the beginning in the early 1920s. These speeches are very obviously ex tempore, because there are a number of verbal hesitancies. He makes sounds like ‘emm’ or uhh’ and you can see he is gathering his thoughts about what to say next. He goes off into a little story about some guy who did something silly, usually in the face of some stiff and respectable figure of the hated Weimar Regime, and the stories are actually quite interesting. The crowd roars. He rambles along every now and then and tells these little stories and of course they never got reported in the foreign press who had to concentrate on the political content.

He never strays very far from political content. It becomes increasingly apparent that the most exciting time of Hitler’s life was getting this tiny little unknown political party off the ground and eventually taking over the whole of Germany. He comes back to this again and again. All the difficulties! All the problems! No, it seemed hardly possible … but we did it! And we did it because the German people were simply waiting for us (for him) to come along and show them the way. Obviously. Otherwise the Party would never be where we are today.

The thing that struck me was how similar (in some ways) he was to Churchill. Both of these men were totally committed to an enhanced historical and rather romantic notion of their own country and its place in the world, and both were totally convinced that only they knew what needed to be done and that there were crowds of useless and annoying people that had to be swept aside to allow this thing to happen. Both went through years in the political wilderness before finally attaining the power they earnestly sought and both fell upon it greedily, elbowing aside all contenders and possible opponents. The significant and telling difference is that Churchill was a dyed-in-the-wool parliamentarian, steeped in the long traditions of the House, loyal to the Crown, a self-described Servant of the State. Hitler felt no such restrictions and effectively dismantled the power of the Reichstag, took over the Presidency upon the death of Hindenburg, and sidelined, imprisoned or even murdered any opponents. He was Caesar in all but name ... but the name suggests it, "Der Fuehrer".

It was a conflict of political systems and two strong leaders in which Britain seemed slated to lose. If Hitler hadn't attacked the Soviet Union or declared war on America after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he could conceivably have won the war in the West. The RAF could not have held the Germans off indefinitely had the Nazis had no other enemies to contend with, in spite of the brave and fortuitous victories in the summer of 1940. The June 1941 attack on Russia took the pressure off Britain; the entry of the USA into the war told Churchill (he says as much) we have won; we can no longer lose.

Both men were gifted speakers, capable of rousing their people to heights of patriotic fervour. The difference was Churchill knew his people better than Hitler knew his. Churchill dealt with known strengths he had recognized from his own years in the Army and at the Admiralty: obstinacy, bloody-mindedness, a cheery surface, class-hatred tempered by admiration for courage or a touch of grace, understatement, a display of insouciant flash. The Scots and the Irish (the latter not even in the war, officially) were less enamoured, but the English lapped it up. Even the dogged class warriors of the Left got this vapid grin on their faces when the upper classes behaved nicely towards them, found themselves tugging at their forelocks: so depressing, so inevitable, so intrinsically English. Hitler, on the other hand, had no such "Fingerspitzgefuehl", fingertip sensitivity, a German expression never put into so many words in Britain but automatically acted upon. Hitler depended on blood loyalty, a racial vision of the German people that went back to Hermann (Arminius) and the German tribes who had defeated the Roman Legions in 14 AD. No Jews then! Most Germans neither knew nor cared. What was he on about? Hitler believed in all this turn-of-the-century Viennese rigamarole (he had lived there as a down-and-out) and Himmler was the little rat who set about exterminating the Jews of Europe by planned, efficient, industrial methods. Death factories. Hitler (quite carefully) never signed any papers but never raised a finger to stop him, either.

Isolated in his own glory, a stranger to any opposition, losing touch with reality, Hitler held up impossible standards of perpetual victory to his soldiers with not even the option of tactical retreat, so that after all the initial successes, the elation, when the first setbacks came on the Russian Front his adamant refusal to accept them gradually turned the Wehrmacht and his own generals against him. It was an Army conspiracy that tried to assassinate him in July 1944. Churchill visited the bombed areas of East London and other cities, went out among the people. Hitler never did. The Nazi bigwig who did go out and talk to the people was, perhaps not surprisingly, Goebbels. Goebbels was an opportunist, a professional liar ("Das Propaganda!") but he had one or two saving graces, a willingness to face the people being one among them. At the end of the war he was far more popular than Hitler. His speeches, although easier to understand than Hitler's, are unleavened by jokes or anecdotes. That was left for the more relaxed style of the Boss ... "Der Chef".



Hitler was amazingly indulgent to damaged and at times quite embarrassing public figures (Julius Streicher, pornographer; Hans Hoffmann, photographer and falling-down drunk) who dated back to the early days of the Party. Nearly everything was overlooked if you’d been with him in the Old Days. At times you feel as if they all used to play football together, or served in the same unit during the First War: Alte Kamerad! Churchill picked up and dropped people like playing cards: all he cared about was performance and Action This Day! He drove his staff crazy. His secretaries were scared stiff of him. Hitler, on the other hand, liked familiar faces and was courtly and fatherly to his secretaries, drank tea with them, and never fired anyone. He shot and hung people with piano wire instead ... but never any of his Inner Circle. Except, in the final days, the greasy Faegellein (Eva Braun's sister's husband).

Hitler's little stories are quite amusing, self-deprecatory, e.g. there were about 500 people in the hall back then, you know, and only 50 of them were listening. Some of them didn’t know why they were listening (knowing laughter) and I was in charge of a “Haufen”, a shapeless lump, but they were my crowd and I was happy and proud to be in charge of them. Maybe it's the way he tells it, the storyteller. The delivery is always dry, straight-faced, throwaway. If you didn’t know who this person was and what was about to happen, it could be seductive, calling forth complicity of a kind. I found myself smiling or grinning several times and I had to think … wait, wait, wait!! … this is, this is ... Hitler!

Time and time again he goes back to the insurmountable difficulties that were eventually overcome by “faith” and “will” and adherence to the principle of restoring the honour and freedom of Germany. There can be no question he believes this. Violence is always a method employed by the party’s many enemies – not a word about the SA or the SS.

At times Hitler sound quite genial, not the screaming fanatical fool we have been led to believe in. The crowd are obviously listening to him and hanging on his every word. Once you get used to his rhythms and the heavy accent it all starts to make more sense than before. He was a political disaster, a new Black Plague … but the charm and charisma in his less formal moments is undeniable.

What does this mean? It means, if nothing else (and I’ve been reluctantly honest about my reactions 70 years later, even with the benefit of hindsight) that what the Germans of the time heard and responded to was a form of rhetoric that was not simply a hammering political harangue in a spiky unpleasant-sounding foreign language but a series of stories and anecdotes that were often spontaneously connected and even humorous and amusing. Hitler was the Boss, sure, but he never came across to his public as a cold demanding poker-up-the-arse Prussian militarist. In reality he was far more dangerous than any Prussian but he never sounded that way: he could sound reasonable, he could tell stories, he could be avuncular, he was everybody's "Uncle Adolf". These recordings were an absolute revelation.

But none of this changes what happened. Hindsight is 100%. This is not a luxury afforded when you are living through events. When wars are far away (however unjust) and none of our friends or family are physically involved, we tend to be apathetic, if not simply content to allow them to happen. Too bad about the local Afghans and Iraqis these days, for example, just as in those days it was too bad about the Slavs and Jews. Of course it’s not the same thing – just another, slightly different, watered-down version. The aversion to doing anything about it remains, then and now, precisely the same.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
What if Hitler had invaded Ireland? Here is a rather chilling article from the Irish Times which makes it abundantly clear that the Nazis had no respect for Irish neutrality and fully intended to take over the country. Our survival as a free nation had little to do with our own efforts and everything to do with the victory of the RAF in the Battle of Britain. Thank God there were at least a few young men like Paddy Finucane who could see that!

384. Under The Waves Stays With You My Heart

Unter Die Wellen Bleibt Bei Dir Mein Herz

Frau Elena Proschkow, 92, remembers her first husband, her abiding true love, Kapitaenleutnant Hans-Christian Meier, commander of the submarine U-263, lost at sea on November 9, 1942.
-------------------------------------------------------

O Christian
how it all comes back --
I can see you now
so young, so eager,
so resplendent
in your tailored uniform,
your dark eyes gleaming,
your shy lovely smile,
the proud glances of your father,
the apprehensive eyes of your mother,
and, there, both laughing and fearful,
little me, three months pregnant
with Johann, our firstborn,
the child you would never see.

I weep now to remember;
I can see it all so clearly
even now, after sixty-eight long years,
like a photograph, like an image
burned into my brain;
you, my darling husband,
you, the best of all men,
on the night before you went to sea
for the last time, never, never
to return to the warm bed of love.

We had been married two years
and your parents had made
some initial old-fashioned fuss,
but you, my dear, had insisted politely,
with the hidden steel of a German officer
(I think they were a little afraid of you),
and I loved you all the more for that.
Christian, you made me so happy!

Father had an eye for a pretty girl
(yes, you smiled when you told me!)
and your mother soon capitulated
when she saw how much I loved you.
O Christian, Christian,
in those early days, we were
so happy together, so proud!

The degenerate filthy French
had been soundly trounced,
and the cold treacherous English
were left snarling on their island,
as the new Germany, under Adolf Hitler
became triumphant!

The shame and the stain
of the First War had been erased
(in which my father fell, as you know)
and the German nation, reborn,
was holding a lamp to the world:
Kraft durch Freude, Strength through Joy,
a bulwark against godless communism,
a shining example of will.

Do you remember, my darling,
that day we first met?
You were a young lieutenant
and I was a girl with the BDM,
(a Gruppenleiter, you never knew that!)
and we were lost in the crowds,
all the celebrating thousands
cheering for Goering and the Fuehrer:
that was June, after the fall of France,
such a day of heartwarming pride!

I was pushed this way and that,
lost one of my shoes, such enthusiasm,
and you, my dark-eyed knight,
came to my rescue, plucked me forth
from the surging multitudes;
you carried me off for coffee and cakes
at the Adlon Hotel. Such class!
I fell in love immediately.

The courtship was exciting,
but correct and approved,
and we were married within six months
after the usual blood tests
and racial examinations;
I thought my heart would burst
with sheer joy. O my darling!

The War continued for some reason
although it was perfectly clear
we had already won. The British
behaved very badly, in my opinion,
but you fought like a lion, naturally,
gaining a Knight's Cross (First Class!!)
followed by well-deserved promotion.
Then came your first command.

When you were away at sea
I would pray for you each day.
In one corner of my little room
(we had had to move to your parents'
after the cowardly bombing began)
I had a picture of the Sacred Heart,
and in another, the divine Fuehrer,
and with my arms outstretched,
I prayed to both of our saviours.

Keep my Christian safe!

Such joy whenever you returned!
I would rush headlong to the docks
(along with your mother and father,
now my dear friends, lovingly united
in our adoration for YOU, dear Christian)
and you would hold me in your strong arms,
there in full view of your crew,
who were lustily cheering and smiling,
waving their caps, even whistling!
My dear, how they loved you ...
but never so much as me.

Then came the attack on Russia.
We were surprised, but understood
these swine were the real enemy,
the Bolshevik dagger at the throat
of western civilisation: the foul
English, blind to decency and reason,
continued their useless resistance,
and you, my dear, punished them
remorselessly. Your name was respected.
I was proud to be your wife.

I noticed with concern how
haggard you had become; with each
successive homecoming from patrol
you became more withdrawn, less
enthused for the dream of Greater Germany.
Naturally, I restored your patriotism,
even when you were snappish and surly,
but I was a bit taken aback, darling,
when you removed the portrait of the Fuehrer,
and once (almost) I had the feeling
you were about to strike me:
silly, silly -- my imagination!

America (negroes and mongrels!)
came into the war, and the bombing
became much much worse.
They are such hateful, despicable
opportunists, everybody knows that,
bought off by the British and the Jews;
they came in for the money, nothing else.
Can't they understand anything?
The Bolsheviks want to destroy civilization!
Only Germany can prevent disaster.

Strange news is coming from the East
which I can't believe: the BBC
is spreading vile propaganda
about German actions in Russia.
These people will say anything.
They also say that the Jews,
having been removed for their own safety,
are being eliminated. Nonsense.
Our enemies will go to any length.

I worry so about darling Christian .....
--------------------------------------------------
At this point Frau Proschkow broke down and was unable to continue. The news of her husband's death shortly before the birth of their first child is something she still cannot discuss. There is evidence that Frau Proschkow entered into a liaison with an American sergeant after the conclusion of hostilities and was thus provided with food and, it would appear, cigarettes and nylons which she was able to trade on the black market. Charitably, one must assume that this was done to protect her young son Johann. This relationship seems to have led to a breach with her late husband's parents. In 1955 she married a prosperous factory owner named Werner Proschkow with whom she lived amicably until the death of Herr Proschkow in 1970. Johann Meier-Proschkow is now a senior executive with Siemens in Munich but was unavailable for comment. Frau Proschkow lives alone in a tiny apartment in Berlin surrounded by photographs and memoribilia of the early 1940s, most prominent of which are citations from the BDM and a large studio photograph of her first husband in naval uniform. He looks remarkably young.
-------------------------

-- BDM- Bund Deutscher Maedel - female equivalent of the Hitler Youth.
-- Gruppenleiter - group leader

383. Love in LA

When I first met you, darling,
you were an awful little bitch,
spoiled, living on Daddy’s money,
there beside the swimming pool
with your full, your bouncy little tits
contained in a scant bikini,
and you treated me like some
Mexican gardener, ordering me
about like a peon, so of course
I stomped out, angry, incensed,
past the jacarandas and the BMWs,
but you came running after me,
said you were not that kind of girl at all.

There was no way your family
would allow us to get together,
so we had to meet in out-of-the-way places:
burger bars, shopping malls, Starbucks.

I had a little car, a Rondeo.
You winced when you saw it.
Never mind, it moved, we went
skimming along the coast, laughing,
in love with life, so giddily
in love with one another.

We talked about everything,
your parents, my parents,
the total unfairness of life,
and then we kissed and hugged,
and you let me put my hand on your breasts;
trembling, I squeezed them ever so gently,
my whole being in my fingertips,
and once, only once, you touched my cock.
We were in love. Anything could happen.

Why did you do it? Why?
The first I heard was when my father said,
you know that girl you talked about,
she went and killed herself. Pills.

382. North Cider, South Cider, Rest of Ireland

The ideal Ireland that we would have, the Ireland that we dreamed of, would be the home of a people who valued material wealth only as a basis for right living, of a people who, satisfied with frugal comfort, devoted their leisure to the things of the spirit – a land whose countryside would be bright with cosy homesteads, whose fields and villages would be joyous with the sounds of industry, with the romping of sturdy children, the contest of athletic youths and the laughter of happy maidens, whose firesides would be forums for the wisdom of serene old age. The home, in short, of a people living the life that God desires that men should live.

-- Éamon de Valera (New Yorker, returnee, scholar, rebel, felon, Taoiseach, President, old man, corpse, transformed national icon) from a speech made on Irish Radio on March 17, 1943.

People laugh at the innocence of de Valera these days, and of course they are welcome to do so, but in my never sufficiently humble opinion, I think -- no, I know -- they don't have a clue where he's coming from. He may have been prudish in sexual matters, painstaking and upright in even the smallest financial transactions (thrifty, too), appropriately dressed on all occasions, and in many other ways a man of his time and its notions of respectability. But politically he was a dangerous radical, quite implacable, ready to employ violence if need be to bring about his unbending dream of an independent Ireland. Because of the rigidity of his character and his overweening belief in his own righteousness this was not always a good thing for the people around him (Michael Collins immediately comes to mind) and not always a good thing for Ireland either. His inflexibility caused a great deal of conflict and dragged us into a civil war over the Treaty in which former comrades within the IRA ended up hunting and killing one another in a war that could and should have been avoided. Like De Gaulle, even Robespierre, he was one of those authoritarian Great Men who identify themselves with the State at a time of overwhelming duress and will brook no opposition. But out of misery sometimes ... sometimes comes redemption.

But what about modern Ireland? Freedom becomes a habit, a thing one takes for granted. A free nation goes off in different directions, no longer focussed on national grievances or the humiliation of foreign occupation. Different lifestyles come into play. New difficulties swim out of the depths, raise their ugly heads, problems entirely of our own making. How we cope with them is the measure of the country we have become, now that the older generation that bequeathed us the Free State, then the Republic, have gone on to their grumbling & complaining final rest -- de Valera among them.

So what is Ireland like in 2010?

It's bloody hard to explain. It's a meritocracy with recent family overtones and less recent historical undertones. The class system, like America, is largely based on income. Kids who finish school and go on to university get jobs and make careers while the kids who drop out at 14 and hang out in the neighbourhood end up on the fringes. Family connections (it's a small country) can definitely help get you into a job; lack of them can also freeze you out. During the 1990s there was a huge economic boom which made some people incredibly rich and their kids got used to living on Daddy's money. At the same time the working class kids bounced around from one dead-end job to another and got caught in a world where the big money came from drugs and criminality. This is very evident in Dublin. The big distinction in Dublin is the River Liffey -- Anna Livia.

I wrote a poem below (Anna Livia) which simply talked about the river itself, and not what it does to Dublin City. The river runs through the centre of the city and acts as a kind of border-line, not quite like the Berlin Wall, but in local perceptions somewhat similar. The North Side is essentially working (now non-working)class: hard-scrabble, tough neighbourhoods, old houses, what we like to think of as the 'real' Dublin -- two guesses where I'm from -- with a heart and a soul, the part of the city where all the young fellas came from in the past who dropped everything and went out to fight for Ireland. Could be there wasn't all that much they had to drop: restricted lives and boring jobs, provided they had one. This is where Leopold Bloom lived, next to the church (dull stroke on the strike of nine) in Eccles Street.

North Cider/ South Cider was a clever ad by Bulmer's last summer -- a cider-making company who'd figured things out.

The South Side contains the Old Viking city, the University, the leafy Georgian squares, the government offices, the museums, the quiet avenues, the settled civilised side of the city. This is where all the 'outsiders' settle, coming up from the country and from foreign parts like you wouldn't know what. They've taken over the city in their upscale spreading suburbs. The rock stars and Hollywood celebs go further south to Killiney on the sweeping Italianate hills overlooking the sea. It's beautiful. It's expensive. It's so cool. The North Side (inner city) is turning into a slum. So that's what's happening.

This is just a lead-in. Sorry. A fellow Northsider -- now living in Spain, strange how we can feel so passionate about the place yet choose to live elsewhere -- sent me this. It's a parody, sure, of all the things I've been talking about above. It's no more than a joke, yeh? Trouble is, it's not that far from the truth ....

NORTHSIDE LEAVING CERT

MATHS TEST FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS
IN THE NORTHSIDE OF DUBLIN

NAME _________________________

NICK-NAME ____________________

GANG NAME ____________________

1. Deco has 0.5 kilos of cocaine. If he sells an 8 ball to Vinno for 300 Euro
and 90 grams to Tomo for 90 Euro a gram,what is the street value of the rest of
his hold?

2. Anto pimps 3 brassers. If the price is 40 Euro a royde, how many roydes
per day must each brasser perform to support Vinno's 500 Euro a day crack habit?

3. Whacker wants to cut the kilo of cocaine he bought for 7,000 Euro, to make
a 20% profit. How many grams of strychnine will he need?

4. Christy got 6 years for murder. He also got 350,000 for the hit. If his
common law wife spends 33,100 per month, how much money will be left when he
gets out of the 'Joy?
Extra Credit Bonus: How much more time will Christy get for killing the
slapper that spent his money?

5. If an average can of spray paint covers 22 square metres and the average
letter is 1 square metre, how many letters can be sprayed with an eight fluid
ounce can of spray paint with 20% extra paint free?

6. Liamo steals Eamo's skateboard. As Liamo skates away at a speed of 35 mph,
Eamo loads his brother's gun. If it takes Eamo 20 seconds to load the gun, how
far will Liamo have travelled when he gets whacked?


SOUTH SIDE LEAVING CERT

MATHS TEST FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS
IN THE SOUTHSIDE OF DUBLIN

NAME________________________________________
____________________________________________
____________________________________________
____________________________________________
____________________________________________
(if longer, please continue on a separate sheet)

SCHOOL____________________

DADDY'S COMPANY___________

1. Julian smashes up the old man's car, causing x amount of damage and
killing three people. The old man asks his local TD to intervene in the court
system, then forges his insurance claim and receives a payment of y. The
difference between x and y is three times the life insurance settlement for the
three dead people. What kind of car is Julian driving now?

2. Chloe's personal shopper decides to substitute generic and own-brand
products for the designer goods favoured by her employer. In the course of a
month she saves the price of a return ticket to Fiji and Chloe doesn't even
notice the difference. Is she thick or what?

3. Rolly fancies the arse off a certain number of tarts, but he only has
enough Rohypnol left to render 33.3% unconscious. If he has 14 Rohypnol, how is
he ever going to shag the other two-thirds?

4. If Savannah throws up four times a day for a week she can fit a size 8
Versace. If she only throws up three times a day for two weeks, she has to make
do with a size 10 Dolce et Gabbano. How much does liposuction cost?

5. Alexander is unsure about his sexuality. Three days a week he fancies
women. On the other days he fancies men, ducks and vacuum cleaners. However he
only has access to the Hoover every third week. When does his Sunday Independent
column start?



COUNTRY LEAVING CERT

MATHS TEST FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS
OUTSIDE DUBLIN

Name: Paddy/Mary _________________________

1. If Paddy Joe Murphy drove a Massey Ferguson through PaddyJohn's turnip
crop at 10miles an hour. What colour was Paddy John's tractor?

2. If John Joe likes Mary and Mary likes Paddy, how much is a pint of stout
in O'Brien's at the crossroads?

3. Paddy Joe Mahoney has 25 sheep, 10 cows, 12 hens, a cockerel and 6 geese.
John Joe has 12 sheep, 18 cows and 12 pigs. How much does Paddy Joe offer to
John Joe for a dowry for Mary?

4. If it takes Sarah Jane 40 minutes to cycle 12 miles to O'Brien's on the
crossroads for the ceilidh and it takes Mary Murphy 40 minutes to walk 2 miles
to O'Brien's, which girl will end up in John Joe's hay barn?

5. If Paddy Joe's prize hen can lay 4 eggs every morning and his other hens
can lay only two each the odd morning, which one will he have for Sunday dinner?

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yerra! Whoever wrote this knew first-hand what he (possibly she) was doing. This harks back to the ill-printed circulars and pamphlets handed out in the same old familiar streets 2-300 years ago on pain of Transportation. Cantankerous wicked people, they keep coming along, God Bless 'em entirely! Siochán leat.

381. Ithaca

Death is now a welcome guest
When I am laid in earth, may my wrongs
Create no trouble in thy breast;
Remember me … but ahh, forget my fate.
-- from the libretto to 'Dido and Aeneas' by Henry Purcell

The chainlink fence prevented and defied all access
so you had to walk hundreds of metres up to the gate,
sweating in the sun, but as the suitcase, thankfully, had wheels,
it was no big deal; the same hundreds of metres back again.

You get used to these things: world travel is basically
one inconvenience after another: people scrambling through
windows on Indian trains, scrabbling, losing their grip
falling under the wheels, screams. The old grandmother
collapsing suddenly upon your lap on the bus in Guatemala
who turns out to be dead, eyes open, dribbling on your knees.

Afghanistan. No, we don't want to go back to that,
to that young lad dying in my arms. Allah … Allah… Allah ….
his last moments spent with an infidel Ferenghi. His eyes, his eyes
fixed on me to the end: pleading, darting, then frozen glassy still:
poor poor young boy, I held you, carried you into your death.

Some things you simply remember, others you cannot forget.

An iron ramp led into the bowels of the boat, which was
rocking and swaying, even on a very sheltered harbour tide;
there came angry shouts, brilliant smiles, the usual Greek confusion,
as passengers come stumbling aboard like sheep, and me
among them: this battered old tub will sink and drown us all!

When setting out upon your way to Ithaca,
Wish always that your course be long,
Wish for many adventures, many good stories.
And let there be many summer mornings
When with pleasure and with great delight
You leave a harbour for the very first time.

In a stink of diesel fumes and alarming shudders
we departed the harbour, farting on all cylinders,
and left behind Patras and the Peloponnese,
and all of Greece, as troubled now as in ancient times,
with its pride, corruption and underpaid military,
almost (but not quite) Balkanized,
a summer playground for backpackers,
for pallid northeners with better salaries,
our EU partner who cannot pay their bills …

But I have seen Greece in a far different light
after emerging from Turkey, across the minefields,
(Idiota! Did you not know the risk? No, I didn't)
but I knew instantaneously I was back in Europe
after pleasant then precipitately rather unpleasant
relations with the Turks ( a small matter of a smuggled car)
when they wouldn't let me leave, I left anyway.
I didn't know about the mines. Obviously.
The Greek customs guys thought it was great,
clapped me on the back and plied me with ouzo.
One in the eye to the Turks! I actually liked the Turks,
far more stable than the Greeks, a bit ponderous,
Oriental, Muslim, but solid, not so excitable.
I love Istanbul. Been back several times since,
no hint of that phantom car on an expired passport.

It's so good to be young, you know?
No matter how stupid you are you still survive,
unless, of course, you don't. Happens.

But do not rush your journey.
Better that it should last for many years,
And that when you moor at Ithaca at last,
An old man, enriched by all you have gained,
You do not expect Ithaca to give you further wealth.

Here on this boat, snorting, plunging and struggling,
we passed by the coast of unknown secret Albania,
home of the greatest criminal gangs in Europe, recently
spreading their tentacles into Italy and even beyond,
a total plague not unconnected to the KLA or KSA,
whatever, that crowd NATO supported against Serbia.

But that was a couple of wars ago:
after a while, you lose count of wars.
Vietnam is simply fading into history,
all the deaths, the wounds, the pychological damage,
all the aging warriors, the damaged surfers
surviving on drink and pills. Well, they will soon
have a new bunch of veteran friends
from Afghanistan and Iraq. It will never end.

I lay no claim: I have no claim to lay.
I believe in freedom.
I believe in travel.
I believe in all countries open to all men.
I don't like war. I've seen it.
No thanks.
I believe in a rollicking great shag.
I believe in friends and family.
I believe in little children,
in desperation, love and honesty.
I believe in ... things that disappear
(well, fucking won’t be one of them).

You do not expect Ithaca to give you further wealth.
For Ithaca has given you the journey.
Without her you would not have set your course.
There is no more she can give.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

The quoted poem is from Cavafy, an Alexandrine Greek (1863-1933), and it's my own rather doubtful translation.

380. Anna Livia

Old lazy lizardslither
you come swiftly softly down,
concomitantly coiling
on your way to Dublin Town.

Here be a bridge, be water,
be people walking, talking
in a rapid half-sung dialect,
warbling inta mobile phones.

Half-heard tones of sub-aqueous
subterranean splendour, raise
the heads of sleeping river gods,
Lugh the Lord of Light, hidden spirits
within ancient aching stones.

(picture: Jack Yeats, "The Liffey Swim")

379. Kanzanji (a Japanese riff)

We got out there with the wind rippling rippling through the rice fields, so frail, so bending, so outstandingly beautiful, light green, dark green, hints of yellow ... Teruo said we needed some sake ... there was a shop by the side of the road with the Noren down, the split curtains across the door, a sure sign the place was open ... we poked our noses in ... Irrashaimase! Come in, come in! ... Mama san grinning behind the counter ... local boys from the Fire Brigade, red-faced, smiling, happy, been there for a while from the looks of them ... paid for the first couple of flasks and that was the last time we put our hands in our pockets ... Gaijin san, the hell you from? ... huh, what, ah who cares? ... pretty soon the place was reeling ... Mama san like a nutbrown berry, three teeth and a battered kimono ... Papa san's feet slightly showing, sleeping it off under the counter ... the roar and the heat of the lads ... Here for the fireworks are you? ... Well, yes. ... We know the best place to go, we'll take you, have another why doncha? Still early ... won't start till dark ... are you drinking or what? Me, I went out for a piss ... seemed to take half an hour, not pissing just getting there, aww Jayz that felt so good! Trees, woods, where the hell am I? Listen, listen, listen ... follow the noise. Claps and cheers, the prodigal returns, I come through the door, try to do a bow and fall flat on me arse. The lads go into hysterics. Where did you say you were from? ... Have a drink, gaijin san! Thanks, thanks and thanks again ... but then the shades of the Japanese night descended, descended in slow darkening spirals almost as though the freshening wind was bringing the darkness in from behind the mountains. Time to go. The boys rose almost as one and we rose with them ... out into the rapidly falling dark. Sticks were placed in our hands. Snakes! Poisonous snakes all along the narrow mountain trail! The lads were battering the bushes, laughing themselves silly, falling down ... the snakes, being sensible, stayed well away from us ... so up up up the mountain and down the other side ... and then the whole lit-up glory of the lake was there right before us ... people crowded crowded on the other side (not knowing firemen, not knowing our mountain, possibly also terrified of snakes) ... and the fireworks began! Crack -- boom! Explosions all over the sky, the oohs and ahhs from the other shore ... red, gold, purple, yellow ... crack! ... again and again and again. We sat by the water's edge with our mouths hanging open ... holy Jeeeeeeeezus!! Sat by the water's edge jarred into some semblance of sobriety ... and then with a glance and a grin both Teruo and I tore off our clothes and dived into the waters of fierce flickering reflections ... God, it was cold, but so fresh, so pure, so beautiful ... so silent when you went under and so full of colour and explosions when you came up again! Ha - hooh! I think we both went a little bit mad that night and it wasn't just the sake. It was ... it was just something.

378. Witness to His Century

The light, I see, is fading,
infinitessimally shading

daytime colours into tones of grey.

Twice have the servants come
offering to light the candles,
twice have I waved them away.

I know I am but a guest,
and I know the servants need their rest.

I sigh. I have little time. Come close and let me begin ...

I sit with this blanket on my knees,
obdurate, unmoving,
alone in this oh so familiar room,
communing with the dust-motes of the past.

We had returned in a lather after the hunt
Look here, old boy, don't be a c--t!
bellowed Ivo, expounding the need for war
just over there -- there by the cloissoné table;
(yes, we did use THAT kind of language then!)
This bloody old Kaiser needs what-for!

Ivo copped it in the first few days
along with his brother and four of our cousins
and Death became known in ... industrial ways
to all of our class and generation;
I was out there, of course, beastly drunk
from start to finish, can't recall a bloody thing

before drifting home, being let go,
to indifferent thanks from a shattered nation.
I still have the medal, you know, it reads
"The Great War for Civilization"

The Twenties passed in a cocktail haze
of very long nights and very short days;
I believe I got married once or twice,
so hard to recall, I was never quite sober
after Passchendaele, I can remember fondling
short-skirted girls, rubbery, frightfully nice!

And I seem to remember some trouble and fuss,
that was '26, I think, I was driving a bus.
There was a strike of some kind, and the 'civil power'
hadn't expected me to run over their own policemen,
which I did, I'm afraid, and when the crowd closed in,
they cheered the hero of the hour!

In the Crash my chums lost all their money,
silly asses, and none of them could quite see the funny
side of things, as I did, who lived on land,
or rather on the backs of my hardworking peasants;
and so I flitted about town, much the same as ever,
charming to a slight but unforgiving degree,
distributing wicked ... calculated presents.

The Thirties were long and infinitely weary,
the people poor, bad-tempered, resentful, dreary;
I considered a sojourn in warmer foreign climes
but was consumed with such malignant hatred
for Mosley, AND for that bastard Churchill,
that I chose to wait.

We should have gone to war in Thirty-Eight,
could have wrapped it up: '39 was too late.
But -- the pusillanimous politicians still held sway,
Halifax; and that grisly Birmingham tosspot, pallid
Chamberlain, "J'aime Berlin"; there was only Winston,
half-mad, a glowering crackpot, to lead the way.

I had quite a jolly war, I must confess,
half-sober, exciting, but you must not press
for details. Mum's the word, (dear lost and darling mother)
for it was a world of codes and radios,
parachute jumps and secret agents,
and when it ended, I prayed for another

being flushed, arrogant, never dreaming that

many years on, I would get my other war
but not the one I'd bargained for. Now, this moment,
as the room grows dark and the staircase creaks,
I sit here alone with this blanket on my knees,
straining hard to hear the echoes from the past,
voices, sounds, little leaks from shameful memories.

377. On the Death of a Deeply-Loved Aunt

( a poem primarily for the 15 McCarthy cousins )

Lift up the latch on the creaky gate,
once flaky green, now painted silver,
and it’s seven steps on the narrow path
to the stained-glass door of 34.

To the south, once, was a trellis of roses
just at the top of the slope of the garden
in which Pop-Pop planted a crop of potatoes
in the long summers of the "Emergency" --

an event never quite acknowledged
by the new Irish nation, although
over the waters east beyond Clontarf shore
people called it the Second World War.

Then the house stood solid, square and new,
a redbrick perched on the brow of a hill,
looking down on the long broad valley of Dublin,
on a turbulent old city hugging an ancient river.

But this semi-tragic city full of cheerful ghosts
appears snug and lightly-grey now, quietly pretty,
and beyond it rise the blue and lavender hills
of Wicklow, where the rest of Ireland begins.

Stand on the green and now potato-free lawn
(mowed by Uncle Thomas over so many years),
or even better leap up to the grey stone wall,
and you can see this same old oddly soothing sight ...

as the children, our parents, did before
stepping out the door of 34.

Abundant life and voices seeped slowly away
as they begin to do, must do, in all large families;
there were the two never-known uncles who died of TB,
two laughing young men who never grew old

in the natural way that our own parents did
and over whom our Nana wept scalded tears,
inconsolable, remembering their eyes and faces,
by the black fireplace in the sunken scullery.

But then there were the courtships and marriages,
the setting up of new hopes on low wages
(“Sure, won’t we drop in to see you on the weekends!”),
and poor dear Lily going off to God-knows-where

and with her children barely known to anyone.
Soon there was only Pop-Pop, Nana, and Kathleen,
and then there was only Nana and Kathleen:
after that, for many years, only Kathleen.

Now there is … what? A silent sturdy old house,
familiar to us all, once a symbol of permanence,
but also an impermanence we should have seen coming,
and which we did see coming, but turned aside from.

Where now is the spirit of that house on the hill?
Four -- and now five -- generations of our family
have been loosed from the moorings from whence they came
and only an emptiness, an absence, and silence remain:

No more come the excited shouts of young children,
Auntie Cack’leen, Auntie Cack’leen!!
Well, I might just find a few sweets and chocolates,
I might, only if you promise to be very very good.

No more come the hurried calls from the Airport,
It’ll only be two weeks and we’ll fend for ourselves!
Well, ye’ll blutty well have to! I’ll put on the tea now,
but I’ll not be doing the cooking for the lot of ye!

And yet there’d be Irish rashers and sausages galore,
(not the very items, I confess, I’ve seen Kathleen enjoy!)
and not only for the arrival but for every morning after
because there was no boundary, no limit to the kindness,

and no limit to the love. Then, of course, there was
that bouncing little cutie from Japan, Brendan’s child,
all of six-years-old, a self-important miss at Marino School,
who set out, strictly, impatiently, to teach Kathleen Irish!

Immense progress, I’m told, was made.
Yes, immense progress was made in many many ways,
and perhaps it’s only now we can come to realise
how central she was to us all.

For how can you say that you’ll “miss” a river,
or a mountain, a valley … or even a whole country
that no longer really seems to exist without that
central someone? You do, though; you carry on.

The family is large, active, supremely vibrant,
quick-witted, quick-speaking, in the good Dublin way,
but the house we all came from lies now cold and empty
behind the stained-glass door of 34.

376. Star Ferry

The path was narrow
and the road was long
but it finally brought me
to Hong Kong

Hee-yah! Kwai-Lo.

Kwai-Lo. Foreign Devil.
Not just foreign, understand,
but devils into the bargain.
We smell like corpses
even after umpteen showers,
a sour rancid smell, they say,
of slowly rotting meat.

Sniff your armpits

The civilised people,
Chinese, self-described,
stink, I think, of decaying fish
but that's just accepted,
normal. It's all in the
perception. My conception
of boring daily banking life
was severely wrenched
when I was drenched
in a sudden shower.
An umbrella popped
and I whirled around to see
a Hong Kong lovely.

A Hong Kong lovely
wears a white silk blouse
and a tight dark skirt,
sheer stockings, very
expensive Italian shoes,
a little gold crucifix
(Hee-yah! All gods are good);
lovely has lips of vermilion,
she has green-blue mascara
and blue-black shiny shiny
carefully tumbling long black hair.

Does she look good?
She looks good. You,
on the other hand, stand
like an idiot, rooted to the spot.
"Ha, you, umblella," she smiles,
so you, bumbling and stumbling,
escort her to the Star Ferry
for which you pay all of 50 cents
in a gentlemanly manner,
aware of the inescapable fact
that you may be smelling like a corpse
while she, instead of day-old fish,
smells of Guerlain.

"You, what name?", she smiles,
and as you try to bloody well remember
your heart goes pitty-pitty-pat
and a torrent of pain rolls over you,
memories of Nanny and the nursery,
the brittle coldness of Mama,
the icy distance of Papa,
the brusqueness of the boys at school,
the cold sheets, the tearful nights.

Hee-yah! Kwai-Lo.

Soon it is Kowloon side
and as the brisk little Chinese sailors
do quick arrangements of ropes
the ferry smacks upon the pier;
"Your name ... you haven't told me your name!"
My name Mei Ling. I go now.
I give umblella you. Yes? You pay 5 Hong Kong.

375. An Overture

A pall of smoke and drifting ash
hangs above the battered ruins of Baghdad;
for four long days it has hung above
mounds of corpses and the humming
sounds of blowflies. It has cast a shadow
on the wide meandering river, but by now
the impassive horsemen, their work done,
have casually moved along.

From an oven built of bricks, which takes up
corner space in a smouldering cellar shop,
emerges, from cavernous thick cool depths,
a child, wary and uncertain. It is a boy,
tousle-haired, perhaps about nine or ten.
He gazes upon the surrounding wreckage
and sees the charred bodies of his parents,
his two sisters. He climbs up to the street.

Tied to his robe by a thin rope is a pouch
containing scraps of stale uneaten bread,
an empty flask of water, four small silver coins.
The street is grey and blurred under falling ash
but the heat and the stench, as they come on
so suddenly, cause the child to cough and gag.
He mutters a quick prayer, Allah, not that his
mind, unformed, truly believes in any God.

Nothing moves. The collapsed huddled shapes,
heaped, blackened and bloated, line the alleyways,
and show themselves to be his neighbours,
the people he has known since he was born.
How … how could this have come to happen?
It doesn’t seem right that complete strangers,
people he has never even seen or heard of before
can ride in on the wind and do such things.

Go HERE for background

374. Gentle Into That Good Night

Death is not proud nor is it peremptory.
It is no rigid Prussian officer in a spiked helmet
calling out commands in a military falsetto,
nor even a full-bosomed hospital matron
with eyes the Gorgon would have paid for.

It is false to think our lives are made for
happiness; the pursuit of ephemeral dreams
knocks the moral compass off its mark, leaves
us reeling in the dark; the aims of the American
Republic have disarranged us all since then.

It is extremely hard to convince young men
that what they are, their character, is what they get.
It is neither birth, education, nor application,
nor thrift and toil, nor midnight oil,
that define the course of a man’s existence.

Belief, the very force of bland persistence
can make us blind to the subtle markers
showing here and there upon the trail: how often
do we hear these words “succeed” and “fail”
only in terms of money, pleasure ... feelings?

When we take the measure of all our dealings
in the course of our three score and ten,
(having been statistically exempt, let us say,
from murder, disaster, car-collisions, war),
wouldn't you ask yourself what was it for?

It wasn’t for the money … well, not really,
and it wasn’t for the boss or the job
or the house; nor even for the lack of money
or house or boss or job. It wasn’t for the drugs,
wasn’t for the drink, not even for the wonderful sex
that came and went like a summer shower:
these things we hardly remember at all.

What do we remember? Ask yourself.

Karen, you're such a sweet little thing,
you remind me so much of your mother,
or was it your grandmother? No matter,
would you care to dance? -- Grandfather,
really, you shouldn't be bothering the young girls,
says fat-lipped Mario, the oily bastard
who married my cousin's daughter. I glare
at his Facebook ... no, his MySpace grin,
his sheer, impregnable, unapproachable
idiocy, his wasteland of vacant hollows. I sigh,
give up, and return to the table of Old Ladies.

Death comes down like a benediction,
the taxi pulling up to the door, throbbing,
five or ten minutes early: ready to go?
Well, no. Hang on a sec …
When in pain or misery or despair
it arrives ten years too late.

Fate … which might be too heavy a word
to put upon it, usually and very often
repeats itself, like the old photographs,
see Mam and Dad younger than you are now,
the old portraits, diaries, sketches, samplers,
the books we read as children, the books
we still read now, how we keep the past alive.

Ten years ago I would have punched him.
Now he might punch me back. Couldn't handle
that: where's me fuckin revolver? I was
in the War, you streak of shit, and where the fuck
were you? Not born. Not even here. And now,
dear God, I'm not even here no more.

The dead only become really dead
and pass like wraiths into the shades
when the memory of the living fades.

What of it? A dance, a drink? Fuck this
sitting with the sly old ladies, don't they
know me too well? But the anger
wells up in me. I was a far better man than he was
or ever will be, back in my prime, and I am still
the same man ... but I know I'm not.

The anger. Calm down. Take a pill ... take three.
O, Jesus, take the whole fuckin bottle!

What of it? So come in, you cheery young men,
and carry me out upon your shoulders.
I don’t believe in a Disneyland in the sky, nor any
perennial Auschwitz in the bowels of the earth,
(nor any half-way house inbetween!) despite
the Fathers of the Church, Evangelists, Bible-thumpers,
and the whole collection of bloody fear-mongers.

She was a fish-monger, and sure twas no wonder,
For so was her father and mother before ….
That’ll do, thanks: ahh, sweet (dead) Molly Malone.

You come in and you leave this world alone,
but you never really do. You are surrounded
by people all your life, a smiling enormous crew
who say they love you: who'll show at the end?

Taxi? I never called no taxi.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

No, it's not as bad as all that. But I do have a couple of rare old friends of my father dating back to the really old days of the Spanish War and the Battle of Britain who are more or less on their last legs (90s) and I can see how old age infuriates them since they were such furious (young!!) hyper Alpha Males when they were machine-gunning Fascists and Nazis of the Luftwaffe. They saved the country from invasion ... that's what Churchill himself said. Now they have to deal with filthy streets, insolent oblivious kids and the National Health -- hard to say which is worse. Outliving the people of your own generation seems to be a curse better done without.

373. Molokai

The pilot in his shorts and Aloha shirt
skims low, very low, over Maui island,
at ease in his little 12-seater;
now he dives to show us a herd of goats
who scatter, and all the passengers
grin widely but hold on awful tight.

On the ground. Alive. Molokai.
The aiport’s about the size of a caravan
with a smell of rain, bougainvillea, plumeria;
shrug on the backpack, head off for the road
where the first car slows down, stops,
“Eh, brah’ – wanna ride” – “Sure!”

“You wanna stay my house, eh?” – “What?”
“Eh, brah’, you like take or geev?” –
understanding takes a few minutes or so;
it seems like boys like boys on this island
and they’re so removed from the tourist track
that nobody even knows or cares.

I politely, regretfully, refuse: what a prick
I am, well, maybe in this case a non-prick,
but the young driver just shrugs and smiles;
he takes me to the eastern tip of the island,
to a hidden valley, a track to a waterfall,
one of the loveliest places I’ve ever seen.

I camp for two days, see nobody,
smoke dope, walk naked, talk to God,
the sort of things we did in those days;
when supplies run out I head for the road,
and sure enough, the first car stops again,
and (polite refusals later) drops me in town.

With some food and good-priced pakalolo,
I hitch a ride north, walk through pineapple fields,
and in a grove of trees set up my evening camp;
in the soft pastels of the morning, in boots and denims
I stumble down the crazy drops of the dangerous trail
to Kalaupapa, the forbidden peninsula.


So little, in those days, had really changed
since the time of Damien, the Belgian priest
who had come here to care for the castoffs;
this spit of land had been set aside for lepers,
an affliction the islanders could not deal with,
and it was in exile here they lived … and died.

The setting was far from grim, rather beautiful,
made into a village now of whiteboard houses,
the mountain behind, the sun-speckled sea around;
an old man, a leper, was pleased to guide me,
so very cheerful and gay with his stumps of fingers,
and it was a day of humility, sunshine and hope.

Later, back in Waikiki, more-or-less grinding out
the dirty dollars that would later set me free,
amid braying mid-Westerners, the military, the local touts,
my mind would revert to that lovely little island,
a place so physically close yet so far far away,
with its elderly lepers, its diffident homosexuals.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

This was Molokai in the early 1970s. Since then the hotel chains have moved in and the place has been totally made over. Here's some further info on the leper peninsula of Kalaupapa.

372. 物の哀れ (mono no aware)

sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt
Aeneid I.462 (Virgil)

when the tears arrive
tensely flowing from your eyes
they embrace the void

here there is nothing
once there were so many things
nothing now remains

a feeling of fear
your eyes seek here, they dart there
still there is nothing

fresh green tatami
the absence of all objects
emptiness, nothing

from the great window
stripped, denuded of curtains
the outside looks in

in a flower vase
under the tokonoma
three sprigs of blossom

you have never been
this lonely in your life ...
nor quite so happy.


--------------------------------------------------
Lacrimae rerum (from that dear old imperial sycophant, Virgil): Aeneas, while crying, says, "sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt" as he gazes at one of the murals found in a Carthaginian temple, which depicts battles of the Trojan War and deaths of his friends and countrymen: ... "tears for mortal things (sufferings) touch the soul." ... The burden man has to bear, ever present frailty and suffering, defines the essence of human experience.

Mono no aware (物の哀れ, mono no aware, lit. "the pathos of things"), also translated as "an empathy toward things," or "a sensitivity of ephemera," is a Japanese term used to describe the awareness of mujo or the transience of things and a bittersweet sadness at their passing (which explains why the whole country is so big into cherry blossoms, which are undeniably beautiful but only last about a week). This poem goes off on a slightly different tangent, to "wabi" and "sabi" which is the old, but very closely related (and quite definitely NOT modern) fixation on absence and silence and ... (not brought out in the poem) the studied non-perfection of carefully-made beloved things: so if you like your old teacup or teddy bear from when you were a kid, or insist on wearing that smelly old pullover you had in college then you are closer to the wabi-sabi ideal than the following Wikipedia definition: Wabi-sabi (侘寂) represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic centered on the acceptance of transience. The phrase comes from the two words wabi and sabi. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is "imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete" It is a concept derived from the Buddhist assertion of the Three marks of existence (三法印, sanbōin), specifically impermanence (無常, mujō).

tatami - Japanese mat flooring, green and pungently aromatic when new, then gradually yellowing with age. All traditional Japanese houses (or rooms within houses) have this flooring, as do temples.

tokonoma - an alcove let into a wall in a traditional Japanese room to allow for a hanging scroll or other decoration, usually fronted with a vase of seasonal blossoms or flowers.

371. A Hospital Visit

Darling, honey, we need to speak of your funeral;
I've just been on the phone to Monsignor McNeill
And they seem to want such ... well, so much money.
Mercenary was the thought that crossed my mind
Since their church is really quite empty on weekdays:
I think we can dispense with the RC service.

I seethe in my coma, this twittering bitch,
Serena, my second ill-chosen wife, mother
Of none of my children, Thank the Lord for that,
Sits here, smiling, perched beside my hospital bed,
In a happy flush of exaltation: I twitch,
But she knows I cannot speak.

I shall keep the house in town, she says,
But I plan to sell off your stamp collection;
The books you’ve collected for the last forty years
Can be sold off, I’m sure, in a job lot.
I’ll wipe clean the computer, of course,
And shred all the files of your silly poems.

A ping and sudden peak in the monitor
Is the only reaction that shows; comatose,
My defeated body lies flat on the bed;
I pray to God for a surge of strength,
to allow me to rise from this bed like a Titan,
and smash to pieces her evil head.

Oh, my dear, you seem to be quite upset,
that unbecoming bulge in your bloodshot eyes;
I suppose it can hardly come as a surprise
Since the doctor says the cock winds down
Even on the most robust constitution; my resolution
Suggests Spain with my hairdresser Germain.

The monitor pings.

Your children from your previous marriage
Have expressed some wish to see you;
I said there was really no cause for alarm
(Ill-founded concern can cause such harm)
So they won’t be coming, darling, so sorry. PU?
PU, an incoming text on my mobile phone.

Ping, ping, PING!

PU? Please Understand? Unveil … Undress?
Germain’s such a tease, he can often fail
To understand the nuances of language;
But he’s a Demon Little Big Boy in Bed!!!
The influence of anguish, the soft caress:
Oh, another message! … it reads,

God, in the end, came through,
And I rose up from the bed with a leonine roar,
Lifted her bodily from the floor, and ….

The patient had fallen from bed to a chair
When he died; his wife, in an access of despair
Seems to have thrown herself from the window.

370. Nineteen Thirty-Six

Ava Waverley
married Peter Ponsonby
for the mordauncy of his tongue
for the excellence of his tennis;

The alternative view
drifting into disenchantment
said the little bitch just did it
to arouse every hackle in sight.

Von Brickendrop, ex-champagne
salesman, now German ambassador,
appeared, and so did Lady Astor
with the well-heeled Cliveden Set;

There were two telegrams
from Wales and Wallis at Fort Belvedere,
one from Mussolini, not a peep from WSC
on the Cote d’Azur with Maxine Eliot.

Betty Cranbourne, later Lady Salisbury,
when writing a letter to someone
remarked that plays had left the stage,
the spotlight now shone down on Us;

Colin, who was in Cambridge at the time,
a friend of Burgess and MacLean,
took me aside, he said quite sensibly
it’s all drama, nothing to worry about.

369. Ariel

Being dead doesn't bother me, it's the dying part,
she said of a sudden straight from her heart
and I replied all free and easy,
light, ironic, breezy,
Darling, should I help you along?

'S'alright, love, I can manage myself,
I can perch, resigned, at the back of the shelf
and care for the children, let you go your way,
let you fuck all your squirming little tarts.
I frowned. There was little I could say.

On a bone-cold freezing winter day
she placed milk and biscuits on a tray,
brought them to the kids in the room above;
and without a word of reproach, nor even of love,
she placed a cloth in the oven and her head upon it

and died.

I have tried, tried so many many times
to discover some sense of meaning
in this careful act of cold finality:

Did she hate me? or was she a lone fatality
of a self-scourging sense of futility,
seeking recompense, hovering, leaning
over the blank utility of the grave?

I have lived since then, huddled down in the nave
of a shattered cathedral, her own and mine,
and nothing I have written, however fine,
can recover any lightness in my soul.

Even my innocent children survive on a dole
of pained and measured kindness. Her poems,
published and praised, still carry a sting
that assails me now, waking and sleeping.

Even as I ignore amazonic american hordes
who excavate this incident, this ... this thing,
women who hold me strenuously to account:
at the fount of non-knowledge, there is only weeping.

368. Timor Mortis Non Conturbat Me

... tears by bards or heroes shed
Alike immortalize the dead.

When I travel in dreams to 1916,
to the barricades of Dublin, to the angry cannonades
by the streams of the Ancre above the Somme,
I can see their tired individual faces
squinting east into the sun.

Curiosity rather than fear now traces
the look in their eyes, hands clasped loosely on rifle or gun,
their look of wonder married to mild surprise,
the morning roll-ups drooping on young dry lips.

This thing we have been waiting for all our lives,
this event from boyhood only half-imagined,
is about to begin. What will it be like?

--------------------------------------------------------

Timor mortis conturbat me is a Latin phrase commonly found in late medieval English poetry, translating to "fear of death disturbs me". The phrase comes from a responsory of the Catholic Office of the Dead, in the third Nocturn of Matins: Peccantem me quotidie, et non poenitentem, timor mortis conturbat me. Quia in inferno nulla est redemptio, miserere mei, Deus, et salva me.
"Sinning daily, and not repenting, the fear of death disturbs me. Because there is no redemption in hell, have mercy on me, O God, and save me."

The addition of 'Non' in the title renders the phrase into a negative: fear of Death does NOT disturb me. Why ever not? Here's some background:

Lord Kitchener's New Army consisted of 1914 civilian volunteers who had been trained throughout 1915 and shipped to France, for the most part, in the spring of 1916. These were idealistic patriotic young men, many of them serving with their friends or workmates in locally organised "Pal's Battalions" -- the very flower of English manhood. Their first and for many last battle began at 7.30 am on July 1st, 1916, the opening day of the great British attack just north of the River Somme. The battlefield extended for about 30 km (18 miles) in the Artois/Picardy region of northern France, from the villages of Gommecourt in the north to Montauban in the south, an area just east of Amiens and south of Arras and bisected by the River Ancre, a tributary of the Somme. Before evening fell more than 57,000 of these young soldiers had been killed or wounded, the worst single day for casualties in the whole history of the British Army, more than its battle casualties in the Crimean War, Boer War and Korean War combined. Reinforcing the catastrophic failure of the opening day, their commanding generals (primarily Sir Douglas Haig aided by his subordinates Rawlinson, Gough, Allenby and Snow) threw them into further attacks for another four months until winter brought the offensive to an end -- by which time they had suffered another 350,000 casualties and advanced exactly six miles. That was the end of the Volunteer Army, and the experiment of the Pal's Battalions was never to be repeated -- whole towns and villages throughout Britain had been plunged into mourning. Conscription came in and the War went on.

About two months previously in that same fateful year of 1916, other young men of similar age and patriotic disposition, members of the Irish Volunteers and Citizen Army who had refused to fight overseas for the British Empire, occupied strategic buildings in Dublin and declared an Irish Republic. The rebellion was ruthlessly crushed after the centre of the city had been destroyed by artillery. Martial law was declared and executions followed.

In spite of the vast differences in scale I have conjoined these two events in my poem, not to score any political points but to show that for young patriots facing their first armed conflict in a cause they passionately believed in, feelings on the eve of battle -- excitement, trepidation, curiosity, a desire to perform bravely, the nobility of the cause -- would not have entirely overcome their fear of death or maiming but would have done much to mitigate it, and would probably have been quite similar among both sets of young men.

----------------------------------------

Update ... Jan. 28

This poem made an appearance on several poetry lists and was nominated for an IBPC award, whatever that is, 'B' being Board (probably) and 'P' pretty definitely Poetry. I turned down the nomination, not peevishly, but for the reasons given:

Upon reflection, I have decided not to accept the nomination to IBPC for this poem. This may seem to be a rather strange and arbitrary decision, but it isn't really. It doesn't mean I plan to close the door irrevocably -- that's the kind of flat decision you make in your teens and twenties; as you begin to decay thereafter you tend to become more thoughtful and switch to the long game, adopting more of a wait-and-see attitude to just about everything -- and it's not beyond the bounds of imagination (as apart from harsh cold practicality) that I may come up with something, possibly on my 100th birthday, that is so-o-o-o fuckin good that nobody on earth can ignore it, never mind IBPC!! Dream on! I have a string of decades to go, barring war zones, drunken nights, earthquakes, explosions, traffic accidents, angry boyfriends (not mine, hers), sudden illnesses and sundry other catastrophes, so that I believe there may yet be time to chuckle in the darkness and hone my craft. Having been through most of the above before I am rather hoping there won't be re-runs.

I want to apologise to Steve and Bri for not going forward. I appreciate the nomination and the encouragement, but this is not the time, nor is this the poem I want to throw out there.

Sparks of interest in this poem only began to ignite when there was a better understanding of the events, both taking place nearly a century ago in 1916, that formed its background. Once the background was absorbed the poem made better sense for readers who came to it for the first time. This brings up two connected thoughts: 1) To what extent should a writer depend on the assimilated knowledge of his/her readers; and 2) Should a poem be able to stand alone without any supplementary explanations?

There are off-the-cuff opinions, without doubt, but what has been decided? The "classic" modernist turning point might be characterised by T.S. Eliot's "Wasteland" which appeared in 1922 with footnotes. Footnotes! Well, the traditionalists were absolutely scandalised. Of course they were. But, how many of the following works/authors could you read today without referential aids of one kind or another?

1. Beowulf
2. Mallory's "Morte d'Arthur"
3. The Canterbury Tales
4. The plays of Shakespeare
5. Milton

This is the Short List. The list extends to the Romantic Poets of the early 19th century who make free use of classical allusions that are no longer familiar to modern students. Poetry as a form of emotional shorthand depends heavily in its more complex forms upon some shared knowledge of historical or literary events/allusions among its readers or else loses all hope of concision. We need Primers to understand the mental world of Chaucer, Shakespeare and Milton. Shortly (even now) we shall need Primers to understand the mental world of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries.

The First World War ( 1914-18 ) falls under the same rubric. It has slipped from the file cabinets of daily life and people can grow impatient or even resentful when demands are made upon their historical memory: "How the hell should I be expected to remember all that crap?" A reader on a sister list praised this poem mildly and remarked that it was difficult to find 'a new slant' when it had all been done so well already by the Owens and the Sassoons, etc.

Well, ... yesss, with the enormous difference that from poor doomed Rupert Brooke at the beginning, all the other poets that followed: Sassoon, Graves -- (they were in the same regiment, the Royal Welch) -- Wilfred Owen ... (who met Sassoon at Craiglockhart Hospital, aka the Loony Bin) ... Herbert Read, Blunden, Edgell Rickword, Ivor Gurney, John McCrae, et al, actually lived through the experiences they wrote about. There is a tendency to lump them together as the War Poets -- now the FIRST War Poets -- as though the whole thing has been boxed and shelved and generally tidied up. The whole point is that even as the Great War fades chronologically in our memory -- the last of the boy-combatants has now succumbed, I believe -- the enormity of what happened remains.

Philip Larkin was one who returned to the theme in "MCMXIV":

Those long uneven lines
Standing as patiently
As if they were stretched outside
The Oval or Villa Park,
The crowns of hats, the sun
On moustached archaic faces
Grinning as if it were all
An August Bank Holiday lark;

And the shut shops, the bleached
Established names on the sunblinds,
The farthings and sovereigns,
And dark-clothed children at play
Called after kings and queens,
The tin advertisements
For cocoa and twist, and the pubs
Wide open all day;

And the countryside not caring
The place-names all hazed over
With flowering grasses, and fields
Shadowing Domesday lines
Under wheat's restless silence;
The differently-dressed servants
With tiny rooms in huge houses,
The dust behind limousines;

Never such innocence,
Never before or since,
As changed itself to past
Without a word--the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages
Lasting a little while longer:
Never such innocence again.

There is a great danger of domesticating or even patronising the Past as Larkin seems to do so in his first three stanzas above, to relegate it from modern consciousness as an area of quaintness now long outgrown or superceded, something to be given the gloss of Disneyfication or else herded into various Theme Parks with admission prices and opening and closing times. This, I think, is a mistake. Looking at the jerky old newsreels or posed photographs we can smile at the fashions, the early motorcars, the peculiar telephones, and smugly believe we have left all that behind. We can even look at the bulky video cameras and somewhat-mobile phones of the 1980s and delight in the same feeling. This may make us feel superior (among the young the 1960s felt INFINITELY superior to the 1950s and everything that went before ... now the 60s are a half-century ago) but it overlooks the non-superficial, the things that never seem to change: the Seven Deadly Sins, for example, a form of behavioral shorthand which need no religious connection to be recognised. Emotional reactions, failures of judgement, moral lapses, are human phenomena that are still very much with us, and so is the potential for repeating the horrors of the past on an even grander scale.

A bit of a rant, sorry, but that's one of the things poems (and comments on poems) are for!

Slán anois,