488. Prague Concerto

Snow in the wind, my thoughts
slide over to the Winter Queen, so easily
brought to mind in this unbombed
Central European city: War, having
taken its pound of flesh from the people
spared its buildings.

The Munich betrayal. Heydrich.
No wonder they feel the way they do.
Chamberlain. J’aime Berlin.

I visited you before and after.
In the summer of 1989, the border
was a nest of guns and barbed wire
with apologetic young recruits
going through your bags. In 1991,
when I came again with my family,
all of that stuff had gone.

The river, the Charles Bridge, the palace,
all of that stuff was still there.

The West betrayed you, England and France,
and condemned you to a half-century
of misery: fascists followed by communists,
and if I were Czech, I’d be angry.

Surprisingly, you are not angry. Rueful,
I think is the tone. You sure as hell
got rid of the Sudeten Germans, every
last single one of the Nazi bastards,
which in its way is a pity, when you think

Of Kafka, for example, no Sudeten farmer,
just a person who thought and wrote in German,
and most of that has been lost. Also Slovakia,
who were not much help to you during the war.
Pity the countries with no seas as shelter!

Land borders in Europe pay no attention
to the people who happen to live within them
and never really have. The Versailles Conference,
post-Great War, was supposed to change all that
and didn’t. They simply carved up Europe
and set the seeds for the next great war.

And they carved up the Arab world as well,
drawing straight lines with rulers on maps,
setting up "mandates" for France and Britain,
promising everything to everyone, including,
of course, the Jews. Which is why, Ladies & Gentleman,
we get 9/11, the problems that continue today.

No, I haven’t forgotten about Prague. The food
improves (MacDonald’s was a step up, if you can imagine!)
and the beer has always been good. It is a quaint
and lovely city with its old clock towers and cobblestones,
with its trace of the nostalgic Old World “Mitteleuropa”,
which hasn’t been seen since the 1930s. America

has a great deal going for it, or had at one stage,
but it will never never replace, with its Disney dreams,
the real and honest thing.

487. Elvis: "Last Train to Memphis"

I was a small Irish kid in Germany in 1958 (my Dad worked in the AFEX system as an accountant) when Elvis came over as an army draftee. A family friend got his autograph for me which I lost soon after (damn & double-damn!) and this is the point where this book - the first of a two-part biography - closes. The first part of this biography takes us back from the arrival in Germany to Elvis' birth in Tupelo, to his family's move to Memphis, his geeky high school days, the $12 guitar his father bought for him, and his burning desire to cut a record. This brought him to Sam Phillips and Sun Records. This early recording took off thanks to radio play throughout the South and a series of live gigs followed,  getting ever bigger and bigger. Soon things became so big they nearly got out of control. From some peculiar mixture of gospel, hillbilly, and Negro blues Elvis had hit on a new sound that caught the imagination of teenage America. By the age of 21 (1956) he was pulling in huge audiences and the music moguls were taking an interest. The predatory ex-Carnie barker "Colonel" Tom Parker moved in to guide this boy along and in his manipulatory and conniving ways made Elvis a national phenomenon.

What makes this story so fascinating is the way it is told. The author, an early fan of the music, spent 11 years tracking down all the surviving friends and associates of Elvis and tells the story as if he were looking through a keyhole, recording conversations and first impressions and opinions from such a wide number of people that you begin to feel you are there yourself. The way this book was put together is extremely impressive: by no means is it your "standard" biography. Whether you like the music or not (I did even then, I still do!) you cannot help but get caught up in the story. After such a meteoric rise you just know that a fall is bound to come: hubris, as we know from the wise old Greeks, is followed by nemesis.

A second volume of the biography entitled "Careless Love" charts the course of Elvis' career from the time he was released from the army to his early death at the age of 42. That will require another review.

486. In Reply to a Letter from an English Friend

We don't hate the Brits, Ben. We used to, that's true, but we don't any more. They seem to get along pretty well with us, too, much better than, say, with the modern-day Scots! The divorce - politically speaking - has been decisive and complete, apart from the dispute over the kids in Norn Iron and even that has been levelled down thanks to the IRA campaign, although nobody will admit that was the real reason. Terrorists!! Local boys (and girls) if you want to know the truth. The Queen could finally come over after a hundred years, and she was very welcome. On the personal level the old antagonisms just don't exist any more. We still have the old songs, of course. They're great old songs, so no reason to throw them out! And we still have the Gaelic tradition - the poetry and sagas and what one might describe as our 'national' character  - going back to the early centuries, both BC and AD. This will never never die out and our very strong sense of place and all the multiple layers of our long and colourful history can still inspire the rising generations ... and people like me!

We have the national or more precisely, tribal, failing of falling in love with Ireland, the landscape, the people, the whole surrounding atmosphere, and although this is touching, I suppose, it is more than a little weird! Nobody who leaves Ireland can ever stop talking about it.

The most important thing is that we are a free country again, the only sensible and natural way in which the Irish can exist and openly deal with the world, and we are a relatively 'elderly' free country at that, in the sense that younger generations have no interest in how we broke the chains of oppression and simply take their freedom for granted. Overall, I think this is a good thing. Our people grow up this way and they think it is a human right and they can't understand why other countries don't have the same privileges. So a lot of our nurses and activists go over to Palestine to get shot at by Israelis .... because the Palestinians are the same as the Irish, man, 150-200 years ago!

485. Jumpers

We live in a world of make-believe
day after day after day after day.

I raise a tired fist and feebly say
Hello, hello. It seems that things
are getting out of hand. Herodotus said

a number of interesting things, he pings
on the Ancient World, the BC bit,
long before the AD slice we live in,

being a dangerous man for opinions
altogether. So-o-o-o hard to decide whether
he’d be telling the truth. In a booth

not far from Birmingham I met a man
living in a world of make-believe
who told me something I still remember:

Listen to Herodotus, ya prick,
So I, being young and thick

listened to the man coming over the airwaves,
fading in and out from 350 BC.

It didn’t help or relieve, just sought to heave
the same old problems around, to shunt the cunts
as it were: was Melpomene your suffering mother?

She was young, you know, in the early Nazi days
and thought it was all very fine. Berlin in the sunlight.
Her summer frock. Bathing on the Wannsee with SS boys,
No notion the Fuehrer was out of his mind.

I wish you would go away,
no longer linger no longer stay:
your language is offensive!

Listen to Herodotus.

The defensive part is not the art
that wins a War: toujours, toujours l’audace
lands you dead or else a cripple.

Yes, I enjoy a little tipple
now and again with friends, it makes amends
for the other crap I end up doing.

I have had my fill of war.
You don’t know what you’re fighting for
after the first year runs into the second.

A fecund lady has always been my dream,
broad hips, big tits, something to grab hold of,
but I always end up with slight little girls,

little waifs who slit their wrists, have problems,
who arouse my protective instincts, and who,
if you get that far, are not a very good fuck.

I need a blonde beaming girl who doesn’t read books,
who doesn’t speak in connected sentences,
who understands money .... !

Girlfriends are one thing, wives are another!
I was told that by my mother: she said, may God
direct you to the Right Woman, young idiot, etc.

My little Chinese girl has left me. Of course she has.
She was so cute and young and smart and elegant:
no doddering chav is allowed these things …

if but only for a while

and so my creaking heart still sings. Dangerously.
I smile. A sunny smile. I know, I know it is all a game
and other sweet girls will flutter along

like moths to murder in the flame. They want
a certain something. And so, dear God, do I.
Herodotus was saying, before you interrupted

that different people behave in different ways
and he was fascinated by this: he writes, whenever
the Persians had something seriously to decide
they went about it twice. Initially, they were quite
sober and rational, questioning, very very open to advice,
but then they went off and got totally drunk or stoned
and listened to no-one, to see if feelings would coincide.
As I stare, as I glare at my iPhone 5 today
this still makes sense in every way.

484. Some Random Thoughts on the English Language

When you think, I think,
you don’t want to think too hard:
step lightly over the earth, skip over it,
because there are quicksands and tarpits
and yawning manholes, never mind the landmines,
scattered here and there and everywhere
going by names we have learned to trust,
such as love and loyalty, honour and family,
a collection of abstract, uncountable nouns.

For those who speak only one language,
a sense of false confidence conceals the danger
inherent in the missing abyss of comparison;
why do you go to “the” store instead of “a” store?
What difference does that make? Only the same
as when you love “the” woman instead of “a” woman,
or when you look to “the” future instead of “a” future.
These are such small little things, inconsequential,
unless you start to think about them. But never

think too hard, it wears out the brain, makes you weary,
takes away the jolt and taste of your morning coffee.
(Now where the hell did that word ‘coffee’ come from?)
Paddling your canoe in your khaki shorts past a bamboo grove
you are using four words borrowed from other languages.
But the nouns, oh the nouns, are not the real problem!
It’s the verbs. Those goddam verbs! Descriptions of time
must exist in all languages, and are either smooth or clunky:
if I had but known what he had been thinking of proposing

I should quite possibly not have been quite so willing as I was.
This is the beauty of pidgin, crossover languages, border talk:
He talk smooth-smooth. I say OK. Later I say fuck you.
You can’t argue with the meaning, although it’s not Jane Austen,
nor Dickens or Trollope or Thackeray. Also, it’s not the brutal
vernacular most of us would choose to speak in. Yet it works.
This is the thing about language all around this globe we live in.
It’s no use raising your voice and bellowing at foreigners.
It really really doesn’t act as an aid to understanding. It don’t.

Ain’t that a shame? Please God, finally, let everyone speak English
so we don’t have to bother with learning all their foreign tongues,
and the world will all be One. If you actually believe that, pal,
you are living in La-la Land. Never happen. Everyone changes it.
When the Irish had to learn English or starve they fuckin hated it,
what a stupid thick-arsed language, they thought, and immediately
set out to improve it, adding rhythms and colours and tone to this …
this black-and-white atrocity. All over the world, in Jamaica, in Singapore,
in Kenya, in India and Pakistan, Fiji and Samoa, people do the same!

483. The Uncertain Knight

Night falls, the mountains fade,
and the lamps are lit in the east.
After the feast I know you must retire
with the other women. I cast a sigh
for I have caught your roving eye
as I shuffle closer to the fire.

Night falls, the fountains hiss
and sing in the garden, a splash
of water on stone. I feel so alone
no matter what I try. My father
is a beast within me, a clash,
an abyss of water and burning fire.

Night falls, and I clutch my sword,
in which I place no trust, the blade
is sharp, keen steel, it has no rust
and it mocks me. How can any girl
really love me? I place you above me
in this, in all, in whatever’s made.

482. Irish-Americans

Americans of Irish Ancestry

Nothing means nothing at all
until historians knock, come in to call
and place their markers here and there.
Never knew what was happening, I swear,
until I read your best-selling book,
Mister or Missus or Mizz.

I was living through historic times
with no sense of a change, the range
of the stones we threw was paramount,
and as a revolution this would not amount
to much, but it did in Palestine. I am amazed
how the rebel Irish set the tone, dazed

by the way everyone else gets shot down
or clubbed or imprisoned, in India,
South Africa, Syria, you fuckin name it,
and I know we are the the guys to blame
for telling people to get off their knees
and stand up. Cousin Martin back in the day

was living in Amerikay, minding his own
bizness, getting along so easily as the Irish do,
when they fucked him into the military, sent
him off to Vietnam. I don’t like this, says Martin,
gazing on the departing body bags. I think this
could soon be me: no return to Éireann mo chroí!

It was a very bad war to send in the Irish,
because like the Mexican War a century before
they felt a certain sympathy for the other side.
Who’s beating the fuck out of whom and why?
Racism kicked in, and also loyalty to friends,
but it was a wrong war against the wrong people

with a need to make amends. I don’t know
if we can ever do so. Every single bloody war
America starts, and by God they start a lot of them,
the Irish are right there by their side. They say
they are Americans now. I believe that, how

could you not believe them? It’s in your face, it’s true,
but for God’s sake stop being stupid, stop being dense,
stop pushing, and have a little bit of sense! Our belief
is still with that Shining City Upon the Hill, and the will
to be a free people living in a free country.

481. Dutch Cicadas

Cicadas march on to their shift at daybreak, since
you'll never hear the buggers at night. They have
their factory horn: drop your cocks and grab your socks!
It’s reveille, a revelry of summer sounds. A summer morn
as long as these rockers are around, a pervading blight
which can either drive you nuts, or make you reach
for Pina Coladas on the beach, your sunglasses just so,
waiting for that heiress from Indiana. Juliana was still

Queen of the Netherlands when my father fucked off
for New York and didn’t like it. New Amsterdam was a joke
with nothing left but misspelt names: Harlem, the Bronx,
Roosevelt. He lit off with another bloke for Miami Beach
on Trailways Buses through the Deep South, his mouth
opened wide, a constant O of wonder. A lynching in Georgia,
a bottom pinching of a Charleston Beauty. But that was a fat
old white man, member of the Klan, so he was all right.

Travelling on by day and night, the sun a constant trial,
for the Hollanders of his generation did not grow tanned
but proceeded from pink to red to scarlet to near imminent
self-explosion: a phial (bah!) even a gallon of sun lotion
came as little relief. Stubborn, pig-headed, Dutch beyond belief,
he headed for salvation, immolation, between the sea and sand!
Of course he made it. Not only that he met my stunning mother,
stole her off some New York hood. She liked his peeling nose

and reckoned things might turn out good with an honest man.
She was right about that. Pretty girls know men will chase them
for a certain while: be bad, if you like, but make your pile
before the party's over. My Mommy wasn't a hard case, not really,
she wanted out soon. She married my Daddy, Dirk Van Roon,
and lived happily ever after. My sister and I grew up in style,
amid songs and love and laughter. But they are sadly dead now,
as so many people we love are dead. The lines have been read.

480. Consolation

“Love don't make things nice - it ruins everything.
It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. We aren't here to make things perfect.
We are here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and to love the wrong people and die.”
- Moonstruck

You know the way you just
run into people, as if by accident?
Strangers, I mean; this is
definitely the main theme
in all our lives. I've often heard
children can’t choose their parents.
So what? I say parents can’t choose
their kids. You take what you get,
but when it comes to chance encounters,
you never know what will happen.

This is a poem about you, by the way.
OK, I may not know your name, sorry,
but I know you very well. This same stuff
has also happened to you, don’t even
begin to deny it. How did you meet
the first boy or girl you ever slept with?
How did you meet the person you married?
When did you start thinking, Omigod,
I wish, I wish I’d waited. Never at all?

Liar. But that’s all right, because we all
tell lies to ourselves. We have to prop up
the façade of who we think we are, who
we think we want to be. Hey, it’s normal.
Otherwise you go quietly insane, take pills,
jump off some fuckin bridge, steer the car
in the oncoming lane. Reality is not good for people.
We need all those little ways of avoiding it,
so if we don’t fall down the stairs, don't get shot,
don't board the wrong plane, we make it to old age.

479. Afghanistan

There is an Afghan strain in me, loud and ebullient,
as I wear helmets with colourful fluttering streamers
that match my marvellous pantaloons. I tease
my hair into ringlets, put dark kohl under my eyes,
and look sexy, decadent and dangerous.

This pleases me exceedingly.

I know dancing boys with bums like peaches,
alas, alas, on the other side of the river!

When the British came the first time
we murdered Sekundar Burnes, assassinated
their commissar McNaughten, and simply waited.
Elphinstone was an old man, a weak commander,
he decided to retreat to British India.

Hoo, hoo, hoo, what a fool!
We cut them to pieces, murdered them all
in the snowy passes from Gandamak to Jalalabad.
What a wonderful killing time that was,
and the old grandfathers made songs and poems.

Now we have the Feringhi again, not Russians,
but Amerikhani, Anghrezi, some others.
Why do they keep returning? One wonders,
since the result is ever and always the same.
They die, we die, and in the end they leave.

It has always been so.
---------------------------------------------------
historical reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Anglo-Afghan_War

478. Dietramszell

Hindenburg in his declining years
came often, old Prussian as he was,
to soften the hardness, tamp down
his fears. He was so old, near death.

Each gasping breath brought pain:
He, first to know his time was over,
knew that the War had been long ago
but that the politics would remain.

I imagine him in this Bavarian setting,
the low green slopes and distant mountains,
cap-doffings in the street, “Gruess Gott!”
The greetings of God, Herr Feldmarschall!

His steps would have taken him to the church
which stands still now at the bottom of a hill,
and he would have gone in, the Old Junker,
sweeping aside sectarian differences.

Bavarians were well known for being Catholic,
soft and fond of beer. It took Prussian steel
to instill real fear of God! Pause in the annex:
Fallen for Germany, 241 names, this small town.

Slightly abashed, the Field Marshall proceeds.
The main door is opened and glory explodes:
there is no other word, all is white and gold
and decorative and completely unrestrained!

This is the 18th century brought to life again:
baroque, rococo, architecture possibly designed
by pastry chefs, inedible incredible swirls of plaster.
The Field Marshall blinks once, twice. He smiles.

477. The Return to Ireland of Conor MacArt

Fill ar ais go hÉirinn de Conor MacArt

Three years in a darkened prison, by God,

and myself snivelling and whining for food,

kissing hands of any man who brought me water.

God blast the heathen Jew and Paynim!

I would roar in my black and fearful cell

and the rats would cock their heads to listen.

Bert, my servant, had been summarily executed,

thanks be to God, he with no more stories to tell,

caught stealing bread from homeless orphans.

‘Twas that bread that barely kept me alive

until the summons came, a flood of sunlight,

illuminating stones, the source of a shriek of pain.

The chains and manacles were roughly removed,

and I was bathed and shaved and pomaded.

Arra, this is looking good, says I to myself.

A ship. The Great Suleiman has paid your ransom

I was curtly told, and I confess I was none too pleased,

but then we fell among moustachioed Cypriot pirates.

There was a great furore and a clanging of swords

and when they came down to kill us all, I sang

Kyrie, Kyrie Eleison, Kyrie Kyrie Eleison.

They dropped to their blood-drenched shaggy knees

and asked if I was a priest. I was, I told them,

and was escorted most politely to the upper deck.

I did solemn funeral ceremonies for the Christian dead

while the Turks were simply cast over the side.

I suggested a collection for the widows and children.

Now that I had money I was ablaze to get ashore

and was dropped, feigning illness, on an island called Rhodes.

It took me half a year to get to Marsillia in France.

Erstwhile friends, with exceptions, feigned not to know me,

and it was a weary journey from the south to the north.

At long last I gazed on the turbulent, grey northern sea.

England? No, I hardly think so. That Queen is no friend.

But a long sea journey will cost more than I possess.

Sadly, regretfully, I settled on robbery and murder.

Green and yellow, under clouds, beyond blue rushing waves,

appear the long and longed-for shorelines of Erin.

Home is the wanderer, what fate will await me now?

476. Heartaches (a wee shortie)

Heartaches
are like bonebreaks:
You'll never walk again!
You think it's true,
but then you do.

475. War

A few friendly farts around the table
do not come amiss, a new friendship starts
before language kicks in. Most of the lads
of whatever nation, of whatever station,
laugh at the same jokes. We are yokels.
Wars, I think, are made easy to start
because of male simplicity of the heart.

We need women to keep us sane,
balanced, keeping to the narrow lane
of things that matter. And as we become
older and fatter, the truth sinks in,
that it is young men with their flags unfurled,
heavy on the booze and with nothing to lose,
that make revolutions in this world.

474. Cahirciveen, 1720

False friends beam slyly in the taproom
and thy name is now unknown to me,
thou Jezebel! The very doors of hell
yawn wide in a field in daylight
my bruiséd soul to greet. A breeze
whistles through the woods, and I,
who once would fawn, dissemble fright,
who would once yield, go weak in my knees,
go light of head, run fey in your sight,
am but a warp in a winding sheet.

473. Game Suspended

Lounging about, as we do,
in that limbo-like, that lingering time
where nothing happens, the now and then
where we find ourselves asking
which constructs are actually true,
and which but gatherings of desire,
simple deep derivative desires,
or if or whether or when
we retreat or get physically flung
arse over tip, chest over chin,
to be lost without trace, again to begin,
or to be stretched and hung, alone, apart,
shuttled off in rattling old cattle cars
to the rag and bone shop of the heart.

472. Mister Death Leans Down

When your bones are mangled
people try, they try to be so gentle,
but every movement hurts: such activity,
many many people talking all at once,
all of them in a foreign language.

Think, stay conscious, concentrate!
What … what happened? One minute
cruising along, iPod on the speakers,
last lesson coming up at this company
and then a ten-day break to follow.

Next thing Mister Death leans down,
skids you neatly into the oncoming lane
and lets you watch for a second or two:
you know exactly what’s going to happen
and not a damn thing you can do.

The guy who hit me was not a truck
I’m glad to say, and I’m also glad to say
he wasn’t hurt himself. His first question
as I dangled out the door, presumably dying,
was ‘Hey, dude, do you have insurance?’

I nodded. Bummer, I’ll be late for work.
I tried to lie down, just take a little nap,
when total strangers started slapping me
and behaving in a very impolite, a most
un-Japanese manner. Sirens, sirens …

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

Apologies. I’m still trying to make sense of this thing.
I’ve been in hospital for the last six weeks
(which would explain the blessed silence).
In time, I’m told, everything will more or less work again
and there will be no permanent physical damage.
I’m not fishing for sympathy here – you’ll know that if you know me.
But I still cannot figure out what the hell happened!!
Being a Celt, no matter how many generations along,
I am only half-Christian and aware of the Other World.
I look upon this as a direct and painful warning.
I have been doing something seriously wrong in my life.
Apparently, I’ve been given one last chance to fix it.

471. Inennan

I want to hold you
but I cannot hold you …
not in front of a policeman
not when the lights are turning green
not when people are looking
not when your eyes are shining
not when a cough is coming
not when a war still rages
not when the climate changes
not when children are sad and hungry 

unless perhaps when it rains
and we can smile in one another’s eyes
and hide under a big umbrella 

but the people will bump into us
from before and behind and say,
move along, move along, move along!

抱きしめたい
保持することはできません...
ない警官の前で
交通信号灯が.緑色に回っていない場合
人々が探しているいないとき
あなたの目は輝いていない場合
咳が来ていない場合
ないときは、戦争はまだ激怒
ていない場合の気候変動
子供は悲しいと空腹時ではなく

ない限り、多分雨が降るとき
互いの目には笑うことができる
大きな傘の下に

人々は上がっていきます
前と後ろと言うから
移動する移動する移動する 。

470. The Master

Last in, first out
Is what they used say
In the factories: the layoffs
Sensed before they happened.

And in Belfast, at H & W
Where they built the Titanic,
The Taigs would go first.
The natural order.

I think more and more
Of Louis MacNeice.
Of all the poets in the world,
He is the closest to my soul.

Protean, entirely unimpressed,
Shouldering the black guilt of Ulster
And simultaneously shrugging it off,
Every poem a new beginning.

Auden felt awe as his powers failed.
Spender more or less had given up.
Only Dylan Thomas ploughed on,
Sound-intoxicated, incomprehensible.

Larkin, I think, had little to say.
Heaney, Longley and Paul Muldoon
Owe Northern debts of gratitude,
As so, in my Southern way, do I.

A sample of MacNeice:http://dublinerinjapan.blogspot.jp/2004/07/louis-macneice-dangerously-good-poem.html

469. Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

Beannachtaí na Feile Padraig (Happy Saint Patrick's Day) to all my friends -- and to any enemies as well, what the hell! ... since it's not really any specific day any more a but an extended period every year in the middle of March when you get to thinking about the country and not just what it means to those of us who were born there but for all the people of Irish ancestry all over the world and for the people of any nationality or ethnic background who can tune into the music and the craic and get a sense of what this small country poised between Europe and America has come to add to the ongoing story of our human race, adding great moments of hilarity and good cheer in spite of a history that could have crushed any people less resilient: A pity beyond all telling, Yeats tells us, is hid in the heart of love.

Mary Black:   A Song for Ireland