Death of a Naturalist Read online

  Cowling plated forehead and sledgehead jaw.

  Speech is clamped in the lips’ vice.

  That fist would drop a hammer on a Catholic –

  Oh yes, that kind of thing could start again.

  The only Roman collar he tolerates

  Smiles all round his sleek pint of porter.

  Mosaic imperatives bang home like rivets;

  God is a foreman with certain definite views

  Who orders life in shifts of work and leisure.

  A factory horn will blare the Resurrection.

  He sits, strong and blunt as a Celtic cross,

  Clearly used to silence and an armchair:

  Tonight the wife and children will be quiet

  At slammed door and smoker’s cough in the hall.

  Poor Women in a City Church

  The small wax candles melt to light,

  Flicker in marble, reflect bright

  Asterisks on brass candlesticks:

  At the Virgin’s altar on the right,

  Blue flames are jerking on wicks.

  Old dough-faced women with black shawls

  Drawn down tight kneel in the stalls.

  Cold yellow candle-tongues, blue flame

  Mince and caper as whispered calls

  Take wing up to the Holy Name.

  Thus each day in the sacred place

  They kneel. Golden shrines, altar lace,

  Marble columns and cool shadows

  Still them. In the gloom you cannot trace

  A wrinkle on their beeswax brows.

  Gravities

  High-riding kites appear to range quite freely,

  Though reined by strings, strict and invisible.

  The pigeon that deserts you suddenly

  Is heading home, instinctively faithful.

  Lovers with barrages of hot insult

  Often cut off their nose to spite their face,

  Endure a hopeless day, declare their guilt,

  Re-enter the native port of their embrace.

  Blinding in Paris, for his party-piece

  Joyce named the shops along O’Connell Street

  And on Iona Colmcille sought ease

  By wearing Irish mould next to his feet.

  Twice Shy

  Her scarf à la Bardot,

  In suede flats for the walk,

  She came with me one evening

  For air and friendly talk.

  We crossed the quiet river,

  Took the embankment walk.

  Traffic holding its breath,

  Sky a tense diaphragm:

  Dusk hung like a backcloth

  That shook where a swan swam,

  Tremulous as a hawk

  Hanging deadly, calm.

  A vacuum of need

  Collapsed each hunting heart

  But tremulously we held

  As hawk and prey apart,

  Preserved classic decorum,

  Deployed our talk with art.

  Our juvenilia

  Had taught us both to wait,

  Not to publish feeling

  And regret it all too late –

  Mushroom loves already

  Had puffed and burst in hate.

  So, chary and excited

  As a thrush linked on a hawk,

  We thrilled to the March twilight

  With nervous childish talk:

  Still waters running deep

  Along the embankment walk.

  Valediction

  Lady with the frilled blouse

  And simple tartan skirt,

  Since you left the house

  Its emptiness has hurt

  All thought. In your presence

  Time rode easy, anchored

  On a smile; but absence

  Rocked love’s balance, unmoored

  The days. They buck and bound

  Across the calendar,

  Pitched from the quiet sound

  Of your flower-tender

  Voice. Need breaks on my strand;

  You’ve gone, I am at sea.

  Until you resume command,

  Self is in mutiny.

  Lovers on Aran

  The timeless waves, bright, sifting, broken glass,

  Came dazzling around, into the rocks,

  Came glinting, sifting from the Americas

  To possess Aran. Or did Aran rush

  To throw wide arms of rock around a tide

  That yielded with an ebb, with a soft crash?

  Did sea define the land or land the sea?

  Each drew new meaning from the waves’ collision.

  Sea broke on land to full identity.

  Poem

  For Marie

  Love, I shall perfect for you the child

  Who diligently potters in my brain

  Digging with heavy spade till sods were piled

  Or puddling through muck in a deep drain.

  Yearly I would sow my yard-long garden.

  I’d strip a layer of sods to build the wall

  That was to exclude sow and pecking hen.

  Yearly, admitting these, the sods would fall.

  Or in the sucking clabber I would splash

  Delightedly and dam the flowing drain,

  But always my bastions of clay and mush

  Would burst before the rising autumn rain.

  Love, you shall perfect for me this child

  Whose small imperfect limits would keep breaking:

  Within new limits now, arrange the world

  Within our walls, within our golden ring.

  Honeymoon Flight

  Below, the patchwork earth, dark hems of hedge,

  The long grey tapes of road that bind and loose

  Villages and fields in casual marriage:

  We bank above the small lough and farmhouse

  And the sure green world goes topsy-turvy

  As we climb out of our familiar landscape.

  The engine noises change. You look at me.

  The coastline slips away beneath the wing-tip.

  And launched right off the earth by force of fire,

  We hang, miraculous, above the water,

  Dependent on the invisible air

  To keep us airborne and to bring us further.

  Ahead of us the sky’s a geyser now.

  A calm voice talks of cloud yet we feel lost.

  Air-pockets jolt our fears and down we go.

  Travellers, at this point, can only trust.

  Scaffolding

  Masons, when they start upon a building,

  Are careful to test out the scaffolding;

  Make sure that planks won’t slip at busy points,

  Secure all ladders, tighten bolted joints.

  And yet all this comes down when the job’s done,

  Showing off walls of sure and solid stone.

  So if, my dear, there sometimes seem to be

  Old bridges breaking between you and me,

  Never fear. We may let the scaffolds fall,

  Confident that we have built our wall.

  Storm on the Island

  We are prepared: we build our houses squat,

  Sink walls in rock and roof them with good slate.

  This wizened earth has never troubled us

  With hay, so, as you see, there are no stacks

  Or stooks that can be lost. Nor are there trees

  Which might prove company when it blows full

  Blast: you know what I mean – leaves and branches

  Can raise a tragic chorus in a gale

  So that you listen to the thing you fear

  Forgetting that it pummels your house too.

  But there are no trees, no natural shelter.

  You might think that the sea is company,

  Exploding comfortably down on the cliffs,

  But no: when it begins, the flung spray hits

  The very windows, spits like a tame cat

  Turned savage. We just sit tight while wind divesr />
  And strafes invisibly. Space is a salvo,

  We are bombarded by the empty air.

  Strange, it is a huge nothing that we fear.

  Synge on Aran

  Salt off the sea whets

  the blades of four winds.

  They peel acres

  of locked rock, pare down

  a rind of shrivelled ground;

  bull-noses are chiselled

  on cliffs.

  Islanders too

  are for sculpting. Note

  the pointed scowl, the mouth

  carved as upturned anchor

  and the polished head

  full of drownings.

  There

  he comes now, a hard pen

  scraping in his head;

  the nib filed on a salt wind

  and dipped in the keening sea.

  Saint Francis and the Birds

  When Francis preached love to the birds,

  They listened, fluttered, throttled up

  Into the blue like a flock of words

  Released for fun from his holy lips.

  Then wheeled back, whirred about his head,

  Pirouetted on brothers’ capes,

  Danced on the wing, for sheer joy played

  And sang, like images took flight.

  Which was the best poem Francis made,

  His argument true, his tone light.

  In Small Townlands

  For Colin Middleton

  In small townlands his hogshair wedge

  Will split the granite from the clay

  Till crystal in the rock is bared:

  Loaded brushes hone an edge

  On mountain blue and heather grey.

  Outcrops of stone contract, outstared.

  The spectrum bursts, a bright grenade,

  When he unlocks the safety catch

  On morning dew, on cloud, on rain.

  The splintered lights slice like a spade

  That strips the land of fuzz and blotch,

  Pares clean as bone, cruel as the pain

  That strikes in a wild heart attack.

  His eyes, thick, greedy lenses, fire

  This bare bald earth with white and red,

  Incinerate it till it’s black

  And brilliant as a funeral pyre:

  A new world cools out of his head.

  The Folk Singers

  Re-turning time-turned words,

  Fitting each weathered song

  To a new-grooved harmony,

  They pluck slick strings and swing

  A sad heart’s equilibrium.

  Numb passion, pearled in the shy

  Shell of a country love

  And strung on a frail tune,

  Looks sharp now, strikes a pose

  Like any rustic new to the bright town.

  Their pre-packed tale will sell

  Ten thousand times: pale love

  Rouged for the streets. Humming

  Solders all broken hearts. Death’s edge

  Blunts on the narcotic strumming.

  The Play Way

  Sunlight pillars through glass, probes each desk

  For milk-tops, drinking straws and old dry crusts.

  The music strides to challenge it,

  Mixing memory and desire with chalk dust.

  My lesson notes read: Teacher will play

  Beethoven’s Concerto Number Five

  And class will express themselves freely

  In writing. One said ‘Can we jive?’

  When I produced the record, but now

  The big sound has silenced them. Higher

  And firmer, each authoritative note

  Pumps the classroom up tight as a tyre,

  Working its private spell behind eyes

  That stare wide. They have forgotten me

  For once. The pens are busy, the tongues mime

  Their blundering embrace of the free

  Word. A silence charged with sweetness

  Breaks short on lost faces where I see

  New looks. Then notes stretch taut as snares. They trip

  To fall into themselves unknowingly.

  Personal Helicon

  For Michael Longley

  As a child, they could not keep me from wells

  And old pumps with buckets and windlasses.

  I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells

  Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss.

  One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board top.

  I savoured the rich crash when a bucket

  Plummeted down at the end of a rope.

  So deep you saw no reflection in it.

  A shallow one under a dry stone ditch

  Fructified like any aquarium.

  When you dragged out long roots from the soft mulch,

  A white face hovered over the bottom.

  Others had echoes, gave back your own call

  With a clean new music in it. And one

  Was scaresome for there, out of ferns and tall

  Foxgloves, a rat slapped across my reflection.

  Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime,

  To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring

  Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme

  To see myself, to set the darkness echoing.

  Acknowledgements

  Acknowledgements are due to the editors of the following, in which some of these poems have appeared:

  Belfast Telegraph, Dublin Magazine, Kilkenny Magazine, Interest, Irish Times, The Listener, New Statesman, Northern Review, Outposts, Poetry Ireland, Vogue; The Arts in Ulster (BBC Northern Ireland), The Living Poet and The Poet’s Voice (BBC Third Programme); Universities Poetry 5, Young Commonwealth Poets ’65 (Heinemann).