An Origin Like Water Page 4

  The sort of wound a man might imitate forever.

  And seeing hacked limbs, I was their screams,

  Their first spasm of terror. But I was his dreams

  Also as, victim to his victim,

  He saw himself split again

  And turned away alone,

  Forever puzzled. “He will kill again of course,”

  I said. He smiled and sneered. “I am

  The traveler after all. You can’t have known

  How hard it is to get a good horse.”

  The Laws of Love

  (FOR MARY ROBINSON)

  At first light the legislator

  Who schooled you, creator

  Of each force, each element,

  Its secret law, its small print

  Nature—while dawn, baptismal as waters

  which broke early in dark, began—

  First saw the first of your daughters

  Become in your arms a citizen.

  How easy for you to have made

  For her a perfumed stockade,

  How easy for you to impose

  Laws and structures, torts for those

  Fragments which matter less and less

  As all fragments, and we must bless

  The child, its murderer, defend

  This chaos somehow which must end

  With order. But who can separate

  Hatred from its opposite

  Or judge which is the other’s source

  Today? Unless perhaps that force

  Which makes your Moy in its ridge pool

  Prime teenage trout for butchery,

  While at the same time fulfill

  The blood-tie of the tide, as we

  Once new found sisters, each grown miser

  With new found blood began to trade

  Salmond for Shakespeare—none the wiser

  Then but now I see it focus

  Slowly—a miracle, a closing wound.

  That sisters kill, that sisters die, must mock us

  Now, unless, with separate speech we find

  For them new blood, for them now plead

  Another world for whose horizons,

  For whose anguish no reprieve

  Exists unless new citizens,

  And, as we found, the laws of love—

  We two whose very first words fell

  Like wishes down a wishing well,

  Ungranted, had we known, unwanted

  Yet still there as the well is, haunted.

  Sisters

  (FOR NESSA MY OWN)

  Now it is winter and the hare

  Imitates the hillside snow,

  Crouches in his frame of ice,

  The dormouse in his wheel of fur,

  While in caves hour by hour

  The bat glistens in reverse.

  Snowdrops poised for assassination

  Broadcast, white in the face, the stress

  Of first bursting out of a prison

  Where winter grips the warder’s keys

  By day then, at the dusk’s tilt,

  Loops them to Orion’s belt.

  In Monkstown bay a young seal

  Surfaces, sleuth hound of herring;

  Gulls shriek as he steals their meal

  But I, getting the hint of spring,

  As a fisherman an Armada hull,

  Welcome his unexpected skull

  For you, as his outline through

  The spring tide comes to view;

  Spring to mind. In such disguise

  Our love survived as the sea with ease

  Becomes with granite a graphic twin

  Tumbling like a harlequin.

  At seven years, the age of reason,

  The ready child communicates

  With Christ, according to our church.

  Seven years ago, in the silly season,

  And for such reasons, our two hearts

  Were put outside each other’s reach.

  The fable goes, becoming warmer

  Every second against his breast:

  Christ’s blood created the first informer,

  The robin redbreast. And still the thirst

  For knowledge and blood, they still remain,

  And still we turn to still the pain.

  O and my sister, not a sound,

  Could find its way into this silence,

  Nor intervene where you have found

  In one stunned heart, which must now trounce

  Breaking, if not a breathing space,

  Well then a sister’s grim embrace.

  And in your ear a final Word—

  That we remember all our pain

  Has saved us from a final fate,

  One worse than death. Has left us scarred

  But strangely safe for we remain

  From these others separate.

  The three harridans who toy

  With human life, who in the cut

  And thrust of gossip, never

  Noticed one untwisted joy,

  One sisterhood and could not sever

  Ours with a chill and idle gesture.

  II

  O Fons Bandusiae

  (Horace 3:XIII)

  Bold as crystal, bright as glass,

  Your waters leap while we appear

  Carrying to your woodland shrine

  Gifts below your worthiness,

  Grape and flower, Bandusia,

  Yellow hawksbeard, ready wine.

  And tomorrow we will bring

  A struggling kid, his temples sore

  With early horns, as sacrifice.

  Tomorrow his new trumpeting

  Will come to nothing, when his gore

  Stains and thaws your bright ice.

  Canicula, the lamp of drought,

  The summer’s fire, leaves your grace

  Inviolate in the woods where

  Everyday you spring to comfort

  The broad bull in his trace,

  The herd out of the shepherd’s care.

  With every fountain, every spring

  Of legend, I will set you down

  In praise and immortal spate:

  These waters which drop gossiping

  To ground, this wet surrounding stone

  And this green oak I celebrate.

  Chorus of the Shadows

  (after Nelly Sachs)

  Puppets we are, strung by a puppet master.

  He knows the theater of the absurd. He understands

  Murder too well. Outrage. Grief. Disaster.

  He puts the show on in hell. By his permission

  We are moths fired and turned on his obsession.

  His hands,

  Are pinned to the dust. They darken the hangman’s threats,

  Give depth to the noose and our dimensions greet him,

  The victim, as he plummets. No wonder we are

  Weary of our own silhouettes.

  Now we are driven to it, now we deliver

  An ultimatum

  To the planet which scripts our part. Take away

  Light and we will not undertake love

  Any longer. Give us a new part to play

  In the day of a child or a stake in the luck—the frail

  Perfect luck—of a dragonfly above

  The rim of a well.

  From the Irish of Pangur Ban

  (FOR MAIRIN)

  Myself and Pangur, cat and sage

  Go each about our business;

  I harrass my beloved page,

  He his mouse.

  Fame comes second to the peace

  Of study, a still day.

  Unenvious, Pangur’s choice

  Is child’s play.

  Neither bored, both hone

  At home a separate skill,

  Moving, after hours alone,

  To the kill.

  And when at last his net wraps,

  After a sly fight,

  Around a mouse, mine traps

  Sudden insight.

 
On my cell wall here,

  His sight fixes. Burning.

  Searching. My old eyes peer

  At new learning.

  His delight when his claws

  Close on his prey

  Equals mine, when sudden clues

  Light my way.

  So we find by degrees

  Peace in solitude,

  Both of us—solitaries—

  Have each the trade

  He loves, Pangur, never idle

  Day or night

  Hunts mice. I hunt each riddle

  From dark to light.

  The Atlantic Ocean

  (after Mayakovsky)

  This stone, this Spanish stone, flings light

  Like acid in my eyes. Walls splice the day.

  Our freighter chokes, then belches anthracite,

  Fresh water up by noon. We are away.

  A shrivelled Europe faces

  Starboard. Our guzzling boat

  Bloats on fish, swallows, chases

  The anchor down its throat.

  Waves are conjurors, splashes sleeves,

  Up which aces of past and future hide.

  One man finds love, another what he grieves

  By watching. To me they are another side

  Of life, not one to do

  With retrospect or manners

  But with the ballyhoo

  Of war, the hoist of banners.

  Out of this ocean now, its menacing storms,

  Out of its cryptic structures, its tribal

  Tides, out of its secret order, from the cabal

  Of trade wind and water, look, a Soviet forms!

  A squad of drops batters

  The sky for a second, wears

  Out its force, then turns and tears

  Each imperial crest to tatters.

  The waves are agitating now, the sea

  Itself becomes the theater of the battle.

  Lesser waves congregate, they settle

  On a policy for all. All agree

  Not to abandon their will

  To fight, their fierce airs

  Their stormy posture until

  Victory is theirs.

  So what has started well can flourish still,

  As for example, underneath the tide

  The marvel of structured self-perfecting coral—

  Now a milestone, soon to be a guide

  To the she-whale, the sperm-whale nosing

  Clear of the shark, the porpoises

  Braceleting the ships’ bows.

  The octopus intricately dozing.

  No wonder it beats like an alternate heart in me,

  No wonder its drops fill and fall from my eyes

  In familiar drops. It’s in the family.

  At last I see, at last I recognize

  In its wild station,

  Its ice and riot, its other

  Prowess, of my revolution

  The elder brother.

  Conversation with an Inspector of Taxes about Poetry

  (after Mayakovsky)

  No, Comrade Inspector, I won’t sit down.

  Thank you. Forgive me taking your time.

  What a delicate matter this business of mine

  Is! The more difficult since I am

  Concerned to discern the role of the poet

  Within the ranks of the proletariat.

  If you knew how you’ve added to my troubles

  Taxing me like a shopkeeper or kulak!

  For six months you claim five hundred rubles.

  And twenty-five for the forms I didn’t send back.

  But I work as hard as the rest. Look what I’ve lost

  In production. See what my materials cost.

  Perhaps I should explain it in your idiom.

  What you would call a promissory note

  Is roughly the equivalent of a rhyme

  To us, owed to each and every alternate

  Line. And then in the petty cash of sense

  We moisten the coins of nuance.

  Suppose I select a word to go

  Into a line. It doesn’t fit. I start

  To force it. The next thing I know

  The seams of the stanza strain apart.

  Comrade Inspector, I can give

  Assurances that words are expensive.

  I revert now to poetic license:

  Metaphorically speaking my rhyming

  Is a keg of dynamite, my lines

  Smolder towards it. Then the timing

  Device detonates and finally

  The whole poem blows sky high.

  Accusing me from your questionnaire

  I see Have you traveled in the course

  Of business? But what if every year

  I’ve bitted and stampeded Pegasus

  Till both of us were worn? Have sense.

  Take into account the following instance.

  There may be in Venezuela five

  Or six sweet rhymes undiscovered.

  If in pursuit of them I have

  Tax to pay on travel, then my fevered

  Search would draw too mean a loan

  For poetry to sack the unknown.

  Considering all this will you allow

  Me a small mercenary reprieve?

  I’ll accept an inch of clay, a plow.

  I’ll be a peasant. Otherwise I achieve

  So little by this speech that its effect,

  Nil on you, on me I expect,

  Will be years from now, I am sure,

  These lines like ones in a puppet show,

  Will jerk you back, inking your signature

  On final demands. So, Comrade, so

  I will have guaranteed your encore

  Years after I have died and lie a pauper—

  Crushed not by you bureaucrat

  Though your claims are irritating, true,

  But by the vast claims on a poet

  I could not meet. All my debts to you

  Are those of any chance financial sinner

  But these to follow are my debts of honor:

  To the Red Army, boiling across frontiers

  In a wash of Cossack stallions, coats

  Threaded from goat hide, unshaved hairs

  Masking them like bandits, their supporters

  Cheering them as the musket shots

  Ventilated each of their deserters.

  To the winter flowering cherry of Japan,

  Frail as a foundling which never found

  In my verse even the shelter given

  To it by the snows which surround

  Its blossom stealthily as rags are heaped

  Over a sprawled vagrant while he sleeps.

  Finally I know myself indebted,

  Beyond anything I can return,

  To the fastness of my winter cradle.

  Because somehow I never celebrated

  Its bleak skies. To this day they remain

  Unsung and my tongue is idle.

  III

  Ode to Suburbia

  Six o’clock: the kitchen bulbs

  which blister Your dark, your housewives starting to nose

  Out each other’s day, the claustrophobia

  Of your back gardens varicose

  With shrubs, make an ugly sister

  Of you suburbia.

  How long ago did the glass in your windows subtly

  Silver into mirrors which again

  And again show the same woman

  Shriek at a child? Which multiply

  A dish, a brush, ash,

  The gape of a fish.

  In the kitchen, the gape of a child in the cot?

  You swelled so that when you tried

  The silver slipper on your foot

  It pinched your instep and the common

  Hurt which touched you made

  You human.

  No creature of the streets will feel the touch

  Of a wand turning the wet sinews

  Of fruit suddenly to a coach,


  While this rat without leather reins

  Or a whip or britches continues

  Sliming your drains.

  No magic here. Yet you encroach until

  The shy countryside, fooled

  By your plainness, falls, then rises

  From your bed changed, schooled

  Forever by your skill,

  Your compromises.

  Midnight and your metamorphosis

  Is now complete, although the mind

  Which spinstered you might still miss

  Your mystery now, might still fail

  To see your power defined

  By this detail.

  By this creature drowsing now in every house—

  The same lion who tore stripes

  Once off zebras. Who now sleeps,

  Small beside the coals. And may

  On a red letter day

  Catch a mouse.

  Naoise at Four

  The trap baited for them snaps.

  like forest pests they fall for it,

  like humans writhe, like both submit.

  Three brothers die: their three saps

  spill until their split kith

  heals into an Irish myth

  Naoise, named for one of these,

  you stand in our kitchen, sip

  milk from a plastic cup

  from our cupboard. Our unease

  vanishes with one smile

  as each suburban, modern detail

  distances us from old lives.

  Yet every night on our screens

  new ones are lost. Wounds open.

  Nothing heals. And what perspective

  on this sudden Irish fury

  can solve it to a folk memory?

  Cyclist with Cut Branches

  Country hands on the handlebars,

  A bicycle bisecting cars

  Lethal and casual

  In rush hour traffic, I remember

  Seeing, as I watched that September

  For you as usual.

  Like rapid mercury abused

  By summer heat where it is housed

  In slender telling glass

  My heart taking grief’s temperature

  That summer, lost its powers to cure,

  Its gift to analyze.

  Jasmine and the hyacinth,

  The lintel mortar and the plinth

  Of spring across his bars,

  Like globed grapes at first I thought

  Then at last more surely wrought

  Like winter’s single stars.

  Until I glimpsed not him but you

  Like an animal the packs pursue

  To covert in a forest,

  And knew the branches were not spring’s