Mud-Matressed under the sign of the hag
In a clench of blood, the sleep-talking virgin
Gibbets her curse, the moon’s man,
Faggot-bearing jack in his crackless egg;
Hatched with a claret hogshead to swig
He kings it, navel-knit to no groom,
But at the price of a pin-stitched skin
Fish-tailed girls purchase each white leg.
from The Colossus 1960, Faber Paperbacks.
Nicholas Hughes died this week by his own hand .
for C.M
What would they have said
had you heard the whisper
slip ravenous up the avenue
on fat and awkward dialect
towards the parlour comfort
of an army of the wizened
faces of their mother, who
settled in her embroideries
internalising the potential
of an inclusive act, to fuse
the eschatological omission,
confined in insurrection
to the vortices of daylight,
silently, symbolically laced?
Forms; A Sampler is © Chris Allen
Eurydice Series by Anastasia Kashian.With thanks to Anastasia Kashian for the artwork, from her Eurydice Series. Anastasia’s portfolio is linked at Saatchi online and on her website. |
This is just a brief note, given my current interest in our small bird population and this year’s lack of snowdrops in my own garden. Indeed it is related somewhat to another entry on Poethead . (cf bottom of this post for linkie)
Every year we wander to the National Botanic Gardens to take a look at the snowdrops in the rockery, this is utterly convenient because the rockery comprises a playground for the burgeoning and largely tame squirrel population; but I digress.. I bought the book for my mother in her early widowhood because she adores climbers, roses and scented stock. Our beautiful Sumac came down in a storm and though I only visit with her , its become obvious that the straggling offspring do not carry the same impact for the local birds or indeed aesthetically.
Thus this evening I am bringing home In Your garden by Sackville West to re-read, and Faber’s Collected Marina Carr Plays.
We do not often get real sticky wet and slippy snow in Ireland.
Our older people (we will all be elderly soon enough) are carrying themselves with incredible delicacy. The paths present a patchwork of half-hearted sand thrown down and a web of glassy ice. the puddles make a satisfying crack when breached, but bones are delicate.
This is an excerpt from The Book of Imaginary Beings by Jorge Luis Borges. (I found it again, it keeps losing itself in my shelves)
before becoming a monster and then turned into rocks, Scylla was a nymph with whom Glacus, one of the sea gods, had fallen in love. In order to win her, Glacus sought the help of Circe whose knowledge of herbs and incantations was well known. But Circe became attached to Glacus on sight, only she was unable to get him to forget Scylla, and to punish her rival she poured the juice of poisonous herbs into the fountain where the nymph bathed.
(Borges then excerpts the Metamorphoses of Ovid, which btw are given a contemporary gloss and translation by the late Ted Hughes and are published by Faber.)
So, poor Scylla became a rock and well our nod to certain difficulties and words in common usage include the phrase:
“Between a rock and a hard place”
though I suppose that since our education system is more based on manual labour preparation and the globalised market, the provenance of such clichéd phrases or truisms gets lost in the translation.
Edit: 07/12/2019: Read H.D’s “Curled Thyme”. H.D was a much ignored and magnificent poet, whom the canon-makers eschewed due to her difficulty. One imagines the canon-makers as lovers of overt simplicity!
| Odysseus rested on his oar, and saw The ruffled foreheads of the waves Crocodiling and mincing past; he rammed The oar between their jaws, and looked down In the simmering sea, where scribbles of weeds defined Uncertain depth, and the slim fishes progressed In fatal formation, and thought If there was a single Streak of decency in those waves now, they’d be ridged, Pocked and dented with the battering they’d had And we could name them as Adam named the beasts Saluting a fresh one with dismay, or a notorious one With admiration; they’d notice us passing And rejoice at our destruction, but these Have less Character than sheep and need more patience. I know what I’ll do he said, But the profound by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin. This poem is culled from The Penguin Book of Irish Verse. It was edited by Poet Brendan Kennelly and published in 1970. Both poets have collections, translations and ongoing works. |
I ransack her room. Loot and pillage.
I root in her trunk. Crack open
the tightly sprung boxes of satin
and plush. Pierce my breast with her butterfly
brooch. I pose in her hats,
French berets, mantillas of lace,
the veil that falls over her face,
the boa she wraps round her neck.
I try on her shoes. Her slippers
are mules. I can’t walk in her callipered
boots. I break into her wardrobe.
Hands grope in the dark. Faded bats,
like umbrellas, are humming inside.
Stoles of fox-fur and mink: tiny claws,
precise nails. Lips clamped in the rictus
of death. I’m hot on the scent
of oestrus, umbilicus, afterbirth,
eau-de-cologne, I fling myself
down on the bed that she made
of dirt from the Catacombs, blood
of the saints. Under the counterpane,
nettles, goose-feathers, a torc.
from : The New Irish Poets, edited by Selina Guinness Bloodaxe 2004.
|
The Poems of Dorothy Molloy was launched in November 2019 (Faber & Faber) I remember well those fox-furs, my own mother was bequeathed a pair and I too delved into the huge old nana wardrobe, bringing out the fur stoles complete with little curled feet and a golden chain effect that operated as a clasp. The wardrobe revelation is part of most girls’ growing. In the meantime, there is a small piece on the trousseau, inheritance and the Island Women on the blog. I quite remember being unable to zip the zipper of my mother’s wedding dress confection onto me at twelve, nor indeed being able to squeeze my toes into the minute satin winkle-pickers that she wore for her wedding day! EDIT : 25/11/2010, this is a Reblog of a piece written to mark the 16 day Campaign to eliminate Violence Against Women and Girls. Mary Lavin’s Island Women |
The Immortal
Now bloodless and almost fleshless
unmoving , unbreathing, voiceless.
With eyes half closed and sunken,
what matter if -Anna or Maria,
the fine lids will never rise,
the clenched lips will not move or ever
again utter a moan or sigh.
And look how already white and strange is
that ring upon her hands, crossed forever.
But do you hear her innocent child
crying in a cradle nearby.
There is her immortal blood, transferred
and her soul now resident in this world.
days will pass by, years, centuries
and the yielded lips of two young lovers
will again whisper ‘Anna’ or ‘Maria’,
at night amidst the fragrance of spring.
The great-granddaughter will bear everything: name,
eyes, lips, locks of the other invisible one.
1925.
Selected Poems of Elisaveta Bagryana; Penelope of the Twentieth Century
Trans, Brenda walker, Valentine Borrisov and Belin Tonchev. Forest Books.
For Sinead with the Rainbows in her eyes, RIP
Duel
Both earth and sky are greenesses,
Greens that explode and expand:
Shoes flash like fish as I tread the seas
And hang like fish when I stand,
And happiness swims in the shadow of trees
As the light blade hangs from my hand.
Moonlight and Jellyfish
I swim in the moonlight, swim to snare
Jellyfish swarming, flocks of phlegm.
My hands stream out, forgoing me:
Further and further they extend
Among those moving mirrors where,
Coiling, the seaweeds cumber them;
Where, in the mooned alembic sea,
My flesh turns glassy, glassily.
A thing transparent, a chilly thing,
Flows in the water, knows no end…
My soul near frozen, shivering,
Sinks in the sea, is almost drowned,
Drowned in its very trance of prayer
While swarming everywhere around,
Swarming round me everywhere,
The jellyfish in trembles of pure blue
Swim out, swim through
That moonlight they are turning to….
I shall have to balance these excerpts from The Face at the Bottom of the World with a woman poet, when I get two minutes. In the meantime the edition I read these in is from the UNESCO Collection, Published by Charles E Tuttle and Company 1969.
Here, In Ireland our jellyfish are small and brown with electric blue veins in the top. I made a poem about a whole lot of them beached and rotting In Irishtown a number of years ago.There were hundreds lining the beach after a wild storm.
I am publishing this in Images, tagged with Visions.
Round his left shoulder, as he got up slowly
every day’s muscle gathered in agony
His death was flayed off him like a gauze.
Because second-birth has such harsh laws.
From: Between by Ágnes Nemes Nagy.Trans, Hugh Maxton. Dedalus Press , Dublin and Corvina Press, Budapest.
Chris Murray 