Poetry Proper: Issue 5

7/27/2019 Poetry Proper: Issue 5

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POETRY PROPER

Issue 5



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“Since words are spoken by everyone, the custody of languageis a sufficient responsibility in itself for a poet. To inscribe inlanguage some hitherto unexpressed area of experience – tofill in some blank corner of the human canvas – is worthwhile;to speak the small truths that feed into the bigger Truth. Also,the aspiration of poetry is always towards the creation of

something permanent in language: in our era of thedisposable, the ephemeral, this is counter-cultural – as, indeed,is the fact that genuine poetry transcends the blinkered visionof the journalistic present; it inhabits the present, but it is also very much in dialogue with the inherited forms and the great voices of the past.”

Dennis O’Driscoll

1954 —

2012from an interview for RTE’sUndercover (April 9th, 1998), inTroubled

Thoughts, Majestic Dreams (Oldcastle, Gallery Press, 2001) p.45



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CONTENTS

Page

‘Cino’ by Ezra Pound 4

Poems by:

Helen Tookey 7

Rody Gorman 11

Ron Singer 12

Caoilinn Hughes 14

Matthew Ryan Shelton 16

Featured poet: Ciaran Carson 17

Poems by:

Angela Cleland 24

Henry King 26

Richie McCaffery 29

Nathaniel Joseph McAuley 30

John Dennison 33

Photographs:

Paul Maddern, from ‘Flotsam’



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Cino

Italian Campagna 1309, the open road

Bah! I have sung women in three cities,But it is all the same;

And I will sing of the sun.

Lips, words, and you snare them,Dreams, words, and they are as jewels,Strange spells of old deity,Ravens, nights, allurement:

And they are not;Having become the souls of song.

Eyes, dreams, lips, and the night goes.Being upon the road once more,

They are not.Forgetful in their towers of our tuneing Once for wind-runeing

They dream us-toward andSighing, say, “ Would Cino,Passionate Cino, of the wrinkling eyes,Gay Cino, of quick laughter,

Cino, of the dare, the jibe.Frail Cino, strongest of his tribe

That tramp old ways beneath the sun-light, Would Cino of the Luth were here!”

Once, twice a year – Vaguely thus word they:

“Cino?” “Oh, eh, Cino Polnesi The singer is't you mean?” “ Ah yes, passed once our way,

A saucy fellow, but . . .

(Oh they are all one these vagabonds),Peste! ’tis his own songs?Or some other's that he sings?But you , My Lord, how with your city?”



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But you “My Lord,” God's pity! And all I knew were out, My Lord, you Were Lack-land Cino, e'en as I am,O Sinistro.

I have sung women in three cities.But it is all one.I will sing of the sun.. . . eh? . . . they mostly had grey eyes,But it is all one, I will sing of the sun.

“’Pollo Phoibee, old tin pan, youGlory to Zeus' aegis-day,Shield o' steel-blue, th' heaven o'er us

Hath for boss thy lustre gay!’Pollo Phoibee, to our way-fareMake thy laugh our wander-lied;Bid thy ’fulgence bear away care.Cloud and rain-tears pass they fleet!

Seeking e’er the new-laid rast-way To the gardens of the sun . . .

* * *

I have sung women in three citiesBut it is all one.

I will sing of the white birdsIn the blue waters of heaven,

The clouds that are spray to its sea.”

Ezra Pound



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Katherine

Katherine has been dead a week I think of her in this way off & on – thatstrange ghost, with the eyes far apart, & thedrawn mouth

the feel of herdragging herself across her room

a Japanese dollputting on a white wreath, & leaving us, calledaway; made dignified, chosen. And then onepitied her

in a room high upchildlikeness somewhere

felt her reluctant to wear that wreath, which was an ice cold one. And she was only 33posed & twisted

& the doll on the bed, which I detest

Katherine has been dead a week visual impressions kept coming & coming before me

strange ghost, with the eyes far apart very tidy, bright, & somehow like a dollshouse

& the drawn mouth

kept coming & coming and I was jealous

And I was jealous of her writing – the only writing I have ever been jealous of

we met, beyond deathin a room high up

that faint ghost, with the steady eyes, themocking lips, &, at the end, the wreath set onher hair

the mocking lips& the feel of her



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Katherine has been dead a week how we met, beyond death, & shook hands;saying something by way of explanation, &friendship: yet I knew she was dead

Japanese doll

kept coming & coming and I was jealous

childlikeness somewhereagonised, & at moments that direct flick at the

thing seen which was her gift

dragging herself across her roomsomething driven & forcedyet I knew she was dead

& the perpetual rather sordid worries & gibes& the feel of her& the feel of her

& something driven & forced to cram intoone year the growth of five or six


Katherine has been dead a week husky & feeble, crawling about the room likea little old woman

the drawn mouthsomething driven & forced

had her look of a Japanese doll, with thefringe combed quite straight across herforehead

kept coming & coming yet I knew she was dead

and I



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a kind of childlikeness somewhere which hasbeen much disfigured

& the dollthat strange ghost

posed & twisted

Katherine has been dead a week I think of her in this way off & on –

the feel of her& somehow like a dolls house

yet I knew yet I knew

explanation, & friendship: yet I knew she was

deadand Iand I was jealous of her writing

the doll

the mocking lipsdragging herself across her room

& the feel of her

& the doll

that strange ghost

& the dollthe mocking lips


Helen Tookey



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At the Castle

A four-square block of wood tapering from 5 in. to 3 in. A grate of oak stanchions set diagonally A portcullis, the chase of which may still be seen

All angles are of brick

And carved ornament in head and jambs And only the excellence of the mortar And the soile betwene the waulles grue ful of elders

But little of them exists beyond the broken wall-endsBut the patterns in black brick are simpler

But this is only conjectureBy what must have been a miscalculation of levelsCirca factorum le murther holles de novoMuch of the brickwork having fallen away

Of fireplaces, and the toothings on the west towerOf payments to men watching in the moat at nightOf the machicolations, and probably the slabs

On the right-hand turret the maunch or sleevePro levelyng le erthe intra muros

The burning of the bricks

Then felle alle the castelle to ruine

Helen Tookey



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The Son of a Buck Hornydevil Mountainy Man

In the Mournes, in the Twelve Bens, I threwspent my worldlife walktravelling the rangeway, avoiding mankind (and meat) withoutconversation or commerce with any man.

Under the sphereskies for a while under the cloudshadows Istopped travelwalking to sit down and sat down on my tod for aspacetime in a littlelowlyinghollow.

I berryeyelooked, I jetjumped, I shunfled to the furyheather when thecloudblemishfog squanderscattered in front of mejusthoneststraightup, shame on me, as a laymanherowarrior would not asI saw a quicklifeliving lifebreathsoul.

Peopleboundaryhelp me, peopleboundaryhelp me, exaltgreat lord,from the son of a buck hornydevilantlermountainyman on that hill overthere and the Fenianwildernessdeer pursuing me forever, I hearfeelsensethem roundunder me in every jointspotplace.

Fear na mBeann

I mBeanna Boirche, sna Beanna Beola,Chaith mé mo shaol an siúl an raoin, Ag seachaint an duine (is na feola),Gan chaint gan bhaint le mac an aoin.

Agó hoch deirí neirí nann Agus mo rulann heigh ru lann

Amuigh faoin spéir dom seal faoi na scamaill,Stad mé den siúl go ndéanfainn suíGur shuigh mé taobh liom féin ar feadh tamaillI logán ar mo thóinín buí.

Agó etc

Dhearc mé, gheit mé, thug mé teitheadh don fhraochNuair a scaip os mo chomhair an ceoDíreach, mo náire, mar nach ndéanfadh laochMar chonaic mé uaim anam beo.

Fóir orm, fóir orm, a Thiarna mhóir,Ó fhear na mbeann faoin gcnoc úd thallIs na fianna de shíor ar mo thóir, Airím fúm uaim iad i ngach ball.

Rody Gorman



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The Statue of Imitations

“Imitation,” someone said, “is the sincerest form of flattery.” I forget who – Dryden?Byron? – someone dead. Oh, yes, I ‘remember’ now (courtesy of Doctor Google). It

was Charles Caleb Cotton, whose own poems are justly forgotten. As for the statue, itis a Statue of Liberty, of sorts, although it only exists in my head.

Picture the Statue of Imitations (who, thanks to the Statute of Limitations, is, perhaps,immune from being impugned). Imagine a hulk, ultimate epigone, wearing that “Idon’t bother to shave” look, black T-shirt with punk-band logo, voluminous khakicargo pants, and Doc Martens half-sunk in fertile, sticky clay.

Instead of clasping book and torch, Imitation’s empty hands reach skyward, palmsopen, in the “why not?” position. If looks could talk, his would say: “Hey! it’s all upfor grabs. Just make sure you use righteous models, and shuck-and-jive to get around

the copyrights. That’s the way to guard your ass from lawyers, that tribe of greedy high-end suits, slaves to coffee, booze, and precedent.

“Imitation, oui , a time-honored art,” the garrulous slacker drones, intones. “‘Immaturepoets imitate; mature poets steal,’ said Eliot (T.S.), not averse, himself, now and then,to a spot of plag iarism. Lancelot Andrewes’ Good Friday sermon, in Eliot’s ‘ Journey of the Magi’, e.g., had a resurrection of its own. Right on! Let’s invite both toffs overto tea.

“Imitation has been practiced,” the learned Statue persists, “by hordes of righteous

copyists. Take Marlowe, Shakespeare, and the mighty line, which the Bard boostedtime after time. Marlowe, who died in 1593, did not stick around to whine.

“Or Homer to Virgil, Virgil to Dante, that adamantine chain of borrowing. Miltonsnarfed this fancy word from Prometheus’ chains, forging an off -the-rack bondageaccessory for his Adversary of choice.

“But, pushing the major players aside, and gaming a storied metaphor – think ChicagoCubs, 1910, think double play – hacks and tinkers, even, have taken, perchance, the

words of great thinkers, bringing home, or stealing, their bacon.

“What’s more, Bro,” the fatuous slacker perorates (at last), “one of these days, yourown number will come up. Then, just as you on stolen words have fed, your wordsmay feed generations to come. So why not savor the prospect now, prima factum – before the fact – since, soon enough, Dude, you’ll be gaga or dead.”

Ron Singer



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Bruisewort

I can no longer make a daisy chain that is the sum of its parts. The joins lack mindlessness. The split stems are DNA strands:backbones of sugars and phosphates linked by invisible ester bondslike children’s crossed palms, swallowing the weekly good intentions in white

unleavened disks that are neither sugar nor phosphates. They taste of hands. To discover the atom is a start — to know what it means; its particle trinity that has oceans cleaving to the tilted earth resisting the Moon’s recurrent invite;miraculous photosynthesis, which is bodiless, yet we grope about for its photon torso.

If I reassess the sum of its parts, does the daisy chain become divinity,since the electron and its positron hold the pattern of our future infinitesimally?

This is more modellable than we would like to concede. Its Latin name, a propos,means pretty-everlasting. You could say interminable-beauty, but that is evaluative,

not quantitative; besides, they were once called bruisewort. Names are generally variable. A daisy chain is not, as the eye would allow, a succession of weeds:each one is a composite flower, whose petals are not just correlative,but are individual flowers. Even the yellow centres comprise microscopic flowers.

They are an army of atoms; of false flowers working together to spread the seedsof their existence. If their astral particles are the emblems of probability,

should we swallow the astringent petals weekly and see what follows?∅ to know how anti-particles balance the pseudanthium with all its quarks!

With a fast enough machine, we could decode the daisy chain in calculus, Objective-C,transcendental equations. Would the parts of its sum be atoms or litanies?

Caoilinn Hughes



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Snake Creeps through the Grass

The characters seem staged: a businessman swallowing a crustlesssandwich, flaunting his close-fitting skin and rugby ball cufflinks;two young ladies with thick lace tights like curtains waiting to be pulled apart beneath their crushed velvetdresses and shallow breathing; the beggar-victim

with a beard reddened by weather, fury, Dutch Gold; me.

We stand in the park beside a group practicing Tai Chito consider the motives of the brat who stole the beggar’s beanie. It seems like a modern day musical, we agree: ‘Rich kid stealsfetid hat with one dollar sixty in copper condolences.’ The beggar declares: ‘Insanity! Anarchy! Jealousy! That hat

was worth more than money. To hell with him! The cunt.’

Sensei dip into ‘snake creeps through the grass’interpretatively. I wonder what the vagrant makes of them.

That they are taking up more than their share of oxygen, maybe?I confirm the cunt-thief was twenty-something and sporting brand new faded jeans. His hair flopped open on his headlike a dead butterfly. I don’t describe how it gleamed.

I don’t point out that the Tai Chis did nothing to intervene;

that their ‘cloud hands’ seemed to wave the thief off lovingly.

Caoilinn Hughes



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Studies

In this courtyard walled in lime whiteand razor-wire, I smoke and spit,

craned forward, waiting for the rain to accumulate in stone

and earthen pots; a skinny rose trellisanchored in coarse gravel, its lattice

wintering gray lichen; and a downspoutdribbling dark into an iron grate.

Matthew Ryan Shelton



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Featured Poet: Ciaran Carson

AUTHOR 'S NOTE: These poems are part of a projected book, whose working title isFrom Elsewhere . Those with English/French titles are my translations of poems by

Jean Follain (1903-1971); those with English titles are my response to his poems, whether spins on them, or takes on them. In other words, they form a dialogue of sorts.

The Rag (La guenille )

Powerlessto imitate the birdthe rag hangs from the branch

red beside the sweet applethe bird flown the apple fallenit stays where it isexhibiting the chill of agesand its colour in the silence;men are organising in the dark timesnot far from this tatter marking nothing but the space it occupies.

Sunset

The north wind picks upthe streetlamps come onone by oneas an armoured car speedsinto the oncoming dark

from lamppostafter lamppostalong the stretch of demarcated roadthe unionflags begin to flicker in their tatters.



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The Burned Island (L’île brûlée )

Concerning the burned islandone has a long memory of all the shadows of inhabitantsand those of ploughs and harrows.On a certain morning a great noise

was made and shook all the rooms.Reality dwellsin a child’s hand, writing with such force on the ruled paperthat by the second line he pierced it throughand made the steel nib bendthen an icy wind arose

which made the naked branches bend.

Timing Device

As with thunderthe rumble comesafter the flash the shimmerof a tolled bell stroke

after stroke reverberating heard one certain day but now but a glimmerof all such memories of bellsa newsreel flickerthe skeleton of a building or its scaffolding he cannot rememberthe number of victimslet alone their namesor in what month of what yearthat certain day fell.



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Concerning Flowers (Des fleurs )

Flowers seem to watchassembled in large numberson the edge of precipicesand one can fear these clumpsunsleeping in their enclave of leaf-mould,no miller no tumbrelbut the solitary sky of a province

where sometimes a great bowl breaksamong its painted flowers.

Reverberation

From time to timefollowing the rumble of thunderor a bombupon a mantelpiecea Dresden vase crowded

with open-mouthed flowers

trembles aboutto toppleover.



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The Key (La clef )

The dark key attachedto the heavy copper ring

with a day numberin the white nightthat hangs from a nail in the vast innhas been taken by the sleeper

who now from the wood of the bed lets goa hand gloved in mud.

The Beyond

Windows too may have locksbut only on the insidelest the window be a doorhe thought as once againhe climbed out into the nightto go where he had gonebefore to wake upat dawn in his own bedclad in mud

from the neck downremembering nothing beyondunlocking the window.



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Reprise (Un soir se refait )

An evening recoups its lossesin the shuddering of wheatfieldshammerings on doorsarmoires emptiedgetting up from its kneesfrom under the confinesof the black robeflecked with sunlighta beast slouches to its corneruntroubled by the days of horror

which reprise a coupleat the turning of a road

swamped with birds.

The Odds

A burst of gunfirein the bookmaker’s shop

where men are smoking watching the horses

on televisionone of them dying as the pigeonson the square outsidetransform themselvesinto a purple cloud boiling upfrom the cobblestonesto the sound of their own applause.



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High City (Ville haute )

By night garments are constructedby indomitable women

with lively voicesto the smell of flesh in vogue amidst the rubble.By day once morerailings, pillars, turrets,yellow tiles and ruptured walls

will be seen againin the clear light of a city piled on a high rock for the edification of travellers.

Window

He bent to his task at the keyboard as if aboutto play an aria of whichthe notes or words

were not yet known.

He stared at the ruinbeyond the window and began to touch-typethinking of what had beenbefore the bomband typed some more.He looked at the wordson screen and struck the keys for printthe printer tickedand ticked and thendisgorged a page

with nothing on it.



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Abduction

Inside, the carriage is panic-platedred, is stop-signals, warning signs, bloodeverywhere, danger, danger. This childis front-page news. He's in the handsof the man sitting opposite, in the handsof every man in the carriage, trappedin the jaws of the headline closing aroundhis school photo. The train brakes scream

and I am back in that ditch at Achilty straddling the deer's hot ribcage,hand to its chest, while you try to prise

the dog's teeth free. I hold the deer's headto mine; I could draw a gut bow acrossits cello neck, soft stretch offering up its quivering strings to the kiss – I could draw that note again. I don'tknow if the blood, wet on your hands,is the deer's or the dog's or your own.

Tree-broken light flutters through the carriageas if we are running fast, our hearts are

beating flat out to head-off some beast:the beast they tell us is coming for our children,the beast they say has got one, the beast

we have brought with us, the dog that is running deep and close in the woods.

Angela Cleland



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Trackside Semi

Do they know their houseis flowering, its white harledsepals spread, releasing a proud-stigmaed bloom,petals bold and swollenas burst lips?

Perhaps they doand are inside troubling over issues of pollination,

whether it will bear fruit. They lift their heads at each

distant lawnmower drone,at the giant insect clatterof this carriage's wing-casings.

They drop their eyes as we pass,just another train, awaretheir house is wearing their hopes as a button hole.

Angela Cleland



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Chreia

When, as we followed the path beside the graveyard,I stood between you and the sun,you told me to move – just as Diogenes answered Alexander, who’d asked if there was any favourhe could do for the senile cynic.

Or did you say ‘I have been looking for your father’s bones, but cannot distinguish them from those of a slave’?

Accounts of the incident vary.

Henry King



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Bulletins

Today an 8.8-strength earthquake struck Concepción, Chile. Roads reared up; a hotelfell backwards in the dust, an unknown numberof people trapped inside. I imagine thempraying in Spanish, and I could almost believethe earth moved for Mary too – but on what scaleshe should measure that magnitude, I can’t conceive. Later, a congressman pops up to tell usthe only foolproof form of birth controlis abstinence. But then, isn’t the basis of Christianity the fact that that rule,like all others, is proved by the exception?

Now sex, like everything else, comes wrapped in plastic, we know it differs from these microwave dinners we eat while watching telly only becauseof who we’d share it with. I take your platebut it slips my fingers: mea culpa, mea maxima culpa – but whose fault is itthat zigzags round the world and makes it shake? We aren’t bad people, you and I: we cycle. We recycle. We nod and smile at those w ho say an earthquake’s just a trembling of

the hands in which God holds us, not His love.

Henry King



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The Stick Stand

Three of us live here and no onehas any mobility issues yetbut at the bottom of the stairsby the porch door is a small groveof walking sticks, as many typesof wood as a Tunbridge-ware box.

It’s icy out there this time of year and we go about expecting a fallbut don’t need to make a tripod of ourselves with an old stick.

We have collected these canes

as left-over inheritancesthat no one else wantedand we couldn’t bring ourselves to throw away, snapped boughsof our family tree alongsideancient umbrellas, sparse canopies

where moths drop like acid rain.

Richie McCaffery



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The Orchard Man’s Radio The limit of the garden is the distance in the view when picking from the tallest tree, cut short only by the Northern Walls and a childish sky which stops and stoops to touch them. Anything beyond is the yellow wind-up radio which swings on the branch below and spouts out laws of physics which apply to no one within earshot and grow silence if left unwound. Here, night – a time for sleep only by habit – is much the same as day when work needs doing. The radio, though it clears its throat of static, says nothing, afraid perhaps of the ghostless dark or some story from childhood no one round here’s heard.

Nathaniel Joseph McAuley



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The Dangers of Sentimentality to Work and Profit

Few trees are plantedin memory or honourof or for anything other than growing apples.

Those that are, however,growing with his daughterand since his mother,are more troublethan a man should takefrom wood and fruit.

Their yield

falls near inedibleand the growth of canker means morethan simple lossof stock ormissed pressing day.

Uprooting of either – them with a pick,or him,

is out of the question.




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The Child’s Bed

He makes the child’s bed from applewood as if intent to show herthe few facts of life.

The trees, though stripped of bark and painted turquoisemade from oiled begonias,

mark out the parameters within which she can dream.




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Catechesis, St Andrews

Come by me now; do you recallthe cliffs of castle beach, and how the rock laid bare its laden belts

of life let down? The pronounced black seamin the sedimentary crumble, proof against progressor success — yours, or any other

in the graduated powers of our step-gabled, end-stopped city ( your name here, high and distorting on the over-

taut awning! ) Come by and stand,

empty at last in your mastery,at the edge of what you’d presumed was there

for the taking, and taking so much for granted;you are not your own, any more than the fulmarsthat ride this airy conjunction, not knowing

they do what they do and so in their way are better servants than you, who was bought with a priceand, knowing this, still put on airs.

So here, you might turn away from the drop,murmuring with relief, it’s all relative, it’s all good ,

you should just try harder, be true, be free ,

and so forget the bells at your back:not all good , but well: is, and shall be.Come by, sweet-heart: East Neuk, North Sea;

Bell Rock, the Eden estuary,how the westerly ramps up and over-shoots

your situation entirely,unrelentingly plays on the levelled, in-shoreface of things before us. What is itrequired of you? Repeat after me.

John Dennison



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Poetry Proper: Issue 5