It’s well-known this isn’t enough, the word of comfort or bare bones of the thing won’t cut it, the to and fro that comes with a name,
before you open your eyes in the morning, won’t do. It’s well-known.
Fifteen years ago my father died, a man who said under the influence of morphine, ‘Of all the bishops, I speak the best Latin’. I know it won’t do. But the skeleton of the language – that solitary self-undoing – I still can’t see a way out.
A sufficiency and a sufficing deed, they’re not the same thing. I
recognize it, love, it won’t do.
*
The gap between
this and that means
it’s best not breathe
a word to a soul.
Best forbid it –
the very word ‘soul’,
best not let
the word in at all.
Don’t allow
‘allowed’, even.
They’ll come, your chance
and your warning, in turn.
*
Who owns the game,
the upending of pride?
The unguarded tongue needs
someone to come to its aid.
Give in to the Elder,
that ace and deuce,
the ranter who gets it,
when the dance-shoes go on –
that nothing remains
to salvage our failure
but all the old steps
we’ve thrown off the dance-floor.
*
Have a drink on the ranter –
but know the lad’s top dog.
From his booth the DJ reels
her in with his eyes, the spit
of Monroe in
her dayglo heels.
The snappy retort
on his lips: not what
Marilyn’s known for,
looking up skirts.
With a canny eye
but stony-faced,
who’d ask this guy
for a special request?
– To give him his due,
the DJ doesn’t tell her what to drink.
*
Who owns the game,
the upending of pride?
Listen to us, tone-deaf,
but trying to get you onside.
Housebound without
home-care for your hang-ups:
high time to be shot of him,
and with him your handcuffs.
Though there’s nothing heroic
in doing down
the lovely couple
with their purple oranges.
Herself all talk about
his knitting tea-cosies,
himself boasting
about her intricacies.
*
Best stop pushing
on a closed door;
keep out the crowd that
has her driven spare.
Bad cess to the nurse
spraying his table,
his appetite gone
and his lunch waiting.
Grind down to nothing
the years still to come,
the hidden fury that’s grown
into a woman.
*
And have it recognized, again, that this won’t suffice, erring on neither the side of a word to the wise or telling it straight, nor a drawn-out back-and-forth over a tavern glass.
Stitches and bedsprings are first – The Luas rails are being laid. The young of newts not born, not given birth to.
Eavan Boland's first issue as editor of Poetry Ireland Review aims to encourage a conversation about poetry which is 'noisy and fractious certainly ... but a conversation nevertheless that can be thrilling in its reach and commitment'. There are new poems from Thomas McCarthy, Jean Bleakney, Wendy Holborow, Paul Perry, Aifric Mac Aodha, and many others, while the issue also includes work from Brigit Pegeen Kelly, with an accompanying essay on the poet by Eavan Boland. Eavan Boland also offers an introduction to the work of poet Solmaz Sharif, while there are reviews of the latest books from Simon Armitage, Peter Sirr, Lo Kwa Mei-en, and Vona Groarke, among others. PIR 121 also includes Theo Dorgan's elegiac tribute to his friend John Montague – a canonical poet, in contrast to the emerging poets Susannah Dickey, Conor Cleary and Majella Kelly, who contribute new work and will also read for the Poetry Ireland Introductions series as part of ILFD 2017.
