Essential Poems from the Staying Alive Trilogy (7 page)

His grace is no longer called for

before meals: farmed fish multiply

without His intercession.

Bread production rises through

disease-resistant grains devised

scientifically to mitigate His faults.

Yet, though we rebelled against Him

like adolescents, uplifted to see

an oppressive father banished –

a bearded hermit – to the desert,

we confess to missing Him at times.

Miss Him during the civil wedding

when, at the blossomy altar

of the registrar’s desk, we wait in vain

to be fed a line containing words

like ‘everlasting’ and ‘divine’.

Miss Him when the TV scientist

explains the cosmos through equations,

leaving our planet to revolve on its axis

aimlessly, a wheel skidding in snow.

Miss Him when the radio catches a snatch

of plainchant from some echoey priory;

when the gospel choir raises its collective voice

to ask
Shall We Gather at the River?

or the forces of the oratorio converge

on
I Know That My Redeemer Liveth

and our contracted hearts lose a beat.

Miss Him when a choked voice at

the crematorium recites the poem

about fearing no more the heat of the sun.

Miss Him when we stand in judgement

on a lank Crucifixion in an art museum,

its stripe-like ribs testifying to rank.

Miss Him when the gamma-rays

recorded on the satellite graph

seem arranged into a celestial score,

the music of the spheres,

the
Ave Verum Corpus
of the observatory lab.

Miss Him when we stumble on the breast lump

for the first time and an involuntary prayer

escapes our lips; when a shadow crosses

our bodies on an x-ray screen; when we receive

a transfusion of foaming blood

sacrificed anonymously to save life.

Miss Him when we exclaim His name

spontaneously in awe or anger

as a woman in the birth ward

calls to her long-dead mother.

Miss Him when the linen-covered

dining-table holds warm bread rolls,

shiny glasses of red wine.

Miss Him when a dove swoops

from the orange grove in a tourist village

just as the monastery bell begins to take its toll.

Miss Him when our journey leads us

under leaves of Gothic tracery, an arch

of overlapping branches that meet

like hands in Michelangelo’s
Creation
. 

Miss Him when, trudging past a church,

we catch a residual blast of incense,

a perfume on par with the fresh-baked loaf

which Miłosz compared to happiness.

Miss Him when our newly-fitted kitchen

comes in Shaker-style and we order

a matching set of Mother Ann Lee chairs.

Miss Him when we listen to the prophecy

of astronomers that the visible galaxies

will recede as the universe expands.

Miss Him when the sunset makes

its presence felt in the stained glass

window of the fake antique lounge bar.

Miss Him the way an uncoupled glider

riding the evening thermals misses its tug.

Miss Him, as the lovers shrugging

shoulders outside the cheap hotel

ponder what their next move should be.

Even feel nostalgic, odd days,

for His Second Coming,

like standing in the brick

dome of a dovecote

after the birds have flown.

I took God with me to the sheep fair. I said, ‘Look

there’s Liv, sitting on the wall, waiting;

these are pens, these are sheep,

this is their shit we are walking in, this is their fear.

See that man over there, stepping along the low walls

between pens, eyes always watching,

mouth always talking, he is the auctioneer.

That is wind in the ash trees above, that is sun

splashing us with running light and dark.

Those men over there, the ones with their faces sealed,

are buying or selling. Beyond in the ring

where the beasts pour in, huddle and rush,

the hoggets are auctioned in lots.

And that woman with the ruddy face and the home-cut hair

and a new child on her arm, that is how it is to be woman

with the milk running, sitting on wooden boards

in this shit-milky place of animals and birth and death

as the bidding rises and falls.’ 

Then I went back outside and found Fintan.

I showed God his hand as he sat on the rails,

how he let it trail down and his fingers played

in the curly back of a ewe. Fintan’s a sheep-man

he’s deep into sheep, though it’s cattle he keeps now,

for sound commercial reasons.

                                                       ‘Feel that,’ I said,

‘feel with my heart the force in that hand

that’s twining her wool as he talks.’

Then I went with Fintan and Liv to Refreshments,

I let God sip tea, boiling hot, from a cup,

and I lent God my fingers to feel how they burned

when I tripped on a stone and it slopped.

‘This is hurt,’ I said, ‘there’ll be more.’

And the morning wore on and the sun climbed

and God felt how it is when I stand too long,

how the sickness rises, how the muscles burn. 

Later, at the back end of the afternoon,

I went down to swim in the green slide of river,

I worked my way under the bridge, against the current,

then I showed how it is to turn onto your back

with, above you and a long way up, two gossiping pigeons,

and a clump of valerian, holding itself to the sky.

I remarked on the stone arch as I drifted through it,

how it dapples with sunlight from the water,

how the bridge hunkers down, crouching low in its track

and roars when a lorry drives over. 

And later again, in the kitchen,

wrung out, at day’s ending, and empty,

I showed how it feels

to undo yourself,

to dissolve, and grow age-old, nameless: 

woman sweeping a floor, darkness growing. 

What we need most, we learn from the menial tasks:

the novice raking sand in Buddhist texts,

or sweeping leaves, his hands chilled to the bone,

while understanding hovers out of reach;

the changeling in a folk tale, chopping logs,

poised at the dizzy edge of transformation;

and everything they do is gravity:

swaying above the darkness of the well

to haul the bucket in; guiding the broom;

finding the body’s kinship with the earth

beneath their feet, the lattice of a world

where nothing turns or stands outside the whole;

and when the insight comes, they carry on

with what’s at hand: the gravel path; the fire;

knowing the soul is no more difficult

than water, or the fig tree by the well

that stood for decades, barren and inert,

till every branch was answered in the stars.

I have seen the sun break through

to illuminate a small field

for a while, and gone my way

and forgotten it. But that was the pearl

of great price, the one field that had

the treasure in it. I realise now

that I must give all that I have

to possess it. Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future, nor hankering after

an imagined past. It is the turning

aside like Moses to the miracle

of the lit bush, to a brightness

that seemed as transitory as your youth

once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

The moon did not become the sun.

It just fell on the desert

in great sheets, reams

of silver handmade by you.

The night is your cottage industry now,

the day is your brisk emporium.

The world is full of paper.

Write to me.

   Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherised upon a table;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question…

Oh, do not ask, ‘What is it?’

Let us go and make our visit.

   In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

    The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,

Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,

Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,

And seeing that it was a soft October night,

Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

    And indeed there will be time

For the yellow smoke that slides along the street

Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;

There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

There will be time to murder and create,

And time for all the works and days of hands

That lift and drop a question on your plate;

Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

And for a hundred visions and revisions,

Before the taking of a toast and tea.

   In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.

   And indeed there will be time

To wonder, ‘Do I dare?’ and, ‘Do I dare?’

Time to turn back and descend the stair,

With a bald spot in the middle of my hair –

(They will say: ‘How his hair is growing thin!’)

My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,

My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin –

(They will say: ‘But how his arms and legs are thin!’)

Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

   For I have known them all already, known them all –

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

    So how should I presume?

    And I have known the eyes already, known them all –

The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,

And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,

When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,

Then how should I begin

To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?

    And how should I presume?

   And I have known the arms already, known them all –

Arms that are braceleted and white and bare

(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)

Is it perfume from a dress

That makes me so digress?

Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.

    And should I then presume?

    And how should I begin?

.  .  .  .  .

    Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets

And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes

Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…

    I should have been a pair of ragged claws

Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

.  .  .  .  .

    And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!

Smoothed by long fingers,

Asleep…tired…or it malingers,

Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,

Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,

Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,

I am no prophet – and here’s no great matter;

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,

And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,

And in short, I was afraid.

   And would it have been worth it, after all,

After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,

Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,

Would it have been worth while,

To have bitten off the matter with a smile,

To have squeezed the universe into a ball

To roll it towards some overwhelming question,

To say: ‘I am Lazarus, come from the dead,

Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all’ –

If one, settling a pillow by her head,

   Should say: ‘That is not what I meant at all.

   That is not it, at all.’

    And would it have been worth it, after all,

Would it have been worth while,

After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,

After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor –

And this, and so much more? –

It is impossible to say just what I mean!

But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:

Would it have been worth while

If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,

And turning toward the window, should say:

     ‘That is not it at all,

     That is not what I meant at all.’

.  .  .  .  .

    No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do

To swell a progress, start a scene or two,

Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

At times, indeed, almost ridiculous –

Almost, at times, the Fool.

    I grow old…I grow old…

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

    Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves

Combing the white hair of the waves blown back

When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.