More Poetry by Paul Durcan
Three poems in Magill, September 1978
MICHAEL
"Dear Boy, What a superlative day for a funeral:
It seems St Stephen's Green put on the appareil Of early Spring-time especially for me.
That is no vanity: but-dare I say it- humility
In the fell face of those nay-neighers who say we die At dying-time. Die? Why, I must needs cry
No, no, no, no,
Now I am living whereas before-no-
'Twas but breathing, choking, croaking, singing, Superb sometimes but nevertheless but breathing:
You should have seen the scene in University Church:
Packed to the hammer-beams with me left in the lurch All on my ownio up-front centre-stage;
People of every nationality in Ireland and of every age;
Old age an youth-Oh, everpresent, oldest, wished-for youth; And old Dublin ladies telling their beads for old me; forsooth. 'Twould have fired the cockles of John Henry's heart
And his mussels too: only Sara Bernhardt
Was missing but I was so glad to see Marie Conmee Fresh, as always, as the morning sea.
We paid a last farewell to dear Harcourt Terrace, Dear old, bedraggled, doomed Harcourt Terrace Where I enjoyed, amongst the crocuses,
a Continual Glimpse of Heaven
By having, for a living partner, Hilton.
Around the corner the canal-waters from Athy gleamed Engaged in their never-ending courtship of Ringsend. Then onward to the Gate-and to the rose-cheeked ghost
of Lord Edward Longford;
I could not bear to look at Patrick Bedford. Oh tears there were, there and everywhere,
But especially there; there outside the Gate where For fifty years we wooed the goddess of our art; How many, many nights she pierced my heart. Ach, nil aon tin-tan mar do thin-tan fein:
The Gate and the Taidbhearc-each was our name; I dreamed a dream of Jean Cocteau
Leaning against a wall in Killnamoe;
And so I voyaged
through all the nations of Ireland with McMaster
And played in Cinderella an ugly, but oh so ugly, sister. Ah but we could not tarry for ever outside the Gate; Life, as always, must go on or we'd be late
For my rendezvous with my brave grave-diggers Who were as shy but snappy as my best of dressers.
We sped past the vast suburb of Clontarf-all those lives Full of hard-working Brian Borus with their busy wives. In St Fintan's Cemetery there was spray from the sea As well as from the noonday sun, and clay on me:
And a green carnation on my lonely oaken coffin. Lonely in heaven? Yes, I must not soften
The deep pain I feel at even a momentary separation From my dear, sweet friends. A green carnation
For you all, dear boy; If you must weep, ba(w)ll; Slan agus Beannacht: Micheal."
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DR. SEAN SMOOTH
Dr Sean Smooth has the reputation
For being the most with-it psychiatrist in town:
They say that psychiatry is in his blood
For his father-known to all as "Roughie "Smoothh·Was Chief Psychiatrist in a Dublin asylum
For thirty-five years. Like his son Sean,
Roughie was an arch chancer:
By night he'd get stocious drunk in his club,
By day he'd harangue inmates for being alcoholics. He got away with this
Because the inmates were all prisoners
of the helpless working-class.
But Dr Sean Smooth has a different style:
Listen to him interrogating a naive, young woman Suffering from nervous exhaustion and sorrow:
"The world's a strange place, Marina -May I call you Marina?-Marina-
I was in the United States last week Lecturing at a conference in Bombsville
And I met a colleague from there who told me That presently he's working on a drug
That will make Thalidomide
Sound like Christmas Cake:
To be used only in warfare, of course, Against the enemy. Yes, a strange place Is the world. . . hmm . . . hmm ... Do you know something, Marina,
You are the saddest, loneliest,
Most depressed, melancholy, patient I've ever met But you're so intelligent and so attractive ... " And he raised his silver eyebrows and smiled
A silver salver smile
And Marina Ring became a permanent invalid.
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THIS WEEK THE COURT IS SLEEPING IN LOUGHREA
The perplexed defendants stand upright in the dock While round about their spiked and barred fo'castle, Like corpses of mutinous sailors strewn about the deck Of a ghost schooner becalmed in summer heat,
Lie solicitors in suits, and barristers in wigs and gowns, Snoring in their sleeves,
Whilst, up on high, upon the judge's bench His Lordship also snores
Dreaming of the Good Old Days as a Drunken Devil Dozing ia Doneraile;
From a hook in the ceiling the Court Crier hangs, His eyes dangling out of their sockets;
And below him the Registrar is smoothing
the breasts of his spectacles;
And in the varnished witness-box sits Rev. Fr. Perjury With a knife through his back;
Behind him in the dark aisles, like coshed dummies, stand Policemen stupefied by poitin
And up in the amphitheatre of the public gallery An invisible, middle-class mob scream for revenge:
And open window lets in the thudding sounds of blows As, on the green, tinker men brawl
As they have done so there down the centuriessThe Sweeneys and the Maughans.
Such slender justice as may be said to subsist in Loughrea Is to be discerned in the form of a streamlet
behind the houses of the town
Which carries water out to the parched fields
Where cleg-ridden cattle wait thirsty in the shadowy lees,
Their domain far away from the sleeping courtroom of human battle. Is it any wonder that there are children who would rather be cattle?