I write poems about things that I remember or notice or feel. Like many other people, I wrote poems in my teens and then I stopped. In my twenties, I wrote some short-stories, but that also petered out. I worked first as a journalist and then I wrote novels, even though, when I had ambitions as a poet, I despised the sort of tricks a novelist has to play to make the reader believe in a character or a scene. A novel has so much padding for the sake of verisimilitude; the pay-off comes, if you are lucky, in moments of pure illumination.
Slowly, I became interested in the relationship between plausibility and pay-off and I tried to balance them in novels as much as I could.
In 2003, I finished a novel called ‘The Master’. It had taken me four solid years of work, writing the first draft in longhand and then doing much revision and erasing. When it was over, it was a great relief.
Without the novel to work on, however, I was like a swimmer without water. I had no idea for a new novel.
Unexpectedly, I began to write short-stories and poems. I know how the earliest short-story came: I was in a hotel room in Bucharest. I wrote the first sentences on the notepad beside the telephone. The story came not as an idea, or a plot, but a tone, a melody, and a set of images. Writing that story was like singing in key, adding grace notes and flourishes, and allowing the song itself almost to dictate its own shape. My job was to work as though I were finding something that was already there.
I don’t have an exact memory of how and when the first poem came, but it was in the same short period. The poems began with an image and a phrase, and then the words did the work, moving the poem ahead. My job was to hold the poem back, restrain it, concentrate on the image and force the words to do the same.
It was a battle, and the method I used was important.
I wrote a first draft on a word processor, tentatively and then decisively letting the form emerge. I would go back to it a few times a day, adding and cutting. It was essential that I kept no copy at all of what an earlier draft had looked like. There was always only one draft. I worked as though I were painting a picture. If something was erased, it was gone for good. Drafting was like action. Quick ruthless decisions each time.
If I needed help, I went back in my mind to the original image and tried to work out if it was true, or if it was a way of concealing something more elusive, harder to face.
This process would go on until I could make no more changes. Then the poem was done. But a few times, as in the poem ‘December’, I thought I was finished and left the poem for years. When I came back to it, I could see the evasions, the failures, the laziness. I re-wrote the poem.
In the first years after ‘The Master’, I finished quite a few poems. Then, there were one or two poems a year. They always came when I did not expect them. Recently, I have written more. Part of the excitement is the feeling that, just as the impulse to write poems left me when I was twenty, it could depart again. These could be the last lines I will ever write, or ever cut. And, anyway, maybe I am too old.
*
Within the body is its own sweet sound
Which starts as echo and fades fast.
In the bricked-up burden of bone
Two old notes repeat, both fierce.
The city curves. The brightest will
Is open. I have been here for years.
There are lights and wires; there is
Some beauty. It is almost enough.
There was a fierce storm in the night,
The sea lunging at us, slapping on stone.
She slept to the beat of that
In the old bed, the mattress stuffed with wool.
Nothing disturbed her except soft sounds.
With the creaking of stairs or pages turning,
The pulling back of sheets or a half sigh,
She woke in hard fright and came
Downstairs to find out what the racket was.
Thunder comforted her, made her yawn.
That night when old Casas and mad Rusinyol
And the young crew that hung around the bar
Brought the Grecos to the town,
I warned her that there might be noise.
I sold them beer sometimes and knew them all.
And they walked quietly like it was God
Was calling out to be restored, having
Been found rotting in an old shop.
Nothing could save us now. The sound of feet
Drove her to the window, mad, roaring
At the neighbours and civil guards to help.
I have left it out: the beauty
Of slight things gathered and cast off.
You will drive through the night
On the road from Lleida to La Seu.
Coils and wire untrapped in time.
In time. Rivers squandered mud.
There will be marches and protests
Against the fierce gleam of the proven self.
There is no boat to carry us away.
A small rock, untidy, masculine
Stretches, falls. The wheels crunch and splutter.
I am longing for too much.
It was a place we came to then,
Cluttered and forgiving. There were no dead.
One canal, the water fast-flowing, whipped-up.
There was a line of trees.
I will take you into the nest of self.
Before the tree-line, hear me out.
I wish it had not come to this.
Their hands like money, uncomprehending.
Shelter in the vein of stone.
Wisdom has strange, green echoes.
There was something I lost that time
Over there beyond the crowd that gathered.
i.m. Bernard Loughlin
Between the lark and the lammergeyer is the uncrowded sky.
And in the savage brightness a scops owl imagines its own
night,
More desperate than the harmless one that
Must come. The earth is terrace and hard ground.
Crag martins flit as shadows lengthen.
They are all utterance. Soon, they will be gone.
And the sun’s round mouth will shut tight
Against the dark.
In the distance, the headlights of a car approach,
Shine with a purpose that hardly
Matters against the strength of things,
And then it matters more than anyone supposed.
One more day to tease us.
I am ready by then. Cherries
Are out of season. Soon
Peaches and nectarines too.
Line of sun moving, until
Its light is all exposure, and
It is time to move indoors
But lazily, like dust in shade.
Then the warning note that sounded
When she came here. Her voice with all
The years, the sweet knowledge, but not
Enough to be prepared.
Against the hardness of light, it travels
A distance. There was a time years
Ago when there was only darkness.
Memory walks towards us, half beckoning.
The house is sold; the Folly River’s dry.
The strange glistening fire on the horizon
And the lovely warm earth, reddened by use,
Combined to find us wary once the twilight came.
Then there was peace in Wexford, some cars
In the distance the sole night noise.
We were moving slyly towards the trees,
Soundlessly shifting among brambles and briars.
Windows fading out into the dark
Belonged to unimagined space.
Nothing grew easily here, the gnarled
Half tended back of somewhere. When
Branches gave, she must have heard and stirred.
The wet night earth smelled rank and sour.
Sound of a lock pulled back, a key being turned.
Followed by stillness now the years have gone.
All night the sea-wind makes clear
Its deep antipathy to this house
Whose foundations I will steer
Tomorrow on a different course.
I have been telling you this for days.
Sea light and the glow of what is open.
The traffic has been held up. Now go.
If there is a principle at work
In the lovely age-old systems we apply,
I study it. There is too much to regret
And no sweetness in the heavens’ air.
One, one, one. The sound fine-tuned,
The end of something, taut, exact.
There were three shutters painted blue
And they gave on to the street
From the first floor of the long
Building. In the July afternoon, when closed,
They filled the room with shadows, unsettled
The shapes and textures, made things
Seem muted, unfinished, withheld.
From that high room, a curved stairway led
To a windowless landing. The second
Room to the right, overlooking
The courtyard, was the room where she died,
If died is not too strong a word.
We stayed with her in any case, were quiet
For a while, and then went down
And told the others what had just transpired.
I called the undertaker, shook someone’s
Hand, then crept up the stairs again
To find the body covered with a sheet
To protect her, I suppose, making clear
That this was where she was, had been.
It helped to keep her private and at peace.
In the corner of the room as you lay dead
The old patterned jug rested in its place.
And as the day wore on, the unspeaking
Shadows came, bringing in their wake
Ambiguous claims on the softening air.
You were smiling, almost. The small battle
Between shade and light made the jug’s pattern
Blurred and vague, although it must have stayed
The same; it was you who began to change.
Soon they found you and then took you here.
Drawn chalk-yellow out of dust
Keeping us free from sin.
There are shadows, sublime inventions
While I listen and say that I too
Have seen visions, skin crack,
The fist banging helplessly on a shut
Door. Locked hollow spaces
Left there after the war.
He responded to the picture’s need
As a parent to a child’s cry
Or a bird in the air
To a worm or a fly.
There was, I know, some hatred before heating
Came. I can see spots, shapes, mounds,
Twisted, left-over. A crash, of course,
Would slice us in two. And then
On the water I saw - no one else
Noticed it - a piece of symmetry swim away.
Nothing else much. Some faint sounds; and the land
For sale; some dark books and humming
In the margins. And the old echoing moon
That goes without saying.
The art he favours has a hint of risk.
A naked bottom, some Cubist forms, but more
Unwieldly, more Picasso than Juan Gris.
Under the sweetness of his homely gaze,
The paintings conform. Nothing white,
Nothing withheld or pale. Instead,
A mess of squiggles, a maze
Of marks and dots, a wildness in the paint,
A love of gesture, filling every space.
The lopsided look of one depicted face
Suggests the torturer does not fear pain
Or wants it just enough to make its mark.
In his house, as guests, we sip and smile.
He dealt with those he needed to defeat.
Freed, he bows and caters for our needs.
Hedi thinks
I am
middle of the road.
But who
will tell
him
that today
when I had
a token
for one paperback
at McNally
Jackson
I picked
‘Not Me’
by Eileen Myles?
At the register
for one second
when the assistant
looked at the
book and
then at
me
I felt like
the most cutting
edge guy
in all New York
and some of
New Jersey,
not to speak of
Connecticut,
and then –
what could I do? –
I went
back to my
road and
I lay down
right on
the broken line
with my arms
outstretched.
I wondered that December day
What I would miss. December light:
The air liquid and grey
An hour before the ambiguous hour.
Time when the mind’s half-filled with dreams.
The gift of pure dazzling consciousness.
Some books. And music, not to be heard again.
The touch of flesh, your hand.
When I first heard talk of death
I was eight, just in from school,
And my mother, staring in the mirror, said
That my father would die, and soon he did.
From then I did not put my trust
In anything much. When I summon up the names
Of ones I love, for example, I recoil
At having to whisper what has remained unsaid.
My heart is watching and weakening
Mercilessly counting the beats;
It is bored, casually waiting
For this to cease.
My father died at fifty-three.
Vessels leaked in his brain.
Then arteries weakened.
He moaned in pain.
My mother’s eyes were grey as his
Were blue. Her breath
Rose high over the town
Before it sank in death.
I have their two weak hearts in one
Weak heart, their eyes merged in my gaze.
His slow smile, her soft side-glance
Oversee my days.
Her friends are coming up the hill
As she sits in her easy chair
And talks as though the evening will
Dim gently as the dimming fire.
Outside there is a wooden box
Where she will lie until time ends.
Now we hear some mourners’ knocks
And they come in and night descends.
Slowly, we lift her from her place
And lead her to the crowded hall.
We put her firmly in the case,
Nail down the top once and for all.
Orpheus came to this house
On an August Bank Holiday weekend.
He made no fuss; it was as if
I had called a plumber, or a man
To fix the roof. From the roof,
He could expand his horizons -
Raven Point to the south;
Rosslare Harbour; Tuskar Rock
Holding its breath in the light.
When Orpheus pushed the open door
Flicked through the cd’s,
Fumbled with the sound system,
And put on Das Lied von der Erde -
The Kathleen Ferrier version -
I could have told him what it
Would do to the room.
The woodwind holds back
And soars again, knowing
That her voice will break up
Whatever peace there was here.
Orpheus will go to the cliff
And call the dead to come
To us from the sea where
They have been swimming.
He will promise my mother
The music. But she is checking
The water, to see how cold it is,
Then wading out before turning
And giving me a look,
Dismissive, distant,
And then floating away,
Unenticed by the song.
Dripping water and the smell of darkness.
This is where I will go. Follow me now.
Time pressed down, led down,
Down as the steps lead down.
I will go into the dark without you.
Below this below there is more
And it is below that I belong to.
Don’t follow me further. Move away.
Don’t follow me further.
*
COLM TÓIBÍN is the author of nine novels and two collections of stories. His work has been translated into more than thirty languages. He is a contributing editor at the London Review of Books, the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University, and Chancellor of Liverpool University.