New and Selected Poems (10 page)

III
At the Water’s Edge

 

On Devenish I heard a snipe

And the keeper’s recital of elegies

Under the tower. Carved monastic heads

Were crumbling like bread on water.

   

 

On Boa the god-eyed, sex-mouthed stone

Socketed between graves, two-faced, trepanned,

Answered my silence with silence.

A stoup for rain water. Anathema.

   

 

From a cold hearthstone on Horse Island

I watched the sky beyond the open chimney

And listened to the thick rotations

Of an army helicopter patrolling.

   

 

A hammer and a cracked jug full of cobwebs

Lay on the window-sill. Everything in me

Wanted to bow down, to offer up,

To go barefoot, foetal and penitential,

   

 

And pray at the water’s edge.

How we crept before we walked! I remembered

The helicopter shadowing our march at Newry,

The scared, irrevocable steps.

One morning early I met armoured cars

In convoy, warbling along on powerful tyres,

All camouflaged with broken alder branches,

And headphoned soldiers standing up in turrets.

How long were they approaching down my roads

As if they owned them? The whole country was sleeping.

I had rights-of-way, fields, cattle in my keeping,

Tractors hitched to buckrakes in open sheds,

Silos, chill gates, wet slates, the greens and reds

Of outhouse roofs. Whom should I run to tell

Among all of those with their back doors on the latch

For the bringer of bad news, that small-hours visitant

Who, by being expected, might be kept distant?

Sowers of seed, erectors of headstones …

Ο charioteers, above your dormant guns,

It stands here still, stands vibrant as you pass,

The invisible, untoppled omphalos.

She came every morning to draw water

Like an old bat staggering up the field:

The pump’s whooping cough, the bucket’s clatter

And slow diminuendo as it filled,

Announced her. I recall

Her grey apron, the pocked white enamel

Of the brimming bucket, and the treble

Creak of her voice like the pump’s handle.

Nights when a full moon lifted past her gable

It fell back through her window and would lie

Into the water set out on the table.

Where I have dipped to drink again, to be

Faithful to the admonishment on her cup,

Remember the Giver
, fading off the lip.

All round this little island, on the strand
Far down below there, where the breakers strive
,
Grow the tall rushes from the oozy sand
.

                                       
 DANTE
,
Purgatorio
, I, 100–103

Leaving the white glow of filling stations

And a few lonely streetlamps among fields

You climbed the hills towards Newtownhamilton

Past the Fews Forest, out beneath the stars –

Along that road, a high, bare pilgrim’s track

Where Sweeney fled before the bloodied heads,

Goat-beards and dogs’ eyes in a demon pack

Blazing out of the ground, snapping and squealing.

What blazed ahead of you? A faked road block?

The red lamp swung, the sudden brakes and stalling

Engine, voices, heads hooded and the cold-nosed gun?

Or in your driving mirror, tailing headlights

That pulled out suddenly and flagged you down

Where you weren’t known and far from what you knew:

The lowland clays and waters of Lough Beg,

Church Island’s spire, its soft treeline of yew.

   

 

There you once heard guns fired behind the house

Long before rising time, when duck shooters

Haunted the marigolds and bulrushes,

But still were scared to find spent cartridges,

Acrid, brassy, genital, ejected,

On your way across the strand to fetch the cows.

For you and yours and yours and mine fought shy,

Spoke an old language of conspirators

And could not crack the whip or seize the day:

Big-voiced scullions, herders, feelers round

Haycocks and hindquarters, talkers in byres,

Slow arbitrators of the burial ground.

   

 

Across that strand of yours the cattle graze

Up to their bellies in an early mist

And now they turn their unbewildered gaze

To where we work our way through squeaking sedge

Drowning in dew. Like a dull blade with its edge

Honed bright, Lough Beg half shines under the haze.

I turn because the sweeping of your feet

Has stopped behind me, to find you on your knees

With blood and roadside muck in your hair and eyes,

Then kneel in front of you in brimming grass

And gather up cold handfuls of the dew

To wash you, cousin. I dab you clean with moss

Fine as the drizzle out of a low cloud.

I lift you under the arms and lay you flat.

With rushes that shoot green again, I plait

Green scapulars to wear over your shroud.

I

 

He would drink by himself

And raise a weathered thumb

Towards the high shelf,

Calling another rum

And blackcurrant, without

Having to raise his voice,

Or order a quick stout

By a lifting of the eyes

And a discreet dumb-show

Of pulling off the top;

At closing time would go

In waders and peaked cap

Into the showery dark,

A dole-kept breadwinner

But a natural for work.

I loved his whole manner,

Sure-footed but too sly,

His deadpan sidling tact,

His fisherman’s quick eye

And turned observant back.

   

 

Incomprehensible

To him, my other life.

Sometimes, on his high stool,

Too busy with his knife

At a tobacco plug

And not meeting my eye,

In the pause after a slug

He mentioned poetry.

We would be on our own

And, always politic

And shy of condescension,

I would manage by some trick

To switch the talk to eels

Or lore of the horse and cart

Or the Provisionals.

   

 

But my tentative art

His turned back watches too:

He was blown to bits

Out drinking in a curfew

Others obeyed, three nights

After they shot dead

The thirteen men in Derry.

PARAS THIRTEEN
, the walls said,

BOGSIDE NIL
. That Wednesday

Everybody held

His breath and trembled.

II

 

It was a day of cold

Raw silence, wind-blown

Surplice and soutane:

Rained-on, flower-laden

Coffin after coffin

Seemed to float from the door

Of the packed cathedral

Like blossoms on slow water.

The common funeral

Unrolled its swaddling band,

Lapping, tightening

Till we were braced and bound

Like brothers in a ring.

   

 

But he would not be held

At home by his own crowd

Whatever threats were phoned,

Whatever black flags waved.

I see him as he turned

In that bombed offending place,

Remorse fused with terror

In his still knowable face,

His cornered outfaced stare

Blinding in the flash.

   

 

He had gone miles away

For he drank like a fish

Nightly, naturally

Swimming towards the lure

Of warm lit-up places,

The blurred mesh and murmur

Drifting among glasses

In the gregarious smoke.

How culpable was he

That last night when he broke

Our tribe’s complicity?

‘Now you’re supposed to be

An educated man,’

I hear him say. ‘Puzzle me

The right answer to that one.’

III

 

I missed his funeral,

Those quiet walkers

And sideways talkers

Shoaling out of his lane

To the respectable

Purring of the hearse …

They move in equal pace

With the habitual

Slow consolation

Of a dawdling engine,

The line lifted, hand

Over fist, cold sunshine

On the water, the land

Banked under fog: that morning

When he took me in his boat,

The screw purling, turning

Indolent fathoms white,

I tasted freedom with him.

To get out early, haul

Steadily off the bottom,

Dispraise the catch, and smile

As you find a rhythm

Working you, slow mile by mile,

Into your proper haunt

Somewhere, well out, beyond …

   

 

Dawn-sniffing revenant,

Plodder through midnight rain,

Question me again.