poems collected

Seamus Heaney

At the foot of a garden, in earshot of river water,
In a corner walled off like the baths or bake-house
Of an unroofed abbey or broken-floored Roman villa,
They have planted their birch grove. Planted it recently only
But already each morning it puts forth in the sun
Like their own long grown-up selves, the white of the bark
As suffused and cool as the white of the satin nightdress
She bends and straightens up in, pouring tea,
Sitting across from where he dandles a sandal
On his big time-keeping foot, as bare as an abbot's.
Red brick and slate, plum tree and apple retain
Their credibility, a CD of Bach is making the rounds
Of the common or garden air. Above them a jet trail
Tapers and waves like a willow wand or a taper.
"If art teaches us anything," he says, trumping life
With a quote, "it's that the human condition is private."

Seamus Heaney

in memory of Czeslaw Milosz

His instruction calmed us, his company and voice
Were like high tidings in the summer trees.
Except this time he turned away and left us.
He walked to where the stream goes underground
And a steep bank paved with flagstones
Leads down to a lintel in the earthwork.
And there he stood, studying what next.
Between a stone cairn and a marble plaque
To the dead of our late wars.
Other wars and words were in my mind,
Another last look taken upon earth—
Roads shining after rain
Like uphill rivers—so that I all but
Wept for his loneliness.
                        He loosed the girdle then
Off his scarecrow rags, called for his girls to fetch
River water for him, find a place
Where overhanging grass combed long and green
And dip their pitchers there. So off they went
And came with overbrimming vessels back
To pour a last libation and to wash
Their dear departing father, hand and foot,
Prepare his linen garment and do all
According to the custom for the dead.

And when all was done, and the daughters waiting,
There came a noise like water rising fast
Far underground, then a low blast and rush
As if some holy name were breathed on air,
A sound that when they heard it made the girls
Cry out, and made blind Oedipus
Gather them in his arms. "My children." he said—
And the rest of us felt that we were his then too—
"Today is the day that ends your father's life.
The burden I have been to myself and you
Is lifted. And yet it was eased by love.
Now you must do without me and relearn
The meaning of that word by remembering."
Then the waterfall of sound behind him grew
Into an overwhelming cavern-voice
Shouting shouts that came from all directions:
"You there. What are you waiting for? You keep
Us waiting. It's time to move. Come on."

And now he was a stranger. He groped in air
As the daughters went to him, heads on his breast,
And he found and kissed their brows, instructing them
One final time: they were to turn and go
And (these were his words exactly) not look upon
Things that were not for seeing, nor listen to
Things not for hearing.
                        And what he said to them
We took again as meant for all of us,
So turned away together when he turned
Away, with the king accompanying him.

But after a few steps I and other ones
Halted to look hack. He was gone from sight:
That much I could see, and against the sky
The king had his arm up shielding his two eyes
As if from some brilliant light or blinding dread.
Next he was on his knees, head bowed to earth
In homage to those gods who dwell in it,
Then up again with his arms spread out to honour
The gods on high, like a windlass being turned
By every power above him and below,
Raised out knowledge into knowledge, sole
Witness of what passed.
                        No god had galloped
His thunder chariot, no hurricane
Had swept the hill. Call me mad, if you like,
Or gullible, but that man surely went
In step with a guide he trusted down to where
Light has gone out but the door stands open.

(adapted from Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus, lines 1586-1666)

Constantine Cavafy
(Translated from the Greek by Daniel Mendelsohn)

Nero wasn't troubled when he heard
the Delphic Oracle's prophecy.
"Let him beware the age of seventy-three."
He still had time to enjoy himself.
He is thirty years old. It's quite sufficient,
the deadline that the god is giving him,
for him to think about dangers yet to come.

Now to Rome he'll be returning a little wearied,
but exquisitely wearied by this trip,
which had been wholly devoted to days of delight-
in the theaters, in the gardens, the gymnasia...
Evenings of the cities of Achaea...
Ah, the pleasure of naked bodies above all...

So Nero. And in Spain, Galba
is secretly assembling his army and preparing it:
the old man, seventy-three years old.

Eugenio Montale
(translated from the Italian by Jonathan Galassi)

There were birches, stands of them, to hide
the hospital where someone suffering
from too much love of life was bored
hanging between everything and nothing.
A cricket chanted, perfectly in key
with the therapeutic plan,
and the cuckoo you'd already heard
more economically in Indonesia.
There were birches, a Swiss nurse.
three or four half-wits in the courtyard.
an album of exotic birds, a phone,
some chocolates on the nightstand.
And I was there, of course, and other nuisances,
trying to provide the kind of cheer
you would have overwhelmed us with, if only
we'd had eyes to see. I had them.

I cannot breathe without you:
Keats to Fanny Brawne,
whom he wrested from oblivion. It's strange
my case, if you'll permit, is different:
I breathe much better when you're not around.
Nearness brings us moments to remember.
but not the way they happened:
as we imagined them, like smelling salts
for the future, just in case,
or medicated vinegar (but no one faints today
over trifles like a shattered heart).
It's these hoarded facts that take the blow,
but add the corpse and the scaffolding won't hold.
I won't try to explain. I know that if you read me
you believe that you contributed
the impetus I needed, and the rest
(as long as it's not silence) matters little.

These are the first and last sections of Montale's last great "story-poem" from the late 1960s and concerns the old poet's infatuation with a beautiful, emotionally unstable younger woman. The complete translation is in Eugenio Montale, Selected Poems, translated by Jonathan Galassi, Charles Wright, and David Young, edited by David Young, Oberlin College Press, 2004).

Derek Mahon

(De Rerum Natura 6, 451-523)

Clouds take shape in the blue sky and gather
where flying bodies get tangled up together;
tiny clouds are borne along by breezes
till the moment when a stronger current rises.
Hills, for instance: the higher up the peak
the more industriously they seem to smoke;
wind blows these wisps on to the mountain tops
while they are still vague, evanescent strips
and there, heaped up in greater quantity,
they reveal themselves as a visible entity
trailing from snowy summits into the ether,
the empyrean spaces torn by wind and weather.
Steam rises from the sea, as becomes clear
when clothes on the shore absorb the salty air;
particles rise from rivers and wet slopes
while the sky, weighing upon them, packs them tight
and weaves them closely like a linen sheet.
Some come from space, as I've explained before,
their number infinite, their source obscure,
and these can travel at the speed of light.
No wonder the storm clouds, so fast and thick,
darkening fields and sea, slide up so quick
since from the blow-holes of the outer spheres,
as a our own windpipes. our glands and pores
the elements come and go, mysterious and opaque,
through ducts and channels, roois and corridors
as if in a house of opening, closing doors.
As for the rain clouds, how they come to grow
and fall as rain on the drinking earth below -
a multitude of life-germs, water semen, floats
with cloud stuff and secretions of all sorts,
both swollen up, the fat clouds and whatever
solution is in the clouds themselves, cloud-water,
as our own bodies grow with the serum, gism,
sweat, whatever fluid is in the organism;
also they draw up brine with streaming sieves
when wind drives the clouds over the waves,
hoisting it from the surface in dripping fleeces
(same thing with bogs and other soggy places).
When all these water-sources come together
clouds discharge their excess moisture either
by ganging up in a bunch to crush each other
till tears flow; or else, blown thin by winds
and sun-struck, they give off drizzling rains
as wax held to a brazier melts and runs.
Sometimes the two things coincide, of course,
the violent pushing and the rushing wind-force,
and then you get a cloudburst which persists
with clouds upon clouds, tempests upon tempests
pouring out of the heavens, soaking the smoky air
while the earth breathesbhack in bubbles everywhere.

DEREK MAHON

Goddess

Well now, it really is you,
and after how many months?
I had ceased keeping track.
No, not given up, never that.
I should die if that were true.
But still - was it some affront?
You've never been this cruel.

Distracted? To be sure;
even you can't begrudge me this:
a father, friend, another friend.
Death's visits threatened never to end.
I know better than to implore,
complain, or like some schoolchild, wish.
Unvisited I do not live, I endure.

Portrait of My Mother in January

Mother dozes in her chair,
awakes a while and reads her book,
then dozes off again.
Wind makes a rush at the house
and, like a tide, recedes. The trees are sear.

Afternoons are the most difficult.
They seem to have no end,
no end and no one there.
Outside the trees do their witchy dance.
Mother grows smaller in her chair.