nightdog_barks (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
nightdog_barks) wrote2008-11-04 03:06 pm
nightdog_barks) wrote2008-11-04 03:06 pm
Entry tags:
3 Poems
So my new issue of Poetry came yesterday, and there's a review in it of a new book from an Irish poet I'd never heard of -- Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, and they had a couple of excerpts from it, and they were beautiful. So I went looking, and found some more of her stuff, and it's behind the cut.
Aubade
It's all the same to morning what it dawns on —
On the bickering of jackdaws in leafy trees;
On that dandy from the wetlands, the green mallard's
Stylish glissando among reeds; on the moorhen
Whose white petticoat flickers around the boghole;
On the oystercatcher on tiptoe at low tide.
It's all the same to the sun what it rises on —
On the windows in houses in Georgian squares;
On bees swarming to blitz suburban gardens;
On young couples yawning in unison before
They do it again; on dew like sweat or tears
On lilies and roses; on your bare shoulders.
But it isn't all the same to us that night-time
Runs out; that we must make do with today's
Happenings, and stoop and somehow glue together
The silly little shards of our lives, so that
Our children can drink water from broken bowls,
Not from cupped hands. It isn't the same at all.
~ translated by Michael Longley
Miraculous Grass
There you were in your purple vestments
half-way through the Mass, an ordained priest
under your linen alb and chasuble and stole:
and when you saw my face in the crowd
for Holy Communion
the consecrated host fell from your fingers.
I felt shame, I never
mentioned it once,
my lips were sealed.
But still it lurked in my heart
like a thorn under mud, and it
worked itself in so deep and sheer
it nearly killed me.
Next thing then, I was laid up in bed.
Consultants came in their hundreds,
doctors and brothers and priests,
but I baffled them all: I was
incurable, they left me for dead.
So out you go, men,
out with the spades and scythes,
the hooks and shovels and hoes.
Tackle the rubble,
cut back the bushes, clear off the rubbish,
the sappy growth, the whole straggle and mess
that infests my green unfortunate field.
And there where the sacred wafer fell
you will discover
in the middle of the shooting weeds
a clump of miraculous grass.
The priest will have to come then
with his delicate fingers, and lift the host
and bring it to me and put it on my tongue.
Where it will melt, and I will rise in the bed
as fit and well as the youngster I used to be.
~ translated by Seamus Heaney
The Bond
If I use my forbidden hand
To raise a bridge across the river,
All the work of the builders
Has been blown up by sunrise,
A boat comes up the river by night
With a woman standing in it,
Twin candles lit in her eyes
And two oars in her hands.
She unsheathes a pack of cards,
‘Will you play forfeits?’ she says.
We play and she beats me hands down,
And she puts three banns upon me:
Not to have two meals in one house,
Not to pass two nights under one roof,
Not to sleep twice with the same man
Until I find her. When I ask her address,
‘If it were north I’d tell you south.
If it were east, west.’ She hooks
Off in a flash of lightning, leaving me
Stranded on the bank,
My eyes full of candles,
And the two dead oars.
~ translated by Medbh McGuckian
Credit to Eating Poetry blog, which is where I found these. The poet's Amazon page is here, but her new book, The Fifty Minute Mermaid, isn't available yet in the U.S.
Aubade
It's all the same to morning what it dawns on —
On the bickering of jackdaws in leafy trees;
On that dandy from the wetlands, the green mallard's
Stylish glissando among reeds; on the moorhen
Whose white petticoat flickers around the boghole;
On the oystercatcher on tiptoe at low tide.
It's all the same to the sun what it rises on —
On the windows in houses in Georgian squares;
On bees swarming to blitz suburban gardens;
On young couples yawning in unison before
They do it again; on dew like sweat or tears
On lilies and roses; on your bare shoulders.
But it isn't all the same to us that night-time
Runs out; that we must make do with today's
Happenings, and stoop and somehow glue together
The silly little shards of our lives, so that
Our children can drink water from broken bowls,
Not from cupped hands. It isn't the same at all.
~ translated by Michael Longley
Miraculous Grass
There you were in your purple vestments
half-way through the Mass, an ordained priest
under your linen alb and chasuble and stole:
and when you saw my face in the crowd
for Holy Communion
the consecrated host fell from your fingers.
I felt shame, I never
mentioned it once,
my lips were sealed.
But still it lurked in my heart
like a thorn under mud, and it
worked itself in so deep and sheer
it nearly killed me.
Next thing then, I was laid up in bed.
Consultants came in their hundreds,
doctors and brothers and priests,
but I baffled them all: I was
incurable, they left me for dead.
So out you go, men,
out with the spades and scythes,
the hooks and shovels and hoes.
Tackle the rubble,
cut back the bushes, clear off the rubbish,
the sappy growth, the whole straggle and mess
that infests my green unfortunate field.
And there where the sacred wafer fell
you will discover
in the middle of the shooting weeds
a clump of miraculous grass.
The priest will have to come then
with his delicate fingers, and lift the host
and bring it to me and put it on my tongue.
Where it will melt, and I will rise in the bed
as fit and well as the youngster I used to be.
~ translated by Seamus Heaney
The Bond
If I use my forbidden hand
To raise a bridge across the river,
All the work of the builders
Has been blown up by sunrise,
A boat comes up the river by night
With a woman standing in it,
Twin candles lit in her eyes
And two oars in her hands.
She unsheathes a pack of cards,
‘Will you play forfeits?’ she says.
We play and she beats me hands down,
And she puts three banns upon me:
Not to have two meals in one house,
Not to pass two nights under one roof,
Not to sleep twice with the same man
Until I find her. When I ask her address,
‘If it were north I’d tell you south.
If it were east, west.’ She hooks
Off in a flash of lightning, leaving me
Stranded on the bank,
My eyes full of candles,
And the two dead oars.
~ translated by Medbh McGuckian
Credit to Eating Poetry blog, which is where I found these. The poet's Amazon page is here, but her new book, The Fifty Minute Mermaid, isn't available yet in the U.S.
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;-D