Michael Hartnett

for Pat Boran

That kind of summer's day when music comes
down from the hills and sings in small back-rooms
and half-sets from a century before
batter their complex hobnails on the floor
and long laments in overcoats and caps
draw tears, reluctant from the porter-taps —
that was the kind of day it was, that day
when I forsook the world of earn and pay.
There, on the cobbles of the market square,
where toothless penny ballads rasped the air,
there among spanners, scollops, hones, and pikes,
limp Greyhound cabbage, mending-kits for bikes,
velvet calves in creels, women's overalls,
she shook my hand beside the market stalls.
And there before the coulter of a plough,
aware of all the gifts she could endow,
aware, as women are, of all her powers,
as startling as a bunch of winter flowers,
she tricked from me my childish, sacred vow.

I got to know her lovers one by one:
some saw her in an eclipse of the sun,
some saw her practise magic with strange herbs
and made her opaque alchemies of verbs —
some, for her sake, thought blood her favourite wine,
and some thought spirits helped them to divine
her arcane instincts and, as holy fools,
would chant her words not known to any schools.
Some thought that secret nurture made her grow
and more believed she thrived in public show;
some scattered syntax like the blackthorn snow
in flashy spangles on the mud below
and some, like me, immersed themselves in laws,
for what good are the sparks without the straws?
But none of these sufficed. All through the land
I see the poets in their mad distress —
all favoured rivals? No, but victims, yes.
A creature driven by a savage gland,
she takes, and then dismisses, out of hand,
the men and women that she most does bless.
She does not rest, she does not detumesce.

I leave her by a river on a bed,
a silken landscape underneath her head,
and spread her in her finest courting gown
on a spectacular eiderdown
with painted eyes and rings to catch the light
by the oblivious water overnight.
Only the poets can make her come to life,
the stricken catalyst, who call her wife —
at dawn I give her bed a gentle shove
and amputate the antennae of love
and watch the river carry her away
into the silence of a senseless bay
where light ignores the facets of her rings
and where names are not the names of things.
...

1

The sky is alone tonight —
the moon and stars
seek some presence
in the firm quiet, in the hard lack.
A meteor falls in the empty dark.
Someone is absent, the universe is bare
listen, God, are you there?

Sand silts the world —
dockleaves in the yard,
broken teeth eat sadness
in the hayless barn.
Silence knocks on men's doors
and silence answers it —
but music is heard in space.

Lichen eats the stone,
old arrogance eats peace:
female salt eats being,
angry rust eats blood.
Beetle and seal are dead,
poisoned children in lakes —
but music is heard in space.

Weak whistle-music moves
beyond Orion's Belt,
silk threads in a cave
float in the dark.
Some player in the solitude
with a hopeful song
but destruction still goes on.

Lard made from whales,
coats from the seals' fur —
shaving brush from badger hair,
burnt chicks are henfood.
God's lovely creatures last
though we eat them, trout and lamb —
there's a use for the whistler's tune.

I saw a nest ablaze,
living wood sawdust.
I saw a bird on fire
fall soundless from the air.
I saw the ancient ramparts downed
and silence in the plover field.
I saw the killer's belly feed.

A tongue hangs on a tree,
the magpies' might is right:
a noise of glossy black and white.
I heard their loud artillery.
My ears are withered leaves
from their cacophony,
the discord shuts God's eyes.
But a new musician plays
and music's heard in space.



2

Listen, father, wait a while —
stay alive with me until
the universe's gown,
once as fresh as cabbage-heart,
is clean again.
Do you remember mothers' milk
like pigeons' milk that feeds the flock?
It will pour again — wait on.

I saw it last night
in the northern sky
whiter than any blood
dripped from the moon's pap
and every parched grave opened up
and the dough of milk and earth
made a bread forever fresh.

Listen, father, listen close —
though the sky's a tambourine
danced on by an iron fool
there's harmony beyond his noise.
Take time and slow your pace —
the dark drink waits for you
and strange music out in space.

Did you see them last night,
night's-eyes brilliant bright
in the black grass
and dandelions en masse,
guineas on velvet once
on an old god's shoulders
dead since the ancient magic passed?

Remember the age of the seed,
kingdom of creatures, power of air?
(Man was not alone,
man and his household.)
Waterfall tumbling from eldertree,
foam on pools like feather capes?
Remember pollen from grasses' ears?

Listen, father, cry no tear
for evil seed, for history's débris,
for the cold eternal stones,
ruined towers, groves of graves.
Listen: a bullfinch sings sweetly
(musical anvil in forge)
his harmony's all history.

So, my father, wait a while.
There's no music after dying,
no inkling of a human sigh —
just worlds falling into suns.
Earth will be the brightest bride,
star-necklets on her gown —
tinwhistles cracking tunes,
platform dances in each town.
Easy, father, wait a while.

But he did not wait.



3

One day when hope was ill
I took dangerous medicine
and hope died out and left me there,
a naked surgeon, my patient dead.
Like a hen at grips with death
my bill dumb down a well,
my plumage drowned in hate.

I turned my back on Glendarock,
walked for a drink to ease
and to obliterate
pain and fear and grief.
Rats laughed from every hedge,
bones embossed the road —
in the wind a grey crow screeched.

And then I saw the sign
that led my heart to peace —
barley like a green fire,
sheets of barley in live waves
quivering its thousand ears,
swaying flames of green
as quietly restless as a child asleep.

I knew then no victory
would go to iron axe or spear:
our mother which art on earth
conserve us safe and clean.
Gale and 'quake knock flat
all laws, all walls, all treasuries —
bindweed chokes the telegraph.

In spite of joy this peace waned
and ice ran through every vein:
all my pores were locked
and my heart turned,
a piglet on a spit, his blood steam,
panting like a dog's tongue;
the scythe taught the corn its dream.

Caterpillars squashed on the roads,
the swallow snapping back flies,
frogspawn dead in pools dried up,
the horsefly craving blood.
Prick in a vice, a man screams.
The scythe taught the poet his dream.

Barley, cover me up,
let me lie in your field.
I ask of you a green death
in the quiet milk of your stalks.
Yes, the world will survive
with neither you nor me alive.
Damn you, death, I will not then experience
the new gown of the universe —
just lie manure on immaculate earth.



4

Once a perfect standing stone,
fame engraved on my side,
my statement unambiguous,
I had nothing to hide.
But the wind of curiosity blew
with its what? and how? and why?
and blunted the edge of my dignity.

The cow of love rubbed its flank
against my sides and frost burnt:
the grain inside me shrank,
I flaked on the grass bank.
A flock of questions came seeking food
and the mother in me said 'chook, chook'
though I was dumb and mere rock.

The anxiety mason chipped at me
with his heavy hammer,
carving his own design:
his chisel gouged my grammar,
engraved no notices of mine
and every passing stray has read
words not engendered in my head.

And the lichen letters came
twisting the bare word
and their grey crust grew on me
and concealed my shape.
I lost all courage and desire,
my voice was just a shard
and all the silent world had ears.

My body like a dead elm —
dumb lightning upside-down —
inquisitor's file eroding me,
wedges wearing me out.
Before me, in my mouth,
restraints and oaths — but my poem stayed,
I still stand. But where are they?

The sky stands on my tip,
stars flow through me, inside:
I tame the sun and moon,
harnessed to my pride.
No friendships flourish in my shade,
no herb of love, no mint of help,
and I'm incapable of prayer.

Now merely a lump of stone
smashed in the field of scythes,
a circle of calves around me
staring with silly eyes.
I lonesome like a hawtree
while lichen hones me down
and a lizard-brooch sleeps.



5

In Hammer Glen there's blood
in milk and a goose complains
on an empty hearth: a cat
swells in the churn, dead and full.
A flitch of bacon hangs itself
from rafters: a tongs stands like a bull.
My first trip to the house of thatch —

home of the Slaughter Lad
who condemned his own kind —
a hammer-vision showed him how
to escape the bird-lime.
I was called, no scalpel packed.
I threw a saddle on the dark
and galloped to the threshold of his mind.

Knots of briars slid from their nests,
each poisoned eye a blackberry.
I was pelted with a shower of fruit
from a bare blackthorn tree.
I heard the chick sing in the egg,
and the straw in the mattress grew,
the raspberry cried in the jam.

But I came safe from these shades,
out of the battle-noise gales,
until I reached Slaughter Lad's
and saw there under the moon's eye
a hedgehog milking a jack snipe,
a goat beating a drum in the sky —
I had crossed over the borders of the live.

I walked into his head —
no knife, no healing herb —
helix of a snail's shell,
into a complex corridor.
Prayers of hate, echoes of roars
fell from the faceted walls —
his father's face was carved on the floor.

'I hit him hit him hit him again —
the goose drank the juice of this brain,
I made a pig-trough from his skull
and put his eyes under a hen.
One did not hatch at all,
the other shook and cracked.
Out walked a chicken's claw.

'The claw still sticks in me —
it tortures and exhausts:
contrition runs from my nose,
surgeon, give me peace.'
I refused. And left the place.
I threw away all style and craft,
my heart was ash and chaff,
my soul was a gravel bed —
a naked surgeon, and my patient dead.



6

The one-eyed monk sits,
half prays where millstones turn.
His body comes to life,
a need to travel grinds him up —
a need for pools full of hope,
a need for wells of honey and sweat,
a need for hills where torches burn.

He walks the white-flowered field
looking for a ferny place
clad in sparse purple light
(a foxglove round a bee)
to a mild meadow of sheep,
to soft dark, root of history —
peace to all who walk this way.

But only silence from his bell,
dead butterfly his manuscript
— unfinished, unrevised —
he is addicted to this trip,
this drug called pilgrimage
that kills all dignity and skill
and still's his reason to exist.

And when the monk grows weak,
clumsy, worn, aged —
no more desire to roam,
wanting his bell and page.
But he can no longer illuminate,
has lost the power to pray,
lost his interest in the everyday.

This travel's an enormous act,
a trip all have to take,
and meadows and mountains lure
all who want to escape
with coaxing honey, coaxing kiss,
'Do not search for new things,
do not search for new things'.

I will drown all my books
in that honeyed well
and play like a foal
in the brownest fern.
I will swim in the pool of hope,
I will walk till night in the bright fields.

But in the splendid dark I'll hear
wings of parchment shake and bells weep.
...

1 The Poet Down

for Patrick Kavanagh

He sits between the doctor and the law.
Neither can help. Barbiturate in paw
one, whiskey in paw two, a dying man:
the poet down, and his fell caravan.
They laugh and they mistake the lash that lurks
in his tongue for the honey of his works.
The poet is at bay, the hounds baying,
dig his grave with careful kindness, saying:
'Another whiskey, and make it a large one!'
Priests within, acolytes at the margin
the red impaled bull's roar must fascinate —
they love the dead, the living man they hate.
They were designing monuments — in case —
and making furtive sketches of his face,
and he could hear, above their straining laughs,
the rustling foolscap of their epitaphs.



2 The Poet as Mastercraftsman

for Thomas Kinsella

Eras do not end when great poets die,
for poetry is not whole, it is where man
chose mountains to conform, to carve his own
face among the Gothic richness and the sky,
and the gargoyles, and the lesser tradesmen.
Praise from the apprentice is always shown
in miniatures of a similar stone.
I saw the master in his human guise
open doors to let me in, and rhythm out.
He smiled and entertained into the night.
I was aware of work undone. His eyes,
like owls', warned images from the room.
Under the stairs the muse was crying; shields
clashed in the kitchen and the war drum's boom,
men in celtic war dress entered from the right.
I left, my conversation put to rout.

To poets peace poetry never yields.



3 The Poet as Black Sheep

for Paul Durcan

I have seen him dine
in middle-class surroundings,
his manners refined,
as his family around him
talk about nothing,
one of their favourite theses.

I have seen him lying
between the street and pavement,
atoning, dying
for their sins, the fittest payment
he can make for them,
to get drunk and go to pieces.

On his father's face
in sparse lines etched out by ice,
the puritan race
has come to its zenith of grey spite,
its climax of hate,
its essence of frigidity.

Let the bourgeoisie beware,
who could not control his head
and kept it in their care
until the brain bled:
this head is a poet's head,
this head holds a galaxy.



4 The Person as Dreamer: We Talk about the Future

for Des Healy

It has to be a hill,
high, of course, and twilit.
There have to be some birds,
all sadly audible:
a necessary haze,
and small wristlets of rain,
yes, and a tremendous
air of satisfaction.
Both of us will be old
and both our wives, of course,
have died, young, and tragic.
And all our children have
gone their far ways, estranged,
or else not begotten.
We have been through a war,
been hungry, and heroes:
and here we are now, calm,
fed, and reminiscent.
The hills are old, silent:
our pipe-smoke rises up.
We have come a long way . . . .



5 The Poet Dreams and Resolves

for Macdara Woods

To be alone, and not to be lonely,
to have time to myself, and not be bored;
to live in some suburban house, beside
the mountains, with an adequate supply
of stout and spirits (or of stout only),
and some cigarettes, and writing paper,
and a little cheap food, and a small hoard
of necessary books, where I could write
in dark as monks did, with only blue sky
as interference, wind as soul-reaper.

But what would I do if on certain nights
I was mad in heat for the public lights?
I would chain myself to a living tree
to foil the Sirens of the distant city.
...

Ah yes - they justify it all, the brats,
hungry or asleep and gorged with milk.
Each drop's (yes, the milk they drink is yours)
another line unwritten, another page
crumpled like a pufiball on the floor.
Your limpid dialogue is reduced
to the basic syllables of the cave
and the quick infant minds grow huge, while you
relearn vocabularies from the pram.
The typewriter is now a battered toy,
its ribbon has fingerprinted all the walls
(cenotaphs for dead letters all its keys).
You tap the heads assailing your broad lap
and polarise regret and love them while
the cunning offspring of your milk and blood
root up the truffles of your mind.
...

V

I nGleann an Chasúir tá fuil
sa bhainne is goileann gé
ar theallach folamh: tá cat
a d'at sa chuinneog, marbh.
(Do chroch leataobh muice é féin
ó rachta) is seasann tlú mar tharbh:
seo mo chéad chuairt go teach na tuí tréin'.

Seo áitreabh gharsún an áir
a dhaor chun báis fáth a shaoil:
fís chasúir a nocht dó
conas éaló ón nglae glas.
Cuireadh glaoch orm, an lia gan scian :
chaith mé diallait ar an dorchadas
is lean mé liom go tairseach a chinn.

Snámh snaidhm drise as teas a nid -
gach súil nimhneach mar sméar dubh:
crústáladh mé le cith caor
ó dhraighean maol na ndealg ndocht.
Chuala gearrcach ag cantain in ubh
chuala mé an tuí ag fás i dtocht
is síol sú craobh ag borradh i subh.

Ach tháinig mé slán ón scáth
slán amach as síon an ghleo.
Shrois mé clós gharsún an áir
agus b'iúd ann faoi shúil na ré
gráinneog ag crú an ghabhairín reo
druma á bhualadh ag gabhar sa spéir:
chuaigh mé amú thar theora na mbeo.

Shiúil mé isteach ina cheann
gan lansa ná luibh im láimh
(blaosc seilmide le lúb is cúb
fite fuaite mar dhorchla cúng).
Bhí macalla béice is guí gráin'
ag titim go tuibh ón bhfalla gruach
is samhail a athar 'na leac urláir.

"Bhuaileas, bhuaileas is bhuaileas é
is d'ól an ghé sú a chinn:
dá chloigeann dhein mé mias mhuc
's chuireas a shúile faoi chirc.
An chéad cheann ina ghliogar bhí -
ach briseadh an tarna ceann la crith
agus phreab aisti gríobh shicín."

"Tá an ghríobh fós im bhlaosc
am thraochadh agus am chrá -
cith doilís óm shrón anuas -
och, a lia, tabhair don síth!"
Dhiúltaíos é is thréig mé an áit.
chaitheas uaim mo chierd is mo stíl -
ní raibh im chroí ach smúr agus cáith,
bhí lár m'uchta ina ghrinneall garbh,
mé im lia nocht is mo othar marbh.
...

for Brendan Kennelly
1

Her eyes were coins of porter and her West
Limerick voice talked velvet in the house:
her hair was black as the glossy fireplace
wearing with grace her Sunday-night-dance best.
She cut the froth from glasses with knife
and hammered golden whiskies on the bar
and her mountainy body tripped the gentle
mechanism of verse: the minute interlock
of word and word began, the rhythm formed.
I sunk my hands into tradition
sifting the centuries for words. This quiet
excitement was not new: emotion challenged me
to make it sayable. This cliché came
at first, like matchsticks snapping from the world
of work: mánla, séimh, dubhfholtach, álainn, caoin:
they came like grey slabs of slate breaking from
an ancient quarry, mánla, séimh, dubhfholtach,
álainn, caoin, slowly vaulting down the dark
unused escarpments, mánla, séimh, dubhfholtach,
álainn, caoin, crashing on the cogs, splinters
like axeheads damaging the wheels, clogging
the intricate machine, mánla, séimh,
dubhfholtach, álainn, caoin. Then Pegasus
pulled up, the girth broke and I was flung back
on the gravel of Anglo-Saxon.
What was I doing with these foreign words?
I, the polisher of the complex clause,
wizard of grasses and warlock of birds,
midnight-oiled in the metric laws?
...

Ignorant, in the sense
she ate monotonous food
and thought the world was flat,
and pagan, in the sense
she knew the things that moved
at night were neither dogs nor cats
but púcas and darkfaced men,
she nevertheless had fierce pride.
But sentenced in the end
to eat thin diminishing porridge
in a stone-cold kitchen
she clenched her brittle hands
around a world
she could not understand.
I loved her from the day she died.
She was a summer dance at the crossroads.
She was a card game where a nose was broken.
She was a song that nobody sings.
She was a house ransacked by soldiers.
She was a language seldom spoken.
She was a child's purse, full of useless things.
...

Like a knife cutting a knife
his last plea for life
echoes joyfully in Camas.
An egg floats
like a navel
in the pickling-barrel;
before he sinks,
his smiling head
sees a delicate girl
up to her elbows
in a tub of blood
while the avalanche
of his offal steams
among the snapping dogs
and mud
and porksteaks
coil in basins
like bright snakes
and buckets of boiling water hiss
to soften his bristles
for the blade.
I kick his golden bladder
in the air.
It lands like a moon
among the damsons.
Like a knife cutting a knife
his last plea for life
echoes joyfully in Camas.
...

I look along the valley of my gun.
An otter examines the air,
silver in the sun.
I have hunted him for many days.
I will not kill him where he stands;
double death in the breeches
demands he be given a chance.
I take stock, warm metal in my hands.
Will he swim upstream,
water from his nose a bright arrowhead?
Will he swim downstream
coiling in bubbles to the riverbed?
Will he swim cross-stream,
where an ash tree's roots are naked?
There is a chance he will swim towards me.
Will he take it?
...

Maybe morning lightens over
the coldest time in all the day,
but not for you. A bird's hover,
seabird, blackbird, or bird of prey,
was rain, or death, or lost cattle.
The day's warning, like red plovers
so etched and small the clouded sky,
was book to you, and true bible.
You died in utter loneliness,
your acres left to the childless.
You never saw the animals
of God, and the flower under
your feet; and the trees change a leaf;
and the red fur of a fox on
a quiet evening; and the long
birches falling down the hillside.
...

V

In Hammer Glen there's blood
in milk and a goose complains
on an empty hearth: a cat
swells in the churn, dead and full.
A flitch of bacon hangs itself
from rafters: a tongs stands like a bull.
My first trip to the house of thatch -

home of the Slaughter Lad
who condemned his own kind -
a hammer-vision showed him how
to escape the bird-lime.
I was called, no scalpel packed.
I threw a saddle on the dark
and galloped to the threshold of his mind.

Knots of briars slid from their nests,
each poisoned eye a blackberry.
I was pelted with a shower of fruit
from a bare blackthorn tree.
I heard the chick sing in the egg,
and the straw in the mattress grew,
the raspberry cried in the jam.

But I came safe from the shade
out of the battle-noise gales
until I reached Slaughter Lad's
and saw there under the moon's eye
a hedgehog milking a jack snipe,
a goat beating a drum in the sky -
I had crossed over the borders of the live.

I walked into his head -
no knife, no healing herb -
helix of a snail's shell,
into a complex corridor.
Prayers of hate, echoes of roars
fell from the faceted walls -
his father's face was carved on the floor.

"I hit him hit him hit him again -
the goose drank the juice of this brain,
I made a pigtrough from his skull
and put his eyes under a hen.
One did not hatch at all
the other shook and cracked.
Out walked a chicken's claw."

"The claw still sticks in me -
it tortures and exhausts:
contrition runs from my nose,
surgeon, give me peace."
I refused. And left the place.
I threw away all style and craft,
my heart was ash and chaff,
my soul was a gravel bed -
a naked surgeon and my patient dead.
...