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Three Poems Poetry |
Oaxaca
I
It would not be right to say I was homeless for most of my life but one way or another I never had a home of my own until when I was 62 I built a small single-storey dwelling at the foot of a mountain on the furthermost western coast of Ireland on the furthermost western coast of Europe. I had been sleeping alone in it for three weeks when on a showery Saturday June afternoon a man in a 1994 beat-up Mercedes-Benz drove up the sheep track with the driver’s window rolled down and a smile in his eyes. He swung the car round, switched off the ignition and got out. He held a bundle of cloth under his arm which he took in his two hands and threw at me. I caught it. It was a Mexican wrap the size of a king-size bed-spread. I recognised it immediately as being the cover of the large sofa in his own home in the south-east and I remembered him telling me years ago how he had bought it in Oaxaca when he had travelled to Oaxaca to his friend Francisco’s wedding. ‘But’ I remonstrated ‘you can’t…’ He stopped me: ‘A gift from my home to your home.’ He lay down to rest for an hour after his six-hour car journey and I spread the Oaxaca wrap over the armchair the far side of the fireplace and tucked it in at the sides and spread it so that it hung evenly at each side, at the back and at the front so that its golden tassels hung in a straight line a centimetre above the floor-line. I sat down opposite it and stared at its earth-colours; at its wide, beaded stripes of earth colours; red, orange, green, yellow, blue, all culminating in those golden tassels grazing the newly-laid satin-varnished semi-oak floor. I stared in amazement at it.
II
Is not that the chair you sit in?
No, that is the chair I look at.
Anxiouser and anxiouser I get
As the years chop past;
Nothing brings peace,
Nothing contentment
Except the spectacle of that chair
The far side of the fireplace
Empty, imperviously empty.
Is not that the chair you sit in?
No, that is the chair I look at.
Chair flowering with emptiness,
Chair brimful of magnanimity,
Its multi-coloured selflessness
Hanging loose with threads
Of affection, loyalty, generosity
Than which there is no more remedial force
In the face of ignorance and spite.
Is not that the chair you sit in?
No, that is the chair I look at.
When we go, our descendants strip
Our chairs of their covers,
Oblivious of their origins,
Forgetful of their colours.
My Oaxaca wrap will be
Wrapped round me in the ground,
Nobody knowing a thing about me.
Is not that the chair you sit in?
No, that is the chair I look at.
Self-Pity
I am Self-Pity - the most red-hot woman in Ireland.
Younger than time, older than eternity.
All raddle, all lacquer, all scent.
Great is my glory
I who can turn a man into a 24/7 ghost of himself.
I am Self-Pity - the Queen Bee of the Irish Sea.
I have only to squint at a half-decent man
To make him hold his heads in his hands,
Make him put his fist through a pane of glass,
Make him stamp his feet.
I am Self-Pity - the Black Madonna of Ireland.
Great was my education and great my family.
I who with my fabulous loneliness,
Demanding total, exclusive, absolute love,
Reduced a half-decent man to smithereens.
I am Self-Pity – the most red-hot woman in Ireland.
Younger than time, older than eternity.
All raddle, all lacquer, all scent.
Great is my glory.
I who can turn a man into a 24/7 ghost of himself.
A Man Besotted by his Batch
In the SPAR supermarket on Merrion Row
Opposite O’Donoghue’s public house,
When I presented my basket at the checkout
To my dismay it was taken
Not by one of the many Polish girls manning the checkouts
But by a short, stocky, curly, red-headed male Dubliner
Screeching to himself ‘The Auld Triangle’
By Brendan Behan:
And the auld triangle
Goes jingle jangle
All along the banks
Of the Royal Canal.
He was all bonhomie but not excessively.
He commented on my every item
But when I handed him
My Batch Loaf of Bread
He seized-up, swooned, swayed, roared:
“Jasus!” he roared “a Batch!”
He continued as if performing an aria in the Messiah
“When I was in Australia – and don’t get me wrong –
I loved it in Australia – every Dublin man
Should spend time in Australia -
But the one thing I missed was my Batch.
After seven years in Perth – Jasus!
You should see the women in Perth! -
When I came home to Dublin
The first thing I did was to go out
And buy myself a Batch
And I came back with my batch
And I smeared two slices with dollops of butter
And I made one gorgeous ham sandwich.
The women of Perth, O Jasus, forgive me,
But there’s nothing – not even a Perth woman –
To beat a Batch. Thank you, sir. Have a good day.”