Some more poetry
Sep. 12th, 2012 10:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
underthewillowsSomething a little less depressing, though - it is to be hoped - still germane to the thread I seem to be developing (which, God between us and all harm, looks like it's turning into "Come Out, Ye Black and Tans" and other Greatest Hits of the Wolfe Tones' Discography, though that is not the intent).
Michael Hartnett (1941-1999), a poet who decided in 1975 to write only in Irish from then on and did so for ten years until returning to English-language work in 1985.
from "A Farewell to English"
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?
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?
Editor's Note: dubhfholtach = blacktressed álainn = beautiful mánla, séimh, caoin = words whose meaning approximates to the English adjectives graceful, gentle
My dictionary renders "mánla" as "gentle, pleasant"; "séimh" as "pleasant, gracious"; "caoin" as "gentle". There's another word he could have used, "caoimh", which again translates out something as "gentle, kind"; "caoimhiúil" means "kind, tactful, prudent" and as Caoimhe (for the feminine name)/Caoimhín (for the masculine, Anglicé as Kevin) it has something of the savour of "gentle, kind, pleasant, comely".
My own sense of "mánla" involves the sense of "even-handedness" as "steady hands" and so "gentle (in touching)" and "séímh", too, has an echo or shadow or undercurrent of "steadiness, evenness, level" so these adjectives have a tactile and sensuous resonance, not just as a description of an emotional or psychic attitude. This is not, I hasten to add, any kind of 'official' definition, just a nuance that I experience from the words.
Very poor approximation of phonetic pronunciation guide:
Mánla - mawn-law
Séimh - shave
Dubhfholtach - doo-ull-tock
Álainn - awe-ling (or awe-linn, for those parts where the local pronunciation doesn't slap a 'ng' sound onto the terminal 'nn')
Caoin - queen
And dammit, Mick, but yerself has the perfect encapsulation of what I was raiméising on about in the previous posts and comments on same; lave it to the poets, boys, they're the lads for the expression!
Death of an Irishwoman
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.
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.
