Oct 29
A POET'S WORK
"Oh my God is...that the time!
12 o'clock and not
a poem in the house written!
quick! wash those adjectives!
quick! bathe those verbs!
feed those nouns!
have you adverbs gone back to bed?
come on 'Smile!'
like a simile!
noooo! don't
wear the same metaphors
you wore yesterday
aghhhhhhhhhhhhh!
and so with a little playful
smack on its btm
the poem is sent
out into the world.
'See ya...be good'
a poet's work
is never ever
done!"
*
As a child I was sick and poorly and often missed school so that I found myself at home with me Ma and doing all the Ma things that she had to do....I followed her about the house helping out and seeing what an amazing myriad of things she had to do in order to make our life run like effortless clockwork only I found out it wasn't so effortless.
"Dónall son....!" she'd yell from the bedroom amidst sweeping and bed changing and making....will you cut the potatoes for the chips love!" And from bedroom to kitchen we would sing all the Ray Charles we knew.
She would always say the same thing like a little work mantra...
"Jaysus...oh Holy Jaysus....12 o'clock and not a child in the house washed!" And a whole litany of things yet to do. These were like well worn beautiful pebbles being rounded and smoothed in a stream of language....I loved hearing them even for the thousand time! So I cross pollinated all her mad cap hell for leather sayings into this making of poems poem to get the same urgency for tidying up my brain and getting the words washed and up and out making signs upon a page so that other brains could decipher my thoughts.
On one of these being my mother days I was watching "Telefís Scoile" RTE's educational prog. when up popped poet Brendan Kennelly. Now despite only starting my secondary education I was reading all around me so I was reading the Leaving Cert. poems as well. I was having a hard time with Hopkins but then Brendan started to recite The Windhover in his lovely Kerry accent and I at once understood it as the music of his mouth brought the words to life in glorious sound that I at once fell in love with and it splashed against my mind like a wave breaking over the headland that was my tiny mind. It was an epiphany.
Years years later I met Brendan in a pub having a quiet pint by himself at the bar and I went up to him to tell him of this moment made glorious for me by him and Hopkins. So he started to recite it for me again after all this time.
"I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin,"
And I said the next bit.....
"dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding;
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! "
And then he...
"then off, off forth on swing,"
And we traded lines until we had completed the Hopkins.
And then he said: "Well wil ya...have a pint?"
And I said: "I will...so I will!"
And then he said he loved my CRAZY LONELINESS HIJACKS MEMORY OF A BEAUTIFUL GIRL. And I said: "What! Ya still remember that!" And he said:" 'deed I do!" And so I recited it for him. It was so I felt I had come into my poethood!
"Oh my God is...that the time!
12 o'clock and not
a poem in the house written!
quick! wash those adjectives!
quick! bathe those verbs!
feed those nouns!
have you adverbs gone back to bed?
come on 'Smile!'
like a simile!
noooo! don't
wear the same metaphors
you wore yesterday
aghhhhhhhhhhhhh!
and so with a little playful
smack on its btm
the poem is sent
out into the world.
'See ya...be good'
a poet's work
is never ever
done!"
*
As a child I was sick and poorly and often missed school so that I found myself at home with me Ma and doing all the Ma things that she had to do....I followed her about the house helping out and seeing what an amazing myriad of things she had to do in order to make our life run like effortless clockwork only I found out it wasn't so effortless.
"Dónall son....!" she'd yell from the bedroom amidst sweeping and bed changing and making....will you cut the potatoes for the chips love!" And from bedroom to kitchen we would sing all the Ray Charles we knew.
She would always say the same thing like a little work mantra...
"Jaysus...oh Holy Jaysus....12 o'clock and not a child in the house washed!" And a whole litany of things yet to do. These were like well worn beautiful pebbles being rounded and smoothed in a stream of language....I loved hearing them even for the thousand time! So I cross pollinated all her mad cap hell for leather sayings into this making of poems poem to get the same urgency for tidying up my brain and getting the words washed and up and out making signs upon a page so that other brains could decipher my thoughts.
On one of these being my mother days I was watching "Telefís Scoile" RTE's educational prog. when up popped poet Brendan Kennelly. Now despite only starting my secondary education I was reading all around me so I was reading the Leaving Cert. poems as well. I was having a hard time with Hopkins but then Brendan started to recite The Windhover in his lovely Kerry accent and I at once understood it as the music of his mouth brought the words to life in glorious sound that I at once fell in love with and it splashed against my mind like a wave breaking over the headland that was my tiny mind. It was an epiphany.
Years years later I met Brendan in a pub having a quiet pint by himself at the bar and I went up to him to tell him of this moment made glorious for me by him and Hopkins. So he started to recite it for me again after all this time.
"I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin,"
And I said the next bit.....
"dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding;
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! "
And then he...
"then off, off forth on swing,"
And we traded lines until we had completed the Hopkins.
And then he said: "Well wil ya...have a pint?"
And I said: "I will...so I will!"
And then he said he loved my CRAZY LONELINESS HIJACKS MEMORY OF A BEAUTIFUL GIRL. And I said: "What! Ya still remember that!" And he said:" 'deed I do!" And so I recited it for him. It was so I felt I had come into my poethood!
