Daily Book Excerpt: Poetry
Next book on the shelf is The Penguin Book of Contemporary Irish Poetry
“His is a universe of aftermaths, hauntings and returns, in which even God . . . dreams of becoming flesh again.” – Fintan O’Toole on Harry Clifton
A well-traveled man (he has lived and worked in Africa, Asia, and all over Europe), Harry Clifton was born in Dublin in 1952, went to UCD (where he is now a professor). He lived in Thailand (working as an aid administrator) for the 1980s, and all along has published volumes of poetry. His poems are long and detailed, and you travel along with him. India, Africa, Thailand … His poems are very personal, yearning poems, yearning for home, or for someone specific, as Fintan O’Toole observed. He is married to author Deirdre Madden, whose book Molly Fox’s Birthday has received rave reviews, and it’s high up on my To-Be-Read list. A novel about a famous Irish actress? I’m in. He has published prose books as well, about his travels. He has lived and worked in the United States as well, with positions as International Fellow at Iowa University, and was also poet-in-residence at the Frost Place. His collection of poems, Secular Eden won the Patrick Kavanagh Award, as well as the Irish Times Poetry Now award in 2008.
While so much of his poetry takes place in far-off lands, (or, lands that are not Ireland) that is part of the Irish exile experience, and his is a very Irish voice.
Here’s a poem of his I love. For obvious reasons. “Eccles Street” is in Dublin, made famous by James Joyce as the home address of Leopold and Molly Bloom in Ulysses. 1982 was the 100th anniversary of James Joyce’s birth.
Eccles Street, Bloomsday, 1982
Onesided, stripped of its ghosts,
The half that was left of Eccles Street
Stood empty, on that day of days
My own unconscious feet
Would carry me through
To a blind date, or a rendezvous.
Invisible pressure, invisible heat
Laid down the blue coordinates
Of a Hellenic city
From Phoenix Park to the Merrion Gates,
Where disconnected, at one remove
From wisdom, or eternal love,
A million citizens worked, ate meals,
Or dreamt a moment of Joyce,
And felt themselves wholly real,
The equals of fate, the masters of choice,
As I did too, on Eccles Street,
Before ever you and I could meet
In the larger scheme … Coincidence
Rules invisibly, the casual date
Upstaged by Greek infinities
Moving among us like common sense,
Imprisoning, setting me free
To dream and circumambulate
In a myth too young to be formed.
I would built it myself, from the ruined door
Of Bella Cohen’s bawdyhouse,
From other basements, other whores
Unbuttoning their blouses
Forever, while traffic swarmed
And the lights outside turned green and red
On shifting planes of reality –
And you, a final student, read
Of Joyce in the National Library,
Or stood in the crowd, my love unseen,
At the unveiling in Stephen’s Green.
An hour went by, on Eccles Street –
Two drunks, at ease in the Mater portals,
Swigged, and sang Republican songs.
I watched a line of taxis wait
And saw where real grass had sprung
Through mythic pavements, already immortal,
Green as life, and unresearched.
I had come, only that morning,
From Ringsend docks, and Sandymount Church,
Along the arc of odyssey,
With my invisible yearning
To break the circle, set myself free,
As you had yours, until one day
In the prefigured city,
Where every step is a step of fate
And recognition comes only later,
We could meet, you and I,
Weigh anchor at last, and go away.
