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<\/a><\/p>\n\nA 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<\/i> 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<\/i> won the Patrick Kavanagh Award, as well as the Irish Times<\/i> Poetry Now award in 2008. <\/p>\n
While so much of his poetry takes place in far-off lands, (or, lands that are not<\/i> Ireland) that is part of the Irish exile experience, and his is a very Irish voice. <\/p>\n
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<\/i>. 1982 was the 100th anniversary of James Joyce’s birth. <\/p>\n
Eccles Street, Bloomsday, 1982<\/big><\/p>\n
Onesided, stripped of its ghosts,
\nThe half that was left of Eccles Street
\nStood empty, on that day of days
\nMy own unconscious feet
\nWould carry me through
\nTo a blind date, or a rendezvous.<\/p>\n
Invisible pressure, invisible heat
\nLaid down the blue coordinates
\nOf a Hellenic city
\nFrom Phoenix Park to the Merrion Gates,
\nWhere disconnected, at one remove
\nFrom wisdom, or eternal love,<\/p>\n
A million citizens worked, ate meals,
\nOr dreamt a moment of Joyce,
\nAnd felt themselves wholly real,
\nThe equals of fate, the masters of choice,
\nAs I did too, on Eccles Street,
\nBefore ever you and I could meet<\/p>\n
In the larger scheme … Coincidence
\nRules invisibly, the casual date
\nUpstaged by Greek infinities
\nMoving among us like common sense,
\nImprisoning, setting me free
\nTo dream and circumambulate<\/p>\n
In a myth too young to be formed.
\nI would built it myself, from the ruined door
\nOf Bella Cohen’s bawdyhouse,
\nFrom other basements, other whores
\nUnbuttoning their blouses
\nForever, while traffic swarmed <\/p>\n
And the lights outside turned green and red
\nOn shifting planes of reality –
\nAnd you, a final student, read
\nOf Joyce in the National Library,
\nOr stood in the crowd, my love unseen,
\nAt the unveiling in Stephen’s Green.<\/p>\n
An hour went by, on Eccles Street –
\nTwo drunks, at ease in the Mater portals,
\nSwigged, and sang Republican songs.
\nI watched a line of taxis wait
\nAnd saw where real grass had sprung
\nThrough mythic pavements, already immortal,<\/p>\n
Green as life, and unresearched.
\nI had come, only that morning,
\nFrom Ringsend docks, and Sandymount Church,
\nAlong the arc of odyssey,
\nWith my invisible yearning
\nTo break the circle, set myself free,<\/p>\n
As you had yours, until one day
\nIn the prefigured city,
\nWhere every step is a step of fate
\nAnd recognition comes only later,
\nWe could meet, you and I,
\nWeigh anchor at last, and go away.<\/p>\n
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<\/i>, edited by Peter Fallon & Derek Mahon. <\/p>\n