Notes on My Contemporaries
1 The Poet Down
for Patrick Kavanagh
He sits between the doctor and the law.
Neither can help. Barbiturate in paw
one, whiskey in paw two, a dying man:
the poet down, and his fell caravan.
They laugh and they mistake the lash that lurks
in his tongue for the honey of his works.
The poet is at bay, the hounds baying,
dig his grave with careful kindness, saying:
'Another whiskey, and make it a large one!'
Priests within, acolytes at the margin
the red impaled bull's roar must fascinate —
they love the dead, the living man they hate.
They were designing monuments — in case —
and making furtive sketches of his face,
and he could hear, above their straining laughs,
the rustling foolscap of their epitaphs.
2 The Poet as Mastercraftsman
for Thomas Kinsella
Eras do not end when great poets die,
for poetry is not whole, it is where man
chose mountains to conform, to carve his own
face among the Gothic richness and the sky,
and the gargoyles, and the lesser tradesmen.
Praise from the apprentice is always shown
in miniatures of a similar stone.
I saw the master in his human guise
open doors to let me in, and rhythm out.
He smiled and entertained into the night.
I was aware of work undone. His eyes,
like owls', warned images from the room.
Under the stairs the muse was crying; shields
clashed in the kitchen and the war drum's boom,
men in celtic war dress entered from the right.
I left, my conversation put to rout.
To poets peace poetry never yields.
3 The Poet as Black Sheep
for Paul Durcan
I have seen him dine
in middle-class surroundings,
his manners refined,
as his family around him
talk about nothing,
one of their favourite theses.
I have seen him lying
between the street and pavement,
atoning, dying
for their sins, the fittest payment
he can make for them,
to get drunk and go to pieces.
On his father's face
in sparse lines etched out by ice,
the puritan race
has come to its zenith of grey spite,
its climax of hate,
its essence of frigidity.
Let the bourgeoisie beware,
who could not control his head
and kept it in their care
until the brain bled:
this head is a poet's head,
this head holds a galaxy.
4 The Person as Dreamer: We Talk about the Future
for Des Healy
It has to be a hill,
high, of course, and twilit.
There have to be some birds,
all sadly audible:
a necessary haze,
and small wristlets of rain,
yes, and a tremendous
air of satisfaction.
Both of us will be old
and both our wives, of course,
have died, young, and tragic.
And all our children have
gone their far ways, estranged,
or else not begotten.
We have been through a war,
been hungry, and heroes:
and here we are now, calm,
fed, and reminiscent.
The hills are old, silent:
our pipe-smoke rises up.
We have come a long way . . . .
5 The Poet Dreams and Resolves
for Macdara Woods
To be alone, and not to be lonely,
to have time to myself, and not be bored;
to live in some suburban house, beside
the mountains, with an adequate supply
of stout and spirits (or of stout only),
and some cigarettes, and writing paper,
and a little cheap food, and a small hoard
of necessary books, where I could write
in dark as monks did, with only blue sky
as interference, wind as soul-reaper.
But what would I do if on certain nights
I was mad in heat for the public lights?
I would chain myself to a living tree
to foil the Sirens of the distant city.
Copyright Credit: Michael Hartnett, "Notes on My Contemporaries" from Selected & New Poems. Copyright © 1994 by Michael Hartnett. Reprinted by permission of The Gallery Press.
Source: Selected & New Poems (Wake Forest University Press, 1994)