Here in the funhouse

Here in the funhouse, boys and girls avoid the malignant trapdoors, obey anticipatory warnings; be aware of hidden, spiky mines, floating on lines, under the deep and dark blue sea. I loved you, and you liked that, but the gap between like and love is a river without a bridge: nothing, nothing at all can get you across. You knew, yet now this blank silence, consciously intended, is killing me. Well, it's a hard and cruel way to reject a lover, never mind if you actually dislike him; it's such a passive and easy way out -- so very cold. Women have hurt and bruised me so many times: well, never mind, I have done the same, I expect, along with a failure to show respect: I am so sorry, sometimes. It's only now I begin to understand. I have lived with not a few and made love with many more, but, surely, that is not the point. They used to be looking at me and I used to be looking at them as well and the electricity was crack-crack-crack. But that's all gone. Women's eyes pass over me now. They couldn't be bothered. But here is me still looking. I like most women -- and my attention, my intention is admiring, relaxed and cool. I have never been a fool. Compliments, smiles, a dance, the beginnings of a new romance, are infinitely more important than Wars and Governments and Kings: real life consists of simple things.

Damaged in Transit

When things start to go wrong 
panic rises, with a tightness 
in your chest, with a lightness 
in your head. Time seems long. 
Dull colours, bled, take on a sharper edge, 
but this, of course, is an illusion. 
It adds to your sense of confusion 
as your life creeps out on a ledge. 
Breathe deep, you have been here before: 
idiot, risk-taker, chancer, 
laughing moonlight dancer. 
I don't ... 
I don't believe I can take any more. 
I can't go on. I must go on. 
This is the end. This is the 
End: No, this is 
the last beginning.

The Summer of 1914

The summer of nineteen-fourteen 
was made idyllic 
through the prism of memory: 

There were images of a lazy purling stream 
meandering through the peaceful village 
under a buzz of bees and hummingbird wings; 
of high teas with strawberry and cream, 
of respectful peasants at their tillage, 
of order and stability in all things. 

Poof! It was nothing of the sort. 
One can objectively report 
and the diarists of the time will openly confess 
that the world was already in a mess 
for quite some time before ... 
ready and willing to go to war! 

The apogee of pride and prosperity 
reached a peak in about eighteen eighty six 
at home, and in farflung British dominions; 
the Empire commenced its slide downhill 
with the Second Irish Home Rule Bill; 
and Victorian gentlemen, with asperity, 
were wont, ever afterwards, to fix 
that date in their opinions. 

By mathematical extraction 
(learned at school as subtraction) 
there are twenty-eight years left adrift 
between 1886 and 1914; 
and, as can be readily foreseen, 
this will allow all blame to shift 
for decline and contamination 
on that hapless generation. 

Conscience made brief appearances 
and (inevitable) disappearances 
as the ancient ruling classes 
gave ground to the growling masses. 
Under brave Parnell, until he fell, 
(hounded to his death by his own countrymen, I might add, 
Irish shoneens attack only a wounded lion, bedad!!) 
the Irish set out to leave the UK, 
and it's fair to say 
this was not the first nor last temptation 
to do so by this ancient nation. 
(Let's leave it at that: today, at least, 
we are five-sixths OK. Up the Republic!!) 

But in Britain at the time, what was going on? 
Even today, it's not easy to say: 
"I am convinced" was being replaced by "I think, I feel". 
The bedrock the Empire was born upon 
was slowly being whittled away: 
taken for granted, it was not quite real. 
Extending the benefits of English civilization 
was a minor not major consideration; 
extracting profits was no longer the aim, 
so what was the point of the game? 
Power and pride, perhaps, 
and in the event of a lapse 
overseas employment for wayward sons 
and a chance to try out new guns. 

Whatever happens we have got 
The Maxim Gun, and they have not. 


Don't you bloody dare rebel!! 
We'll send you to hell 
with shot and shell!! 

After the Crimean ( 1856-58 ) disaster, 
slowly, and then faster and faster, 
the despised but tough little British Army 
trained on rebellious natives. 
They were ever victorious 
happy and glorious 
in India (1857) and China (1860), 
in Ethiopia (1867) and Zululand (1879) 
and ever and always 
on the wild and woolly Afghan frontier. 

So when the Boers came along, 
that would be South Africa 1899, 
they thought there'd be nothing to it. 
Well, they lived to rue it. 
The Boers -- Dutch white settlers -- 
initially kicked them in the ass 
and the world stood up and said ... Yesss!!! 
At last it has come to pass. 
Arrogance has met its match. 

Of course, they went on to win in the end, 
but only after many a humiliating defeat, 
dealt out, to malicious glee, by "European" opponents 
for a change; but when you think of the range 
and consider the various components 
of this war -- the barbed wire, the machine guns, 
the concrete blockhouses, the concentration camps, 
all the features that would so soon repeat 
with ruthless exponential brutality, 
a new twentieth-century reality. 

But this time in Europe. 

Britain "won" the First World War 
at least until Hitler came along; 
then they had to fight the Second Half 
of the extended German War as well, 
for which I confess, one can do no less 
than admire them. They stood up 
when the rest of the world stood down. 
Including America. 

So that was the final end, 
in victory, mind you, of the farflung British Empire. 
The eccentric awkward island remains 
free and independent to this day. 
After a certain delay 
most of the red and the pink bits on the map 
have faded and gone away. 
But who can say 
that this is a bad thing? 

Is there a lesson for our American cousins? 
Damn right, there is. It's very late at night, 
but what do you think I'm writing for? 
Regard this poem as a metaphor. 
I know you don't like us to call you "Yanks"; 
No, thanks! And I don't want to seem to attack 
Amerkuh (you can be so-o-o sensitive!!). So Iraq 
and the Idiot and his Cronies on this occasion 
will be airbrushed out of the equation. 
A poet can talk and he sometimes sings. 
This time I'm not singing but talking. 
I think, on the whole, you should be walking 
Home. Leave it. You sure as hell don't need it. 
The British found out the hard way 
that tyranny, which is what Empire is, 
does not befit a free people at home. 

It hurts the people at home 
just as much as the "natives" overseas. 
Much more, in some ways. 

You have your own history of defiance, 
real enough at the time, now Disneyfied 
and unfortunately ill-remembered, 
turned into mush marshmallow. 
Geo Washington and the cherry tree! 
But a Republic is not an Empire, 
not if the citizens remain vigilant. 
Avoid it like poison. Keep the soldiers home. 
Do not become another Rome.

My Own Mata Hari

Last night I saw you clearly, for the first time, with all your untruths exposed, with all the explanations swept away, with all the lies stripped down. For a year you have been using me, pretending to love me, pretending to be cheating on your dimwit husband who now turns out not to be your husband at all, instead, your political controller. Now you say your child is in danger (which I believe) and you beg me, tearfully, to help you because I am the "only friend" you have in spite of all the lies, in spite of all the deception, not to mention the fake orgasms. And I think it is on this latter ground that my equivocal heart closes down on you. You can lie. You can lie. But how could you lie about that? Women do this all the time, you say. Maybe so. But you? ----------------------- Ich weiss nicht was Ich werden will .... People want love Instead they kill.

When the Big Mister D Comes Calling

We were told to stay off the booze and to run five miles across the feckin fields when we had, as it were, the time. Everyone snorted and fell over laughing, and then Dinny ups and says, Are we to wear our Wellington boots, sorr? to the snippy runt (it rhymes) come down from Belfast. He looked pinched and peeved, having to deal with us rustics, but he'd brought us guns. Nice guns, too. Armalites, greased-up, new. We were better tooled-up than the sad sallow boys in the fearful British Army (you can take that both ways). They were just walking targets, doing useless patrols. We'd do a ping most days, shoot one, let them drag the body home and think and brood about it. They took it out on the locals which was exactly what we wanted them to do: safe houses, money, food, they all came pouring in. That's when we thought we were winning the war. We were doing grand in East Tyrone, but the cities were a different story. They started picking us off one by one: dawn raids, roadblocks, security checks; all the technology brought to bear. We were driven into the hills and woods like the clansmen five hundred years before. We lost the M-60 that way. Some young lads, recent recruits, seething with frustration, raced through the town with the gun set up on a flatbed truck and shot the hell out of the local police station. The SAS were waiting and shot the lot of them dead, even shot them after they were dead (to make sure, like) there in the parking lot in front of the church. Cartridges like peanut shells everywhere you walked. That's when I went to America, after the cops beat up my little brother, hassled my mother in the street, and swore I would never be captured alive. We had lost, as they say, the initiative. That's why the "Peace Process" was grudgingly welcomed. We were losing. It's that simple. Nobody will admit it to this day: "IRA - the Undefeated Army" --- (that was supposed to be us) was barely functional, nearly licked, and mostly on the run. I was scared of my life in New York -- Jayzus, you think Norn Iron is dangerous? Try Brooklyn. I was bartending, what else do Irish illegals do (construction)? when the word came through it was safe to come home. It is never safe to come home, not if your home is my home: it's been on the frontline for about four hundred years, and I don't want my own kids (if and when I have them) to go through the same thing. Everyone does their little bit, gallantly unmeasured, for Mother Ireland. Do chum Gloire De agus Onora na hEireann* but the time slides around when you have to think about doing a little something for the nerve-wracked jangling creature that dear old Mother Ireland has made of you. ----------------------------------------- * For the Glory of God and the honour of Ireland NB - this poem is NOT autobiographical. I get into a lot of trouble for my weirdly accurate imagination. I would rather not be strip-searched (again) on any future visit to Fortress America. As if I even want to go there ....

terrorists on a coffee break

We were told to stay off the booze and to run five miles across the feckin fields when we had, as it were, the time. Everyone snorted and fell over laughing, and then Dinny ups and says, Are we to wear our Wellington boots, sorr? to the snippy runt (it rhymes) come down from Belfast. He looked pinched and peeved, having to deal with us rustics, but he'd brought us guns. Nice guns, too. Armalites, greased-up, new. We were better tooled-up than the sad sallow boys in the fearful British Army (you can take that both ways). They were just walking targets, doing useless patrols. We'd do a ping most days, shoot one, let them drag the body home and think and brood about it. They took it out on the locals which was exactly what we wanted them to do: safe houses, money, food, they all came pouring in. That's when we thought we were winning the war. We were doing grand in East Tyrone, but the cities were a different story. They started picking us off one by one: dawn raids, roadblocks, security checks; all the technology brought to bear. We were driven into the hills and woods like the clansmen five hundred years before. We lost the M-60 that way. Some young lads, recent recruits, seething with frustration, raced through the town with the gun set up on a flatbed truck and shot the hell out of the local police station. The SAS were waiting and shot the lot of them dead, even shot them after they were dead (to make sure, like) there in the parking lot in front of the church. Cartridges like peanut shells everywhere you walked. That's when I went to America, after the cops beat up my little brother, hassled my mother in the street, and swore I would never be captured alive. We had lost, as they say, the initiative. That's why the "Peace Process" was grudgingly welcomed. We were losing. It's that simple. Nobody will admit it to this day: "IRA - the Undefeated Army" --- (that was supposed to be us) was barely functional, nearly licked, and mostly on the run. I was scared of my life in New York -- Jayzus, you think Norn Iron is dangerous? Try Brooklyn. I was bartending, what else do Irish illegals do (construction)? when the word came through it was safe to come home. It is never safe to come home, not if your home is my home: it's been on the frontline for about four hundred years, and I don't want my own kids (if and when I have them) to go through the same thing. Everyone does their little bit, gallantly unmeasured, for Mother Ireland. Do chum Gloire De agus Onora na hEireann* but the time slides around when you have to think about doing a little something for the nerve-wracked jangling creature that dear old Mother Ireland has made of you. ----------------------------------------- * For the Glory of God and the honour of Ireland NB - this poem is NOT autobiographical. I get into a lot of trouble for my weirdly accurate imagination. I would rather not be strip-searched (again) on any future visit to Fortress America. As if I even want to go there ....

terrorism

Right down through me and you was like brothers, no others never came near to us, they had a fear of us. And I have to say that came in useful. The ranchers knew we were few and first warned us, then suborned us. And I have to say I was surprised. The shootings began, we stayed, others ran. But the idea grew that we could fight too. And I have to say I was ready. It was so damn easy, the house, the yard, only one guard. We kicked in the door, shot him down on the floor. And I have to say it felt good. It felt so good we did it again and again and again and again with all the others. Get off our land until the Rangers came down with reward posters: Five Hundred Dollars for me, Two Hundred Fifty for Billy John Bob: and I believe he never forgave me for that. We never give a damn for the Rangers, it was the local farmers we was afraid of and with good reason. They'd turn in their parents for five dollars, a shot, and a bag of seeds. In the City of Chicago as the evening shadows fall I recall those days. We lost everything. The poor always lose in America, as everywhere else. It's just a fact. But I was glad I fought back in my young youth and shot a couple dozen rich bastards. That's something you can look back on in your old age with a sense of quiet pride: it was them that died and never grew old. Stealing land, grabbing food from the mouths of children; treating better men as slaves. A Remington in the hands of a steady man can soon change things around. I go to the grave of Billy John Bob. He worked on the streetcars, got drunk towards the end. I lay down wildflowers. He was my friend. I'll die in my time. I will never feel sorry.

Dubbalin Town

O, Dublin, sweet and slow,
I come and go
up and down your cobbled streets,
as the rain, insistent,
beats down upon the lights,
and throws an orange fuzzy sheen
over half-seen sights,
the places I have been.
So near and yet so far:
Grafton Street, Stephen’s Green,
the Coombe and Temple Bar,
the shadows on the Traitors’ Gate.
Crowds of loud young English
shout and laugh, then urinate,
without shame, here on the street,
beside the peagreen Liffey
(sweet Anna Livia Plurabelle);
ah well, at least they’re not in uniform,
and it's worse we’ve seen before,
insurrection, pestilence, famine, war:
such a fine collection of bullet holes
in our central city monuments.

So let the hen parties heave their guts out
on the raincold cobbles:
let them stagger home and say,
what a wild time we had in Dublin!
Let them come back in ten years or so,
with their fourth or fifth bloke,
and with all their kids in tow;
let them have another drink, a smoke,
perhaps they'll have some peace,
(for peace comes dropping slow)
and echo the words of the poet MacNeice:
This never was my town,
I was not born or bred
Nor schooled here and she will not
Have me alive or dead
But yet she holds my mind
With her seedy elegance,
With her gentle veils of rain
And all her ghosts that walk
And all that hide behind
Her Georgian facades -
The catcalls and the pain,
The glamour of her squalor,
The bravado of her talk.

Sweeney’s the chemist,
where Bloom forgot Molly’s lotion,
is still in Lincoln Place;
and so is the old post office
down on Westland Row:
O you naughty naughty boy!
I do not like that other world.
And please will you tell me
what perfume does your wife wear?
Bloom smell-sipped his glass of burgundy
at Davy Byrne’s, on Duke Street,
a disappointing place these days,
so gentrified. I well remember
how one of the old barmen
was kill’t telling me how Joyce, yer man,
would be writing away at the back table,
dat filthy buik, Allergies, or wha’ever.
Ah, would you fuck off, says I.
Yeh bleedin bowzy, says he,
I took yeh for a fuckin Yank.

Come to Amazing Tourist Dublin!
Stay at our three-and-a-half star hotels;
eat like a pig, drink like a fish,
and lumber along
our lazy languorous streets.

Buy things!

On your ambling aisy rambles
you can squint up the arses,
the cool marble behinds,
of female statues
at our staid and steady National Museum.
Bloom did, our wandering Jew,
so too can you.
No money, honey;
but even stone hearts slowly melt,
so smile, unbuckle your belt,
make a voluntary contribution!
Oops, sorry, Yanks,
no dollars, thanks,
there’s an exchange-rate
revolution: the … the ingratitude!
(but we were neutral in the Second War).
Hang on to your cash, you’ll need it!
Are ye jokin’ or wha’? indeed it
does seem strange, no proper answer
like a dropkick in the balls
from a weedy ballet dancer.

We still stack up the dead
next to my grandfathers,
maiden aunts, cousins and uncles,
in the wild sprawl of Glasnevin.
Poor poor Paddy Dignam!
(“No home is complete
without Plumtree’s Potted Meat”).
Poor dear betrayed Parnell.
O’Donovan Rossa.
O’Connell.
Collins.
Ah, Michael …
Macushla! … cut down at thirty-one,
our greatest chieftain since O’Neill!
Cut down, I might add,
by one of our own.
Why do we do this?
Ask Jonathan (Gulliver) Swift
who suggested, politely,
that the English should eat Irish babies,
help with the balance of payments,
and reduce the population.
England thought he was serious,
and so did some of the Irish.
“Where can I sell me baby, sorr?”
Well, without you, Michael,
we’d be prancing around the world
on British passports.

Yerra, Carolan!
Tabhair dom do lamh.*
Give us an oul’ song!

Up on the flinty North Side,
Drumcondra, Marino, Whitehall,
sits my old local, The Goose,
just there by Sion Hill;
I’d be away three years, maybe more,
then I'd stroll into the gaff,
and the lads’d say, where ya been?
Japan. O yeah? Me, I went to Benidorm,
two weeks with the new girlfriend,
fuckin magic! Right, it's my round,
then we’d talk and sing and laugh.
Sometimes An Taoiseach lounges in,
good old Bertie himself, backed up
by hard-looking thugs. “Yo!” says I,
“is it the Prime Minister or his bleedin twin?”
“Ah, Malachy!” says he, priding himself
on his memory for names, a head like tin.
“No,” says I, “isn’t it me myself?”
“O, Jayz, the astronomer … the geographer,
or was it the stamp collector?”
“B-b-b-bertie! You got it in one!”
After that, a pint, a good long chat,
here at “home” in Dublin North:
he may be the grand prime minister,
but he knows where his home is at.

On Bridge Street, down by the City Walls,
sits an ancient pub, the “Brazen Head”,
and many a time and oft have I lingered,
langered, within its stout-built chambers:
this is the oldest pub in Dublin, 1198.
About fifty yards away is the bridge,
the – ‘Atha Cliath’ – the Ford of the Hurdles
from which the city takes its name,
just a river crossing on the ‘Sli Cualann’,
one of the five ancient roads of Ireland,
the path from Tara to Glendalough.
That goes to explain the licence plates:
we are the citizens of “Baile Atha Cliath”,
and “Dubh-Linn”, which is also Irish,
is not where we live at all.

In the mean little streets near Christchurch,
winding and awkward to this day,
a government spy called Major Sirr
cornered the rebel Lord Fitzgerald,
and got himself stabbed for his pains.
Thirty-odd thousand died that year, 1798;
thousands more were transported
in creaking hulks to Australia,
a faraway prison for undesirables,
a new continent to slowly transform:
America was to come later.
God saved Ireland with America.
Not many long years before,
The Mad Dean of Saint Patrick’s,
(the cathedral looms just down the road)
that entrepreneur, that pamphleteer,
that purveyor of roasted Irish babies,
was laid at last to rest, his epitaph
fairly bounces off the wall:
Hic depositum est corpus
JONATHAN SWIFT S.T.D.
Huyus Ecclesiae Cathedralis
Decani
Ubi saeva indignatio
Ulterius
Cor lacerare nequit
Abi Viator
Et imitare, si poteris
Strenuum pro virili
Libertatis Vindicatorem **

God, it’s an old country,
but the weight comes down like a feather.
Nothing seems heavy, all drops down so lightly.
Freedom. Freedom, more than any other thing,
is central. You can go back through
all the old stories, the legends, the epics,
the Annals of the Four Masters, local histories,
you can listen to the voices of the rebels,
all those who fought and died,
four hundred, two hundred, one hundred years ago,
right on down to recent times,
and you sense this will never change,
you know this will never change.

All the tubby little accountants,
the cross-looking women in large automobiles,
the fierce young sporting men,
the giggling schoolgirls,
the languid poets and philosophers,
the businessmen in suits,
the regulars in the pubs,
the girl secretaries,
the skangers and headbangers,
the bus drivers,
the radio and TV executives,
the Nigerians, the Chinese,
the actors, the musicians,
the polite young Poles,
the flower sellers,
the asylum seekers,
the Spanish students

can gather in the streets, burn down embassies.

Ancient city of an ancient land,
ringed right round by the ocean sea;
great powers may rise and fall around us,
and do as they will, just leave us be.

-------------------------------------------
Brief notes:

- “Dublin” by Louis MacNeice

-- Turlough O’Carolan, blind harper (1670-1738). The title of this composition is “Give Me Your Hand” in English.

-- Bertie Ahern, Irish PM (An Taoiseach – The Leader)

-- The Brazen Head Pub homepage

-- “Dubh-Linn” translates as Black-Pool, the remains of which (now drained) can be seen behind Dublin Castle.

-- Swift’s epitaph, translated from the Latin by W.B. Yeats:

Swift has sailed into his rest.
Savage indignation there
cannot lacerate his breast.
Imitate him if you dare,
world-besotted traveller.
He served human liberty.




-- Annals of the Four Masters Irish chronicles, ca. 2000 BC - 1616 AD.

The Dark Ungentle Art of Murder

Love and death, possessing and killing,
Are the dark foundations of the human soul.
-- Emile Zola

O happy snappy little prole
Sign yourself upon the dole.
Go out on Friday, Saturday night,
And get yourself into a fight.
Smash the bloke who spills your drink,
Go with feelings, never think.
A pint glass is the warrior’s cup,
So chase the girls and knock ‘em up.
Social Services, police?
Wind ‘em up and never cease.
Football’s the modern field of battle,
So go in with your mates and rattle
Their cages. Towering rages
Make you a man among men!
And then, in a short while, when
Sadly you end up on a slab,
Sliced and diced by Dr. McNab
At the age of twenty, twenty-one,
You’ll have fought and you’ll have won
You little tit, your little bit
In restoring dear old Britain
To things that once were written
By poets and sages
About the Dark Ages.

John MacDonald found a corpse, put it under the sofa,
Waited till it came to life and hit it with a poker,
Sold its eyes for souvenirs, sold its blood for whisky,
Kept its bones for dumb-bells to use when he was fifty *.

George Tremayne was a man of fame
Well known in local parts;
He smiled and broke the young girls’ hearts,
But then broke one too many:
He seduced my sister Jenny.
Now George lies deep in the earth beneath,
I was grave and polite; I sent a wreath.

Unfriendly friendly universe,
I pack your stars into my purse

A weak cheer for our weary warriors
As they tread their hard way home;
Dispensers of Death, and yet,
It was through no wish of their own.
They are eager for love once more,
For simple acceptance; no foreign shore
Of unburied corpses, nor stink of war;
Eager to return to placid streams,
To ignore their dark unsettled dreams
And live as once they lived before.
But every man who was there can say
It never quite works out that way.
They need sweet sleep so badly,
And have no further wish to fight;
They would return their medals gladly,
For just one dreamless, peaceful night.

Every desire is a fear, every fear is a desire.

Doctor Mortimer duly arrived from Devon
On that clear September morning.
Holmes and I had had warning
But nothing under the canopy of Heaven
Could have prepared us for the Tale he told.
That Hound from Hell upon the Moors!

Heave aboot, ye Knaves and Hoors,
And roll them spittin’ cannons out!
Take aim, amidships, wait for the shout,
And dream on gold and jewels.

She would not think him half so cruel
Were she smiling prettily before him now
Instead of mouldering in the tomb;
Alive, at first, but with no room,
So very little room to move,
But time to think, before she died,
Of the earth and stones above her.
He had long since ceased to love her,
And arranged it all; if only to prove
The art of murder should best be applied
To enhance the fear of approaching doom.
Her fingernails torn to shreds, he imagines.
The darkness, the solitude, the weight:
Calculations of his cold dark hate.

He’s alive, he’s fuckin faking!
Chak ….. Chakka - Chak
Well, he’s f---in dead now.
-- US Marines, Fallujah 2004

Here’s a cracking new idea:
You ready?
- She’s a blonde/ brunette/ a redhead
- She’s young and sexy
- She’s got a filthy rich husband
- He’s old and fat
- She likes you
- She makes passionate love to you
- She says she adores you
- She wants you, needs you, etc.
- She begs you to kill her husband
- She’ll inherit the money
- You’ll wait until things cool down
- You’ll “meet”, you’ll get married
- You’ll live happily ever after

Me, I was in the Boy Scouts
So I know a thing or two,
( a couple of years in the Army as well,
but, truth to tell, Scouts is all you need
to learn depravity, get up to speed)
So this is what I’ll say to you:
She’ll be sitting on a sunny beach,
Out of call and out of reach,
Cuddling with her personal banker
While you, you trusting silly wanker,
Will be sprawled out at your leisure,
Doing 20 years at Her Majesty’s pleasure.

Dreamsister, dream once more of me
And I will sleepily dream of thee;
It is only in dreams my life has meaning,
When I hear you calling, softly keening.

Inchigeelagh.

My love and my mate
That I never thought dead
Till your horse came to me
With bridle trailing,
All blood from forehead
To polished saddle
Where you should be,
Either sitting or standing;
I gave one leap to the threshold,
A second to the gate,
A third upon its back.
I clapped my hands,
And off at a gallop;
I never lingered
Till I found you lying
By a little furze-bush
Without pope or bishop
Or priest or cleric
One prayer to whisper
But an old, old woman,
And her cloak about you,
And your blood in torrents –
Art O’Leary –
I did not wipe it off,
I drank it from my palms. **

Yuri Andeeivich Kostolenko
Is an ordinary Russian (Ukrainian) thug,
Wears a leather jacket, shades, a gold rolex,
And if you ask him he might shrug and flex
His muscular beefy arms, perhaps display
His shrapnel scars, the weird tattoos
He got when he and his mate Sergei
Were high as kites and on the booze
With Spetznatz in Afghanistan; Yuri smiles
And gazes three, four thousand miles.
He leaves this world behind. He is not unkind
To animals and little children, not on purpose,
But he will chop off your fingers with a cleaver,
Extract your teeth with pliers, connect live wires
To sensitive parts, or blandly stick a telephone receiver
Up your arse or down your throat. No use talking.
Yuri never listens: Dollars or Euros do the walking.
War was a game; this, the same: Bizzinez is Bizzinez.

Sobibor survivors testified at the trial that Stangl used to ride into the camp and attend ‘selections’ dressed in a white riding habit. ‘How could you go to the camp in that get-up?’ ‘The roads were very bad,’ he replied. ‘Riding was really the best mode of transport.’ I tried once more. ‘Yes, but to attend the unloading of these people who were about to die in a white riding habit …?’ ‘It was hot,’ he said.
-- Gitta Sereny interview with Franz Stangl, ex-SS commandant of Sobibor.

The clouds come drifting from west to east,
Other days they drift from east to west;
Armies come with them from both directions,
Not once, not twice, but many times:
Russia, Germany; and also, Sweden and Austria,
For sometimes the wind blows north and south.
You wouldn’t want to be a simple peasant
Exposed on this martial gathering ground;
And you really wouldn’t want to be a Jew,
Not if you knew what was good for you.

The autumn of ’39 came in like a thunderclap.

It was more, this time, than foreign uniforms,
Some new king squeezing the land for tax,
Much more, so very much more than that:
A half-cocked racial theory had landed.
Auschwitz – Oswiecim – sums it up for us now,
But many survived Auschwitz, hardly any survived
Maidenek … Sobibor … Chelmno … Treblinka.
The utter disgrace of Europe, of historical mankind,
Begins with the philosophes of Enlightened Paris
And ends, logically, in the killing sheds of Poland.

My job
Was to do what I was told.

And this is just totally unacceptable.
This is not only bad, it is wrong.
One of the real reasons we hate the Nazis …
Dislike the Germans, in fact, since Caesar’s time,
A people arrogant in victory, abject in defeat;
Either at your throat, or kissing your feet …
Is their planned, industrial approach to murder,
Their cold inhuman efficiency.

They make the rest of us look stupid

Or rather, make us look good by default:
We prefer to kill in the heat of the moment,
Or when we feel tired, upset, disgruntled,
Or because we received a shitty letter from home,
Or a lot of the time, too much of the time,
Because we are drunk.
Then we just want to forget all about it –
Come home to those placid streams,

Block out bad dreams.

But we rarely feel bad when our victims are unseen,
When there’s no personal memory of where we’ve been
Or of what we’ve done; we can drop a kiloton
Of bombs with mad persistence; from a distance
The blood and ruins, the scattered body parts,
Leave no scars upon our hearts.

We trained very hard for this mission and we knew what we had to do. When we pulled away from the target we were lifted up by a shock wave, and I knew in that moment that the mission was successful … When I looked down, what I saw was an area of roiling tar where before there was a city. Do I have any feelings of guilt? Well, I knew there were human beings down there and I felt sorry for them, but we were sent out to do a job and we did it. That’s the deal. Anyway, if it hadn’t been me somebody else would have done it.
-- Colonel Tibbets, commander of the ‘Enola Gay’.

Somebody else would have done it.
I suppose Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, could have said the same.
So could ‘Bomber Harris’, Dark Angel of Dresden.
So could so many others.

I think it’s a miracle to have made it this far,
All things considered. And also you, my friend,
Tu le connais, lecteur, ce monstre délicat,
—Hypocrite lecteur, —mon semblable, —mon frère!
Thank God (!) for the common sense of the Soviets,
Which is not quite as silly as is it sounds,
When one thinks of the people on ‘Our Side’.

O, God, sweet Mary Jane,
I saw you coming down the lane –
Smoke without fire.
We shall lie within a silken room
In Sidon or in royal Tyre,
Or if you will
In Notting Hill,
Wherever you desire.

Love, reign on me!
Reign over us all.

The man wanted for killing a British woman in a Tokyo flat had charmed her by sketching her portrait, police in Japan have said. Lindsay Hawker was beaten, stripped then strangled before being buried in a bathtub of sand, they added. It also emerged that chief suspect Tatsuyo Ishihashi had been warned in the past over claims he had stalked a young woman. Miss Hawker’s naked body was found in Ishihashi’s apartment on Monday.***

Japan is a doddle, so safe and so wonderful, so polite,
You just walk around in a daze of incomprehension
For the first few months; then the reaction kicks in
And you start to hate the place, since you think the locals
Are having a laugh at you, which, to be honest, they are,
And then it doesn’t matter because you hit your second wind,
And then you start to understand bits of the language,
And then you start to actually speak it a bit, which means
You meet all kinds of interesting new people, and, by then
My friend, you are hooked. You go home on holidays, sure,
But you always want to come back. It’s not exotic, like Thailand;
It’s totally straight down the line but like some other planet.
Imagine they wear a watch showing twenty-five hours in a day
And you are stuck with the good old traditional twenty-four;
So you are in line for some of the time, sometimes minutes away,
But never completely in synch. Yes, well, that’s my take on Japan.
They know exactly what’s going down and you don’t have a clue.
Some people freak and run home; the oddballs kind of like it.

Poor young Lindsay. What happened you?
Where was the back-up, the gaijin friends?
Can’t tell you the number of times when this rash poet,
Soi-disant, befuddled, s-s-s-slightly discombobulated,
Discerned menacing shadows perhaps closing in,
When a voice from the darkness called out,
‘Everything OK, mate? Put you in a taxi, orright?’
The moment of danger … if it was danger … is over.
So, Lindsay, what went down?
Where were your friends when you needed them?
Didn’t you know this geek meant trouble?
I will never know, and I can’t double-guess;
I never even knew you, and there are hundreds
Of girls like you, but none quite like you, and we didn’t
Even live in the same city, and so on and so on …
But I can tell you this, or tell your family,
That every gaijin guy in this country,
Surrounded by 125 million Japanese,
Hoards a nugget of shame, his share of the blame,
That we couldn’t do better,
That we couldn’t protect you.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Brief Notes and Links

* Extract from Bagpipe Music by Louis MacNeice.
** Extract from Caoineadh Airt Ui Laoghaire (The Lament for Art O’Leary)
*** The Lindsay Hawker case


There are some other short, usually italicized, quotes from Edwin Muir, James Fenton, Charles Baudelaire and The Who. For better or worse, everything else is my own.

Mr. Drew Wears Armani

At night, barefoot, on the stony tracks
the roots and the rocks would cut your feet
and you'd come home bleeding, angry,
and prepare for the next time. It went
on and on forever, there in the hills,
down by Cuil Aodha and Gougane Barra.
Tell me the names of a thousand stars
and which of the leaves in the forest
can heal which illness, whether boiled or powdered,
placed in a poultice, eaten, or stuck up your arse.
Twenty years they said it would take, each year
the chance of getting thrown out, rejected,
and the weary shame of returning home.

Knowledge they knew was dangerous
and it was doled out in careful stages; nothing
was allowed to be written; pens and parchment
were things we never saw. Memorise all we tell you
or tomorrow we send you home. In the beginning
it was nigh impossible, but then it became easier,
and our eyes began to see brighter colours,
our ears could hear the mice in faraway barns
and the trout singing softly in the lake,
and we were not asleep even when sleeping;
our teachers slowly, gradually, became less stern
and we knew then we would not be sent home
for us there could be no other home, not then.

Two thousand years later, give or take,
I step off the airplane at LA International
and wave my fingers at the Immigration flunkey
who immediately stamps my passport, blinking.
Out in the hot hazy sunlight I glide into a taxi
and I listen to the mangled Spanish of the driver
for a few minutes, then wave him into silence.
In Beverly Hills I ascend to the Penthouse Suite
obtained with a flutter of the fingers, I telephone
the production company shooting my next movie,
then descend, nattily casual, to the cavernous lobby.
I wave my fingers for an exquisite, well-cooked meal
and eye the elegant blonde sitting four tables over.

A charming little smile, another finger movement,
and she rises from her chair and instantly joins me;
having enjoyed the amenities in my palatial quarters,
I present her with three homemade 100 dollar bills,
far far better than the originals, and she kisses my toes
and bows herself backwards from the room. Ho hum.
Time to call the President, tell him what he's doing wrong,
and accept the usual excuses and apologies. Such a bore,
but one's gotta do what one's gotta do. I find that so true,
and one really needs to plan for the next thousand years.
Had I known in my youth things would end up like this
I might have had second thoughts, felt slightly remiss,
but one grows so used to this business with the fingers.

There is a lot to be said for an old-fashioned education.

fionnuala

down along by the riverrun bawdy
she sometimes leaves the lights on,
her window she opens a wee little crack
for to let the ghosts get in,
and to let the ghosts get back;

sometimes she leaves her lights on
all among surrounding seas of black,
and the ghosts float in and take their ease
late in the long and lonely nights,
her disembodied memories.

Ottoman

The red silken cord, for three long weeks,
lay coiled and hidden in the messenger's pouch.
Having struggled along rain-drenched muddy tracks,
crossed white swollen rivers, climbed over mountains,
he debouched, at last, on the plains of Hungary.
What news from the Light of the World?
croaked the stooping figure of Multan Pasha,
eyes aglitter in a face like mildewed parchment.
Wordlessly the messenger handed him the pouch,
and in silence Multan retired to his chamber
from which he never again would emerge.
-----------------------------------------

European officers facing disgrace and scandal favoured a bottle of whiskey and a loaded pistol; the Sultan simply sent a silken cord to the officials who displeased him.

Geoghan's Ghost

I.

Aequam memento rebus in arduis
seruare mentem, non secus in bonis
ab insolenti temperatam
laetitia, moriture Delli,
--- Horace, Odes, Book II, iii.

Geoghan tempers his moods of disquiet
with appeals to ancient personal gods,
pre-Christian, yes, that goes without saying,
but also pre-Celtic: he seems to gallop across
the millennia instead of a few mere centuries,
swearing or perhaps just furiously praying,
as he races to catch the 16A to Beaumont
with shoelaces undone and his long dark coat
wantonly flapping in the wind that whishes
and whooshes, aweela, wet from the slimegreen sea.
Geoghan invokes secret unheard of names and powers
that were hoary with age in the time of Baal
and Amon Ra; where has he learned these fearful
Stone Age imprecations? Surely not at home
with the mammy and daddy and his three sisters,
one of whom plays the harp and the other two
dainty violins, there in the plateglass bungalow
picked out from the All-Ireland Book of Designs
for Virtuously Vulgar Modern Living, garnished
with garden gnomes imported fresh from England,
Happy and Smiley, Doc and Dopey, Harold Wilson.
Geoghan’s oul fella was a turf accountant, as we say,
with our penchant these days for the gombeen genteel,
our building maintenance operators, our facilitators,
our elderly female recluses, kept well away from society
and formerly known as nuns; the priests, heaven help us,
are still in evidence, and you’ll find a fair few number
when fire alarms ring in the jollier parts of the city:
Come out there, Father, amn’t I holdin yer trousers?
Young Geoghan was never much good at manly sports,
at thumping others for the possession of a pig’s bladder
and then kicking it up and away like all our national teams
so that your heart could weep out of sheer frustration:
ah, would you pass or dribble, and not from yer bloody mouth?
But … but he had a steady sort of way about him,
not at all what you’d expect at the Christian Brothers
where they’d be beating away all that shite and nonsense
the minute you’d look up to stare in their dark flushed faces;
the fact is, they could feel something; and they were afraid of him,
not that at first I felt the same myself; no, that was later
when he’d look at me with those strange sea-washed eyes,
grey-green, pebbly, distant, unspeakably cold and old,
and it was then you’d feel the odd involuntary shiver
and would offer a joke or a beer, anything to break the tension.
Well, he died, of course, our poor unknowable friend,
and it is the matter of his end I wish to speak of.

II.

Inde fit ut raro, qui se vixisse beatum
dicat et exacto contentus tempore vita
cedat uti conviva satur, reperire queamus.
-- Horace, Satires, Book I, i.

It’s only now I’ve decided to break my long silence;
I was afraid, quite frankly, of powers I could not control,
and I didn’t have the protection or belief of poor queer Geoghan.
I was brought up with the mumbo-jumbo of an executed god,
a new departure in religious thinking, when you stop to think,
for here’s a god who becomes the sacrifice, not the demanding recipient,
a god who says turn the other cheek and then does fuckall for you
Geoghan saw through all that. Let me tell you what happened.
He got it in his head, seriously, he could stop the war in Iraq
and so prayed for forty days and nights, each day with two bottles of wine
(red and white) just around the corner from Trinity at the Lincoln Inn,
then, his vigil over, he proceeded, ceremoniously, to forlorn Ballsbridge
and the rounded concrete fortress of the unlovely American Embassy.
There for a while he disappeared, and his nervous band of acolytes
(I was not among them) stubbed endless cigarettes on the grey pavements
and waited and waited and waited for a sign. None, of course, came.
After three days helicopters arose like dragonflies in the clapped-out
dishwatery mauve and filthy pink of a ho-hum Dublin dawn
and shots were fired, we heard them, and the Air Force was called out,
all three of our serviceable planes, they went sqwark … sqwark … sqwark
to each other on the radio, like demented parrots, and we could all hear them
on Radio One; overall, it wasn't a great day for Ireland’s Intrepid Airmen,
with the other two muppets cheering them on from the ground,
their oul’ airplanes wouldn’t kick over when they’d stuck in the keys.

O Kathleen Mavourneen, the grey dawn is breaking,
The horn of the hunter is heard on the hill;
The lark from her light wing the bright dew is shaking …

and so we hared over to Howth Head and Killiney, to the high ground,
to the two encircling, ensnaring arms of this fiercely possessive city,
and from there we could see it all, but what we saw can never be agreed.
The Americans … Irish military gunships? …tried to shut down the whole business
with their broken old record, their fee-fi-fo-fum of GWOT and Guantanamo,
but you might as well try to stop the tide as stop the Irish from talking,
although nobody (this happens a lot in Ireland) could quite agree. Only I could see
a strange awkward figure hovering, balancing there in the whooshing air,
his coattails flapping like the dark raven’s wings on Cuchulainn’s shoulder,
his mouth open in an O with a force of words that only I could hear
and yet barely make out, with the rush of the wind and the clatter of the blades,
and yet it sounded like … Hilatoth …Hilagath … Hilga .. Hilgamoth?
the sacred and doubtless secret name of a long-forgotten but unburied god,
and then Geoghan transposed into a flash of light and his form was gone forever.
No body was ever recovered. And the war in Iraq went on and on.

Gaius Caecilius Metellus

Part the First: In which G. Caecilius Metellus embarks upon a public career.

(These events take place between the consulships of L. Gellus and Cn. Cornelius Lentulus Clodianus and that of Q. Hortentius Hortalus and Q. Caecilius Metellus, that is to say, from the 681st to the 685th Year of the founding of Rome)

The envy of Peperna brought them low in the end;
too many drinks at a feast, a sudden flash of swords,
and in the passions born of burning jealousy,
the great general, Sertorius, was cruelly cut down.
I was then just a military tribune, rising nineteen,
under the command of my uncle, Metellus Pius;
when news of the murder made its way to our camp,
I was not the only young officer to sigh with relief.

Fighting in Spain had been harsh and unpleasant,
days of humping dry hills under a punishing sun;
lightning cavalry probes on our flanks, sudden panic,
dead companions, wounds, no trace of the enemy.
With the enemy Sertorius gone, we soon wrapped it up,
although my laconic Uncle Pius reddened with rage
when Pompey (the ‘Great’) stole away with the credit;
as for me, I was delighted at last to sail home.

Ah, Rome!

You have no idea what it’s like to be back in the city,
to walk again the crowded, cacophonous, colourful streets;
to stroll in the Forum, linger lazily in the baths,
eye the lovely scented and sultry depilated girls!
My father, cold and stern in the approved old manner,
tipped me out of bed at sunrise on the third morning;
‘Holiday over,’ he grunted, as we stood in the cold atrium,
face to face with ancestral masks, ‘time to get cracking.’

So farewell the smoky taverns, the louche companions!
I notice, when you stand in the Forum on election morning,
that the white powder that gleams on your snow-bright toga
rises in little puffs, gets up your nose and makes you sneeze.
There I was, poised uneasily, on the bottom lowly rung
of the steep and seemingly lifelong cursus honorum,
a narrow, overcrowded, and quite often lethal ladder
that might lead one day to the dizzy heights of Consul.

I could see friends grinning up from the surging crowds,
as battered bones still ached from the ordeals of Spain;
my father’s clients milled about full of fussy attentions,
with such a formidable family, I had little chance of losing.
Duly elected quaestor, I was assigned to the Treasury,
about the most boring job you could possibly imagine;
daily I put my seal on whole streams of arcane documents,
presented and removed by dour and efficient silent slaves.

The sheer monotony of this unchanging daily routine
very soon made me frantic with a sense of frustration;
I would slip away for the odd party or secret assignation,
but Boras, that bastard, would infallibly track me down.
Boras, ex-centurion, ex-primus pilus, far-too-loyal retainer,
son of a freedman who had once been slave to the family;
built from brick and scarred marble, doglike in his devotion,
he had no patience for ‘ softarse young pups on the town’.

In my experience, when your fortunes begin to sink low,
they have a way of descending into something far worse;
I’d only months left in the horrible job I’d been stuck with,
when Father announced yet another of his fine notions.
‘There you are, son,’ he boomed, ‘my, you do seem peaky!
‘I think it’s time we put a bloom on those pale pasty cheeks.’
O, gods, no, I thought, whatever this is, I really don’t want it!
‘I think it’s time,’ said the parent, ‘to think of your marriage.’

Boras, you evil old snitch, was my first conscious thought,
you ratted on my all-too-rare nights down in the Subura;
Boras’ eyes never once flickered in his long mahogany face,
so, then, I thought, it must be politics – isn't it always politics!
‘We need to steer a careful path,’ said Father, predictably,
‘between the remaining old supporters of Marius and Sulla ;
‘the family is not all that badly placed, but this could change,
‘we need to consider these rising men, Pompey and Crassus.

‘We connect with Pompey through your cousin,’ he continued,
‘But Crassus has no daughters!’ I cried out, without thinking;
this earned a frown from Father, an obelisk stare from Boras,
‘If you will allow me’, said Father, ‘I was thinking of the Julians’.
‘But this fellow Caesar is a scheming villain, all piss and vinegar!’
‘He may prove successful, and there's an unmarried daughter.’
My heart sank straight to my toes, like a heavy stone within me,
I knew all about young Julia, the ice-cold patrician princess.

I gazed blankly at my father, eyes heavy and dull with horror;
I felt transfixed, like one of the six thousand unfortunate slaves
that Crassus, not so long ago, had roped and nailed to crosses
and left to die, mile after mile of them all along the road to Rome.
‘Cheer up,’ said Father, ‘the betrothal is the thing, she is young.’
She is seven, I thought, which carries scheming a little too far.
‘We need to plan,’ he growled, ‘I command, and you will obey!’
Spain was first, then the Treasury, now this: I must get away.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Brief notes:

- dates: approx. 72-69 BCE
- Sertorian War
- cursus honorarum: elected magistrates
- primus pilus: a sort of regimental sergeant-major
- Suburra: a working class red light district in ancient Rome

The Metelli were a prominent senatorial family, conservative in outlook, but determined to preserve the Roman Republic as they understood it. They produced an impressive number of consuls and military leaders but were ultimately unable to prevent a showdown between the dignified political obtuseness of Pompey and the the unscrupulous political brilliance of Caesar, both powerful ambitious men with large armies to call upon. In a real sense, military expansion (the growth of empire) destroyed the republic, a lesson from history to any imperial power that masquerades as a republic at home. See this article on the family

Part the Second: In which G. Caecilius Metellus abandons for a time his public career



(These events take place between the consulships of L. Caecillius Metellus and Q. Marcius Rex and those of L. Aurelius Cotta and L. Manlius Torquatus)

The quaestor’s job had been tiresome; now Father planned to marry me off,
and not just to anyone, either, he wished to forge an alliance with Caesar.
Much troubled, I went to seek advice from the celebrated M. Tullius Cicero,
whom I had watched, enthralled, during his masterly prosecution of Verres.
When I called on the great man, diffidently, his effusiveness surprised me,
but as a nobody from nowhere, he played up to the scions of older families.
I explained my awkward position and asked for the benefit of his thoughts:
‘Ah, dear impetuous youth,’ he sighed, then smugly intoned, ‘you must obey!’

I thanked him, strapped on my armour and breathlessly ran for the boats.
Quintus, another of my military uncles, had held out one chance of escape
before scheming Father, clutching my testicles, could approach wily Caesar
and offer my services, a sacrificial bull for Julia, his darling only daughter.
A fire-breathing response to what had been an offhand, half-hearted offer
visibly startled Uncle Quintus, this canny no-nonsense fleet commander;
as elder brother to Father, he was quick to understand the lie of the land,
and practically smacked his lips in composing a brusque and formal letter:

Hail, Brother! The People and Senate of Rome, in this hour of crisis,
look as ever to the bravery and fortitude of its young citizen officers,
among whom the fine young men of our family have always been …
Etc., etc.

We campaigned against the pirates of Crete, a bothersome nuisance,
and I found this to be refreshing, a form of violent outdoor exercise;
then, when an ill-planned raid went wrong, I received a slash across the guts
that came close to killing me, and for weeks I languished in some agony,
threatening to die if my worried uncle made an attempt to send me home.
Death passed me by with a whisper, but I knew it would find me in Rome
should I be connected to a woman that I cordially but intensely disliked,
and, more to the point, her ruthless father, who frankly terrified me!

I slipped ashore, a convalescent scholar, on sparkling peaceful Rhodes,
and applied to the school of Molon, former tutor to Cicero and Caesar;
‘Ordinarily, I wouldn’t do this,’ he said, accepting my lavish presents,
for he had cackled rudely at demonstrations of my "slow pedestrian mind”.
I wasn’t offended; I like the Greeks, they are subtle, quick and intelligent,
although incapable of practicalities, such as running their own country.
They make extremely useful slaves, unlike sluggish and belligerent Gauls,
and if you have the sense to flatter them, they can teach you a thing or two.

I took a liking to the local wines, and also to the habit of open discourse,
and was praised, I believe, as a mannerly young fellow, utterly un-Roman.
These were pleasant times, as the pirates faded entirely from view;
the task of clearing them I left to Uncle and, latterly, glory-seeking Pompey.
My father never ceased in his importunate efforts to summon me to Rome,
but well-paid local doctors sent him a series of discouraging reports.
Father recoiled with dread from any thoughts of ships or the sea,
thus I could laze to full recovery, attended by a pair of ravishing sisters.

I forget how long this leisurely life had lasted when it came to my notice
that young Roman visitors seemed to sport strange wispy little beards.
Romans have always been such a notoriously clean-shaven sort of people,
that I was intrigued by this change in fashion and sought these fellows out.
They spoke in reverent tones of some senator, a patrician named Catalina.
I had heard of him, of course, a grasping thug from one of the old families,
he had wilfully murdered for property at the time of Sulla’s proscriptions,
and, so it was said and believed, he had brutally murdered his very own son!

‘A great change will come to Rome,’ these young men were pleased to confide,
‘when all the landlords and lower-class moneylenders will meet their desserts;
'all the old families, the natural elite, will be restored to rightful power.’
Just so, thought I, calling for more wine, but what will Father make of all this?
Hardly a week had passed before his thoughts were forcefully made known.
A slave ran to my gate and delivered a letter from a ship newly docked:
‘Blast your silly wounds!’ it read. ‘Come back to Rome immediately!’
Father’s style, indubitably. Then: ‘I want you to befriend this man Catalina'.