We move in draughty, barn-like spaces, swallows
busy round the beams, like images. There is room
for larger canvasses to be displayed, there are storing-places
for our weaker efforts; hold
to warm clothing, to surreptitious nips of spirits
hidden behind the instruments of art. It is all, ultimately,
a series of bleak self-portraits, of measured-out
reasons for living. Sketches
of heaven and hell. Self-portrait with computer;
self-portrait, nude, with blanching flesh; self
as Lazarus, mid-summons, as Job, mid-scream.
There is outward
dignity, white shirt, black tie, a black hat
held before the crotch; within, the turmoil, and advanced
decay. Each work achieved and signed announcing itself
the last. The barn door slammed shut.
There was a pungency of remedies on the air, the house
hushed for weeks, attending. A constant focus
on the sick-room. When I went in, fingers reached for me,
like cray-fish bones; saliva
hung in the cave of the mouth like a web. Later,
with sheets and eiderdown spirited away, flowers stood
fragrant in a vase in the purged room. Still life. Leaving
a recurring sensation of dread, a greyness
like a dye, darkening the page; thatDies Irae, a slow
fret-saw wailing of black-vested priests. It was Ireland
subservient, relishing its purgatory. Books, indexed,
locked in glass cases. Night
I could hear the muted rhythms in the dance-hall; bicycles
slack against a gable-wall; bicycle-clips, minerals, the raffle;
words hesitant, ill-used, like groping. In me the dark bloom
of fascination, an instilled withdrawal.
He had a long earth-rake and he drew lines
like copy-book pages on which he could write
seeds, meaning – love; and can you love, be loved, and never
say ‘love’, never hear ‘love’?
The uncollected apples underneath the trees
moved with legged things and a chocolate-coloured rust;
if you speak out flesh and heart’s desire will the naming of it
canker it? She cut hydrangeas,
placed them in a pewter bowl (allowing herself at times
to cry) close by the tabernacle door; patience in pain
mirroring creation’s order. The boy, suffering puberty, sensed
in his flesh a small revulsion, and held
hands against his crotch in fear. Paint the skin
a secret-linen white with a smart stubble of dirt. The first
fountain-pen, the paint-box, pristine tablets of Prussian Blue,
of Burnt Sienna – words
sounding in the soul like organ-music, Celeste and Diapason –
and that brush-tip, its animated bristles; he began at once
painting the dark night of grief, as if the squirrel’s tail
could empty the ocean onto sand. Life-
drawing, with naked girl, half-light of inherited faith,
colour it in, and rhyme it, blue. In the long library, stooped
over the desks, we read cosmology, the reasoning
of Aquinas; we would hold
the knowledge of the whole world within us. The dawn
chorus :laudetur Jesus Christus; and the smothered,
smothering answer:in aeternum. Amen. Loneliness
hanging about our frames, like cassocks. New
world, new day. It is hard to shake off darkness, the black
habit. The sky at sunset – fire-red, opening its mouth
to scream; questions of adulthood, exploration of the belly-flesh
of a lover. It was like
the rubbling of revered buildings, the moulding of words
into new shapes. In the cramped cab of a truck she, first time, fleshed
across his knees; the kiss, two separate, not singular,
alive. It was death already, prowling
at the dark edge of the wood, fangs bared, saliva-white.
Sometimes you fear insanity, the bridge humming to your scream
(oil, casein, pastel) but there is nobody to hear, the streaming river
only, and the streaming sky; soon
on a dark night, the woman tearing dumbly at her hair while you
gaze uselessly onto ashes. Helpless again you fear
woman: saint and whore and hapless devotee. Paint your words
deep violet, pale yellow,
the fear,Winter in Meath, Fugue, the Apotheosis of Desire.
The terror is not to be able to write. Naked and virginal
she embraced the skeleton and was gone. What, now,
is the colour ofGod is love
when they draw the artificial grass over the hole, the rains
hold steady, and the diggers wait impatiently under trees? Too long
disturbing presences were shadowing the page, the bleak
ego-walls, like old galvanise
round the festering; that artificial mess collapsing
down on her, releasing a small, essential spirit, secular
bone-structure, the fingers reaching out ofneed, no longerwill.
Visceral edge of ocean,
wading things, the agitated ooze, women on the jetty
watching out to sea; at last, I, too, could look
out into the world again. The woman, dressed in blue, broke
from the group on the jetty and came
purposefully towards us, I watched through stained glass of the door,
and loved her. Mine the religion of poetry, the poetry
of religion, the worthy Academicians unwilling to realise
we don’t live off neglect. Is there
a way to understand the chaos of the human heart? our
slaughters, our carelessness, our unimaginable wars?
Without a God can we win some grace? Will our canvases,
their patterns and forms, their
rhymes and rhythms, supply a modicum of worth?
The old man dragged himself up the altar steps,
beginning the old rites; the thurible clashed against its chain;
we rose, dutifully, though they
have let us down again, holding their forts
against new hordes; I had hoped the canvas would be filled
with radiant colours, but the word God became a word
of scorn, easiest to ignore. We
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