Filíocht Nua: New Poetry

Abstract

Filíocht Nua: New Poetry Justin Quinn Young Mother I told you about her. That night I was going on some duty or for a beer with friends in town when she got on—such beauty— deep in some issue with her husband as they boarded the tram. They had to stop their talk a moment to angle in the pram. Then they went back to working it out. Not that they had to keep their calm, but it was complicated. The child was fast asleep. I looked and looked at her and then she saw me and saw why. The rain came shearing in across the street, as that sped by. She lowered her head for a second, her husband’s concentration oblivious to the quiet shift in their conversation. And of course I thought of you throughout, of how and what to say, returning to you as the tram was drawing me away. [End Page 42] On Hearing Irish Spoken in South Dublin The whole Victorian terrace changes tint like when clouds go or come, a hint or Chinese whisper, a catch deep in the lungs. Thoughts float between the two official tongues like oysters changing sex with changing seasons on rocks that steeply shelve into the ocean. Lift up the shell and sluice one down your throat, and through the darker months your soul goes fluid. It spills its love about day after day of this Atlantic island, sweet and gay. First Spring Days Out walking with one child in a papoose, the other by the hand, cool in a hood and throwing questions and some mild abuse, we came upon two lovers in the wood. We slowed to give them time, as we’d reckoned we couldn’t turn. They rose, a little coy, and as we passed our eyes locked for a second, on either side of that explosive joy. [End Page 43] Šmukýřka Here is the track. It goes beneath the call of crows into the nearby woods. Here is the bus-stop and near its shelter stand two lads in hoods. In gradual enlargements houses and apartments take old farmlands, but for now they still persist. There must be in their midst a Nissen hut. Dog and other ordure. It is a kind of border that makes me suddenly more wakeful: here’s a stranger going from or towards some danger, as he nears me. The light and wind and trees shift a little then freeze an opening in the air: a marvellous azure grace unfolds itself in space everywhere. Before I step through it the branches tilt a bit, the sun goes, the wind stops, everything quickly hushes, and now these point-blank bushes become a copse. [End Page 44] The thorns and nettles mesh cutting into my flesh and closing down the track. Burdocks brush my chin. Something further in pushes me back. Old bricks, some rusting fences and roads to old defences— the gun emplacements gazing down upon the plains south of the city; cranes on wasteground, grazing. A burnt-out barracks shows some signs of life: clothes have been hung out to dry and radishes are growing. The light is slowly going. I keep an eye out for the inhabitant as I begin to slant homewards, with quickened stride to the apartment, our ledge of concrete on the edge of the steep hillside. Below it there’s a valley— a road, a leafy alley. Occasionally in the night headlights spook the trees. Now and then a breeze. I switch off the light. [End Page 45] On the Translator’s Art for Martin Hilský I The woods go dark. What language and what names Do all these shadows have that twist and rise? Kings and asses, spirits at their games, Monkeys, blackamoors and villains’ lies; Or lovers straying in the forest, sick With love and hate that plays through them like fated Rhymes and rhythms, changed in the very nick Of seasons: they are constantly translated By good fellows with wands, quills or machines. They swear and dance in time. They make their vows Then disappear in shifting flats and scenes. The players come back out and take their...