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Chapter 1: What themes do the poems explore in this episode?
Welcome to the podcast version of Sunday Miscellany, which differs from the radio version for rights reasons. We hope you enjoy the program. This first poem is, I guess, about place. It's about here, in a sense, and it's about places that kind of become mythical. It's called September Returning.
A fireplace raising an eternal plume, the house packed and still, totally quiet, a stopped clock kind of silence. The sun we no longer see is drawing a band of yellow beneath the blackish blue sky. Over the lights of the stole, I once thought I could see the lost land of Atlantis or high Brazil.
Now, through the window, the fields like so much emptiness, the leaves like forgetting the fall, making gaunt silhouettes of the trees against the sky. I cannot yet comprehend how each breath of wind can relieve them of their station, leaving like mist from the mouth, opposite of kettle steam or chimney smoke.
Chapter 2: How does the poem 'Father Figure' reflect on personal relationships?
It is the band fading. It is the leaves leaving. It is the breath growing light from the fireplace, the plume rising still. And this next poem kind of came from a quote, which is something along the lines of people who don't have fathers in their lives, kind of spend their lives collecting father figures. And I wish that quote was from some kind of very heady place.
It's actually from Kill Bill, volume two, no less. But anyway, so this poem is called Father Figure. I lay my head in the crux of my elbow and watch sideways as he dresses worn out Levi's and a green blue plaid shirt sleeves are old on his days off. He lets me follow him as he mends this or that around the new house, which is very old and in need of the heavy hammering sounds of a new man.
His hands are hardened, coarse as the stubble on his chin, dark and covering like the coffee grounds I think should taste like cocoa, but never do.
Chapter 3: What is the significance of the poem 'The Fox' in the context of temptation?
I watch the shirt buttons close like eyes opening on their sides. Will time make such a man of my body? I stand sideways in his shadow, waiting to see what is to be mended next. And this final poem, when I showed this to my partner, he asked me what it's about. I said, go away now. Don't be asking questions like that. What's the poem about? And he said, well, I think it's about temptation.
So I thought, OK. I'm going to say it.
Chapter 4: How does the poem 'Night Swim' address grief and healing?
It's called The Fox. I must be moving quietly then, for I've seen him once or twice, flashing ahead of me, bright, shiny, orange under the street lamps like a small, shifty guide. And I want to ask, where are we going then, Fox? What's in it for me anyway? My feet are tired and they're saying, go home, go home, but I think I'll keep following.
Fox turns and for a moment his gold coin eyes are two lumps in my throat saying, not tonight, cowboy. Listen to your feet. How far can I push it before he slips off down some side alley or into some bush? But I don't think Fox really wants me gone. I follow him right to the shore.
Chapter 5: What historical context is provided in 'The United States vs Ulysses'?
and under a pale moon he leaps, growing scales and a fin and then splash. Jump in, he says, jump in. You'd be sure to drown, but sure, convince yourself you can swim. I think to turn and run, but there, dancing in that faraway sea, Fox is whatever I want him to be. Thank you. So this song is called Wolves, in a similar vein. And it's about, I suppose, a wolf in sheep's clothing.
Someone you think you knew but you didn't. In care, you might call them a snake. Ooh.
Chapter 6: How does the poem 'Cahal' connect personal memories with broader themes?
No man is an island We are built from blood and bone But there will come a time
When I got to know Margie in the early 1960s, she was the last tenant left in a red brick terraced house on Gardner Street in Dublin. She had a single room on the top floor in what was once the servants' quarters. Many houses on that street were almost derelict at the time. Margie was elderly, always breathless, frequently dizzy.
Her only source of drinking water was a tap in the basement, so every day she had to negotiate the five flights down. All she'd ever carry back up in her enamel bucket was a couple of quarts. Any more and she'd never make it back to the top of the house. She used to say that climbing those steps was like calvary. Unlike our Lord, she'd grin and gasp, I have to stop more than three times.
Chapter 7: What insights are shared about the creative process in this episode?
But her smile never reached those jaded eyes. At the time, I was a student in St. Patrick's Training College, a member of the Vincent de Paul Society. I visited Margie once a week. For an 18-year-old first time away from carefree Kerry, cosseted by the timetable security of college life, Margie's existence was a shock. Her clothes had the grimy sheen of neglect.
Her face and frail hands were besmirched with ingrained lines. Apart from myself, Margie's only other visitor was the landlord. He always stuffed the rents from his portfolio of properties into the lining of his black hat. And for whatever reason, the same gent forbade Margie from having any religious emblems on display when he called.
Chapter 8: How do the contributors reflect on their experiences at Listowel Writers' Week?
So, on Thursdays, she had to gather up her rosary beads, crucifix and holy water font. Her most precious possession, a photo of Jolly John, as she called Pope John XXIII, was slipped under her pillow. Margie had a blue budgie. She named him the Count, after John McCormack, whom she had seen once in Stephen's Green. The Count was chattering company for her.
First thing every morning, Margie tied back the door of his cage and allowed to count the freedom of the room the whole of the live-long day. If ever I called when the bird was flying free, Margie would be slow to open the door. Standing just inside, she'd wheeze a running commentary out to me of all the mischief he was up to.
I would bring the weekly ration of birdseed and sometimes an oval of cuttlefish and a sheet of coarse sandpaper for the floor of the cage. That year, the Pope became gravely ill. Margie kept her little portable radio on all day, anxiously listening for bulletins about the pontiff's health, gazing out the garage window as the sun sailed slowly across the skyline.
Margie kept up a constant reification. God bless the Pope. God bless the Pope. And eventually, that became the Count's favourite aria. Swinging on his perch, pecking the reflection in his mirror, he gave repeated, high-pitched renditions. God bless the Pope! God bless the Pope! One Thursday evening, the landlord called, as usual. Removing his hat, he placed it on the birdcage.
Immediately, the Count obliged with his favourite refrain. God bless the Pope! God bless the Pope! In a state of high dodging, the landlord grabbed his hat and clapped it on his head. Perceiving the whole episode to be a set-up on Margie's part, he fumed that the bird would have to be gone before he called again. And failing that, he would start proceedings to have Margie herself evicted.
Even though he stormed out, he didn't forget to snatch his rent from the table on his way. One of the last things I did before going home that year for Christmas was to broker an uneasy truce with the landlord on Margie's behalf. When I came back in January, Margie was in the Mater Hospital in intensive care. Visits were forbidden.
In Parnell Square, hardly a stone's throw from Gardiner Street, Friday night hops resumed in Carnegie's hotel and the nearest this young man's thoughts came to medical matters, was the alarming timpani of his pulse as he crossed the floor, dazzled by the dark eyes and dimpled smile of a student nurse from Temple Street. When next I inquired, Margie was dead and buried.
I never did find out whatever happened to the Count. But all of these decades later, I can still see them. Margie, by her garage window, in the fading light, and the Count beside her on his perch, trilling. God bless the Pope. God bless the Pope.
I'm going to play you an air that's about 170 years old or so. A few months ago I was working on a score for a documentary on Daniel O'Connell of this parish. There was obviously the famine happened around the same time as Daniel actually died during the famine. But I was instantly drawn to this tune that I knew for a long time as my father was a Shanno singer himself.
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