Feathers

Publishing poetry in the U.S.A., a cynic said,

“must be like dropping a feather over the Grand Canyon

and waiting for the echo.”* I'd say it both is and isn’t!

The echo's immediate in your brain,

no matter whether America heard it, or didn't.

Drop all the feathers you like—there’s tons of room down there,

even if you alone may care

and they come floating up again in the great Canyon's heated air.

Keep in mind, you’re in this for yourself,

and not to get your hands on worldly echoed wealth.

No need for false modesty or pointless stealth.

No poet’s truer born than one who wants no fame.

*Cited by Seamus Heaney, letter to John L. Sweeney, October 3, 1966.

Whisper, immortal Muse . . .

The Dream of Human Life (artist unknown, ca. 1533). National Gallery, London.

“Better a quiet life, the moon in a bucket of water

With nobody there to hear though the stars do

And a bedside book like the teachings of Chuang Tzu” —Derek Mahon, “The World of J. G. Farrell”

I once had a glass or two of wine with J. G. Farrell

(I know it’s dropping names, but what the hell!)

The best novelist you’ve probably never heard of.

“Who would you like to meet in London?” my friend and agent Lavinia (not Lavinia Greacen)* said

(she meant, of course, in London’s literary world).

There on a visit from California, I hesitated, and she suggested Jim.

Later, alas, he was swept from a rock fishing by the sea in Ireland and drowned.

I can't recall what we talked about—

it was forty-four years ago.

Now I’ve come across this poem by Derek Mahon,

The best poet of whom you’ve probably never heard!

Whisper, immortal Muse . . . No

*Lavinia Graecen, J. G. Farrell: The Making of a Writer (London: Bloomsbury, 1999).

Green Helmet

Isobel Lilian Gloag, The Knight and the Mermaid, or The Kiss of the Enchantress (ca. 1890), detail

I keep wanting to say things in sorrow

Even when I've got nothing to say;

What best might be spoken tomorrow

I recklessly utter today.

“When I was young,

I had not given a penny for a song

Did not the poet sing it with such airs

That one believed he had a sword upstairs;

Yet would be now, could I but have my wish,

Colder and dumber and deafer than a fish,”

Yeats says.*

That’s wishful thinking—

You should quote these lines winking!

I, too, would have my helmet green

If poetry could scour it clean.

*”All Things Can Tempt Me,” in The Green Helmet (1910)