Poguemahone, p.22
Poguemahone, page 22
& her with all her life
yet before her.
It’s sad
the way
things have to work
out
& if only there were some way
to turn the clock back
then, believe you me,
I would gladly do it
may my heart cease to beat
if for one second
I play you false,
God knows.
Because, even after all
of these years that we’ve spent
together here in
Cliftonville
with my poor sister, God love her, in and out
of who knows how many institutions
being to this very day
still visited
by dread remembrances of one sort or
another
as were the tenants of The Temple
back then in No.45
Joanne Kaplan in particular
especially one lunchtime
not long after her best friend’s
suicide
when she had arrived home
early from college
& found herself confronted
by a scene of what can only
be described as one of
unutterable chaos
with great streaks
of jam smeared all along
the flock wallpaper
& random clothes flung
around and books with their pages
torn out
hurled indiscriminately
about the floor
not to mention
her mattress completely torn asunder
& her treasured,
most favourite china cabinet
thoughtlessly overturned.
Such sobs she released as she
sat there in that chair – and, convinced
that she’d just heard
a falsetto peal of mocking
laughter
looked across the room
for her moist eyes to descry –
absolutely nothing.
Faic, as Nano would say.
At least until I found myself
unable any longer to resist
the nagging temptation. . .
Why do little birds whistle?
That’s a question that
you’ll often hear posed.
Maybe, just simply,
because at the end of the day
they have to.
In any case, there she remained,
barely able to move a muscle
as I released a sharp little
arpeggio of notes
but which possessed a strange
sound.
One evocative of that which the spinner
makes when turning her wheel
now near – now distant
the song of the dream-bird
whose velvety flight haunts the clearings at an
indeterminate hour.
Yes, a wee birdie piping
on a window ledge, warmly
liberating itself
of a vital plenitude that it simply can
no longer contain.
Ti-ti-pu, ti-ti-pu: can you hear
me, Joanne Kaplan
come
over
here
come
close
to the wall.
There’s a good girl
easy now
easy
aisy
aisy
aisy
now,
lass
hush there, alanna
there’s a good girl
it’s all OK
it’s you and me
oh Lord blessus
would you look at you now
& you all abashed
as a girleen in your nipper tuck
sure, I’m only making
game of you so I am
with the pair of us soon to be yarnin’
& enjoying maybe even
a biteen of a snuggle
maybe even a little pogue!
yes, a sweet little kiss
& them all there wringing
their hands and keening
where have they
gone
where could they be gone
ah lookit here girl
don’t you be going
all colleen-style flush
come over here, gentle
so I can give you a hug
yes, there we are
there we are now
it’s
just you
&
me
&
with the two of us
smiling
as you
come to me
and I hold you close
aye, taking you in my arms
& I wonder
how do you like her now
your lovely, blue-eyed
girl
Mr Death?
Luke Powys it was
who found her later
that very same afternoon,
making no sense
& frothing at the mouth.
He heard things too –
things he never spoke of –
alarums & such like,
unique scatologies,
warring souls,
that, in their pain,
have turned on themselves.
As I’d so often seen happen
& remember with startling
clarity
like that night, God be good to it,
when I’d arrived back
on the late-night bus
to The Spike, a men’s dossing-house,
& which, at that time, was situated
in Camden
aye, arriving back to find the place in chaos,
with this pair of lousy beggars
Con Colleran and Mickey ‘The Gawp’
Divney
being right in the middle of a rumble
with The Colchester Robbers, as this
other brace of brigands were famously known
at the time.
& with Colleran, in particular,
making it abundantly clear
that he was in no ‘fucking hurry at all to
back away from a ruck’.
And that, before he ever did,
or had any ‘fucking intention at all’
of ‘going anywhere fucking near his leaba’
he would be more than willing to smash the
head aye and the back and bones and any other
part as might be necessary, of any fuck-robber
that had ever come out of Galway
or anywhere else, if it came to that.
With a right old barney starting up after that
until in the end they succeeded in
mollifying him
& a bit of an auld ceilidh
began to raise the rafters
which was often the case in The Spike after
a scrap.
So off I skipped and got the old
bodhrán
& away we all went
as I struck my iron-tipped brogues on the flags:
There was an auld man down by Killiburn Brae
Riteful, titeful, titty folday
There was an auld man down by Killiburn Brae
had a curse of a wife with him most of his days!
With me folderol do, titty fol dol
Foldol dol dolda doler olday!
Rumpity-pumpity
Schwish, ba-boom!
Sawing and stomping until we were rudely
interrupted.
& looked up to see
the fearsome phizzogue of The Priest O’Donnell
with the two eyes standing out blazing
in his head
as he faced us
standing, with the trimmlins,
there in his long grey nightshirt
& o how did he weep
& bawl as he raised his fist
& him with the pages of
Christ opened up there before him
o
you cunts
bad cess
to all of them
as ever dreamed
about you or raised you
Why, the birds, do they bother to sing
to alert us maybe,
& sound all alarums
with regard to the
preponderance of shameless blasphemers
the likes of this
the cur-dogs that, daily, elect to stride
among us in this world
just as they did on a hill beyond Jerusalem
beneath the rusted copper skies above Calvary
bringing náire like the Romans
casting lots for the garments of The Saviour
as among the trees a riot commenced
in its heart the cries of wanton birds –
lamenting the sorry pass of our country
and its kin, the low depths to
which it has descended.
So would it be any wonder that
any day now, just as it did on
that final, fateful morning,
that they’d show their face upon
the mountain once again
those unclean éiníní who
scout & warn of
impending famine and martyrdom
that red dragon, that lone pale horse
those guardian cherubs but who
now have the blood of the lamb
on their lips. Now atremble,
as the panther spreading out its wings
like those of the eagle
he emits his mighty, earth-shattering
roar and declares both to you
and all of your misbegotten issue
yes, let ye hear the sound of the trumpet
before this dawn which
is fast now approaching, you find
yourselves plunged into darkness
before the moon, and hopelessly
stand upon this hill as you
behold your crops and they failing
before your eyes
as fire flows and consumes
the very surface of the water
as this last mighty angel, he
sprouts horns and then vouchsafes
Behold The Sorrowful, Atrophying
Kidneys Of Christ And All That
Remains Of Erin-In-Her-Waste
behold him too, punctured and ruptured
as he slumps
like a pierced, traduced baste slung there
upon his crosstree because of you
to name your shame, sin é an fáth!
That is the reason that they pine in the heavens
those winged angels
because of you and all your sins!
We thought, in the extremity of his passion,
that at that very moment, he was surely
about to drop.
But, somehow, he rallied.
So, goodnight to you all – and, by the bowels of he who
made you
may each and every one of you standing before me
here
this night perish on your pillows as you cry in
misery for the oils of a priest
as he lifts his skirts
& tears across the fields
except that, you see:
he
will
not
come.
Speaking of death, our very own mother
in her turn
did exactly that
in 1954, as I was telling you,
and I really would like
to be
able to say
that
poor old Doreen
– ‘Dots’ Fogarty
as she was affectionately known –
aged 40
that she was
what you would
describe as
solid and matronly
not unlike our custodian
Margaret Rutherford
but she wasn’t, in fact
no, that wouldn’t be true
at all
at all.
No sir.
Although if she had lived, I still retain
hopes
that that is possibly how she might have ended up
instead of becoming a fragile little thing
slinking around the place
as though afraid she had done something terrible.
Because that’s the way she was
literally terrified of her own narrow shadow
and to suggest anything else
anything would be just to make up
yet another of Nano’s silly ‘old pishogues’,
more little birdies
digressive hoodwinkings
none of which, as I’m sure you’ve guessed,
are true.
But, regarding poor Dots
our very own dear old departed mother
is it any bit of wonder
that the poor unfortunate lady
God be good to her
that she could have been
any way other
than the way she was
and her having had to endure trials in her life
as no mortal on this earth should have to
put up with.
& which I probably wouldn’t
have referred to at all
or bothered my head
bringing up in any way
only Una said this morning
that she’d been tossing
& turning all night
in her sleep
with this dream she’d had
all about Dots
and the days when she’d
lived as a young woman
in London
& that in this dream
our old friend
Bonnie from Currabawn
she’d been playing a lament
on the violin
that’d be Bonnie,
Red Jack Sugrue’s daughter
who was a wizard on the instrument
& used to charm the auld birds
with it, from the trees
as well as making every man-jack
as ever sank a pint in The Bedford Arms
swear they’d get themselves wed to her in the morning
you see if I don’t
with the only difference being
that Red Jack’s daughter
she loved women, do you see
& didn’t have all that much
time for men
not in that way, anyhow.
O, the curls on that lovely girleen
they used to say
aye, men and women alike they
used to remark on it
as she swept her bow
why, this way, & then that
that it’d make you think of a flock of
birds itself.
With her maybe getting everyone
well way overexcited
because that, as I recall,
was the very same night
that Maddie Lynam,
God rest her soul
(long since deceased, in a car crash
in Italy, outside Naples)
who had also stayed at 45
on any number of occasions
& never complained of anything untoward
now awoke in the night
being short-taken
&
going off to have a piddle
when what did she see
half in shadow
or so she said
when she was going
to the bathroom
only the suspended figure of our
very own mother
still attired in her assistant nurse’s
uniform
yes, none other than poor Dots Fogarty
herself
who had spent some time
in that very same
room
hanging there, unmoving
from a bare wooden rafter
with a few drops of fuil
yes, the darkest of blood
falling ever so slowly
ploc!
they went
& then
ploc
again
ploc!
ploc!
ploc!
& such a scream as poor Maddie
Lynam let out of her
when one of the droplets
say, about the size of an old Irish
sixpence
didn’t it land smack
dab in the middle of
her forehead
yes, right in the
centre
that it was like nothing on earth
that ever you have heard
is all could say
– as regards poor Maddie’s scream, I mean.
Wake the dead.
And how did all this
come about
do you ask
for to make me little
more than an obstetrical hembridge
going ploc ploc ploc
what exactly happened
far away in
the long ago
to make all this sadness
& madness come to pass
because make no mistake
ba bhrónach é, cinnte
it certainly was sad.
Anyhow, to make a long story
short
God bless ye all, if you’re listening,
you patient old craythurs
what happened
do you see,
wasn’t it that Doreen ‘Dots’
late in 1953
she encountered this latchyco
(that is to say, an irresponsible,
if charming, rascal)
after drinking most of the day and
a goodly part of the night in
Nano’s
yes, she met this fellow
who went by the name of
Slack Port-au-Prince
Or Slack John Timmoney
as they called him in The Bedford
a sailor, rarely home,
a high seas wanderer o
a rare fellow too
cagey, talking out of
both sides of his face
a rum currahanach indeed
which means restless soul
& one to be wary of
but poor Dots was tipsy
& what would she care about
that or anything more than
the liking that she’d taken
to his jet-black curls
and cheeky smile
& agreed, in the heat of the moment,
to perform the mickey-jump-jubbly
with him in an alley just off
the Commercial Road
yes, got stuck in enjoying a spot
of that good old:
ruaille
buaille
No Sex Please, We’re British?
Not ’arf!
& which she definitely
most certainly
had enjoyed at the time
but then, as so often happens
& will continue to do so
sight nor sign of him was
ever seen again in spite
yet before her.
It’s sad
the way
things have to work
out
& if only there were some way
to turn the clock back
then, believe you me,
I would gladly do it
may my heart cease to beat
if for one second
I play you false,
God knows.
Because, even after all
of these years that we’ve spent
together here in
Cliftonville
with my poor sister, God love her, in and out
of who knows how many institutions
being to this very day
still visited
by dread remembrances of one sort or
another
as were the tenants of The Temple
back then in No.45
Joanne Kaplan in particular
especially one lunchtime
not long after her best friend’s
suicide
when she had arrived home
early from college
& found herself confronted
by a scene of what can only
be described as one of
unutterable chaos
with great streaks
of jam smeared all along
the flock wallpaper
& random clothes flung
around and books with their pages
torn out
hurled indiscriminately
about the floor
not to mention
her mattress completely torn asunder
& her treasured,
most favourite china cabinet
thoughtlessly overturned.
Such sobs she released as she
sat there in that chair – and, convinced
that she’d just heard
a falsetto peal of mocking
laughter
looked across the room
for her moist eyes to descry –
absolutely nothing.
Faic, as Nano would say.
At least until I found myself
unable any longer to resist
the nagging temptation. . .
Why do little birds whistle?
That’s a question that
you’ll often hear posed.
Maybe, just simply,
because at the end of the day
they have to.
In any case, there she remained,
barely able to move a muscle
as I released a sharp little
arpeggio of notes
but which possessed a strange
sound.
One evocative of that which the spinner
makes when turning her wheel
now near – now distant
the song of the dream-bird
whose velvety flight haunts the clearings at an
indeterminate hour.
Yes, a wee birdie piping
on a window ledge, warmly
liberating itself
of a vital plenitude that it simply can
no longer contain.
Ti-ti-pu, ti-ti-pu: can you hear
me, Joanne Kaplan
come
over
here
come
close
to the wall.
There’s a good girl
easy now
easy
aisy
aisy
aisy
now,
lass
hush there, alanna
there’s a good girl
it’s all OK
it’s you and me
oh Lord blessus
would you look at you now
& you all abashed
as a girleen in your nipper tuck
sure, I’m only making
game of you so I am
with the pair of us soon to be yarnin’
& enjoying maybe even
a biteen of a snuggle
maybe even a little pogue!
yes, a sweet little kiss
& them all there wringing
their hands and keening
where have they
gone
where could they be gone
ah lookit here girl
don’t you be going
all colleen-style flush
come over here, gentle
so I can give you a hug
yes, there we are
there we are now
it’s
just you
&
me
&
with the two of us
smiling
as you
come to me
and I hold you close
aye, taking you in my arms
& I wonder
how do you like her now
your lovely, blue-eyed
girl
Mr Death?
Luke Powys it was
who found her later
that very same afternoon,
making no sense
& frothing at the mouth.
He heard things too –
things he never spoke of –
alarums & such like,
unique scatologies,
warring souls,
that, in their pain,
have turned on themselves.
As I’d so often seen happen
& remember with startling
clarity
like that night, God be good to it,
when I’d arrived back
on the late-night bus
to The Spike, a men’s dossing-house,
& which, at that time, was situated
in Camden
aye, arriving back to find the place in chaos,
with this pair of lousy beggars
Con Colleran and Mickey ‘The Gawp’
Divney
being right in the middle of a rumble
with The Colchester Robbers, as this
other brace of brigands were famously known
at the time.
& with Colleran, in particular,
making it abundantly clear
that he was in no ‘fucking hurry at all to
back away from a ruck’.
And that, before he ever did,
or had any ‘fucking intention at all’
of ‘going anywhere fucking near his leaba’
he would be more than willing to smash the
head aye and the back and bones and any other
part as might be necessary, of any fuck-robber
that had ever come out of Galway
or anywhere else, if it came to that.
With a right old barney starting up after that
until in the end they succeeded in
mollifying him
& a bit of an auld ceilidh
began to raise the rafters
which was often the case in The Spike after
a scrap.
So off I skipped and got the old
bodhrán
& away we all went
as I struck my iron-tipped brogues on the flags:
There was an auld man down by Killiburn Brae
Riteful, titeful, titty folday
There was an auld man down by Killiburn Brae
had a curse of a wife with him most of his days!
With me folderol do, titty fol dol
Foldol dol dolda doler olday!
Rumpity-pumpity
Schwish, ba-boom!
Sawing and stomping until we were rudely
interrupted.
& looked up to see
the fearsome phizzogue of The Priest O’Donnell
with the two eyes standing out blazing
in his head
as he faced us
standing, with the trimmlins,
there in his long grey nightshirt
& o how did he weep
& bawl as he raised his fist
& him with the pages of
Christ opened up there before him
o
you cunts
bad cess
to all of them
as ever dreamed
about you or raised you
Why, the birds, do they bother to sing
to alert us maybe,
& sound all alarums
with regard to the
preponderance of shameless blasphemers
the likes of this
the cur-dogs that, daily, elect to stride
among us in this world
just as they did on a hill beyond Jerusalem
beneath the rusted copper skies above Calvary
bringing náire like the Romans
casting lots for the garments of The Saviour
as among the trees a riot commenced
in its heart the cries of wanton birds –
lamenting the sorry pass of our country
and its kin, the low depths to
which it has descended.
So would it be any wonder that
any day now, just as it did on
that final, fateful morning,
that they’d show their face upon
the mountain once again
those unclean éiníní who
scout & warn of
impending famine and martyrdom
that red dragon, that lone pale horse
those guardian cherubs but who
now have the blood of the lamb
on their lips. Now atremble,
as the panther spreading out its wings
like those of the eagle
he emits his mighty, earth-shattering
roar and declares both to you
and all of your misbegotten issue
yes, let ye hear the sound of the trumpet
before this dawn which
is fast now approaching, you find
yourselves plunged into darkness
before the moon, and hopelessly
stand upon this hill as you
behold your crops and they failing
before your eyes
as fire flows and consumes
the very surface of the water
as this last mighty angel, he
sprouts horns and then vouchsafes
Behold The Sorrowful, Atrophying
Kidneys Of Christ And All That
Remains Of Erin-In-Her-Waste
behold him too, punctured and ruptured
as he slumps
like a pierced, traduced baste slung there
upon his crosstree because of you
to name your shame, sin é an fáth!
That is the reason that they pine in the heavens
those winged angels
because of you and all your sins!
We thought, in the extremity of his passion,
that at that very moment, he was surely
about to drop.
But, somehow, he rallied.
So, goodnight to you all – and, by the bowels of he who
made you
may each and every one of you standing before me
here
this night perish on your pillows as you cry in
misery for the oils of a priest
as he lifts his skirts
& tears across the fields
except that, you see:
he
will
not
come.
Speaking of death, our very own mother
in her turn
did exactly that
in 1954, as I was telling you,
and I really would like
to be
able to say
that
poor old Doreen
– ‘Dots’ Fogarty
as she was affectionately known –
aged 40
that she was
what you would
describe as
solid and matronly
not unlike our custodian
Margaret Rutherford
but she wasn’t, in fact
no, that wouldn’t be true
at all
at all.
No sir.
Although if she had lived, I still retain
hopes
that that is possibly how she might have ended up
instead of becoming a fragile little thing
slinking around the place
as though afraid she had done something terrible.
Because that’s the way she was
literally terrified of her own narrow shadow
and to suggest anything else
anything would be just to make up
yet another of Nano’s silly ‘old pishogues’,
more little birdies
digressive hoodwinkings
none of which, as I’m sure you’ve guessed,
are true.
But, regarding poor Dots
our very own dear old departed mother
is it any bit of wonder
that the poor unfortunate lady
God be good to her
that she could have been
any way other
than the way she was
and her having had to endure trials in her life
as no mortal on this earth should have to
put up with.
& which I probably wouldn’t
have referred to at all
or bothered my head
bringing up in any way
only Una said this morning
that she’d been tossing
& turning all night
in her sleep
with this dream she’d had
all about Dots
and the days when she’d
lived as a young woman
in London
& that in this dream
our old friend
Bonnie from Currabawn
she’d been playing a lament
on the violin
that’d be Bonnie,
Red Jack Sugrue’s daughter
who was a wizard on the instrument
& used to charm the auld birds
with it, from the trees
as well as making every man-jack
as ever sank a pint in The Bedford Arms
swear they’d get themselves wed to her in the morning
you see if I don’t
with the only difference being
that Red Jack’s daughter
she loved women, do you see
& didn’t have all that much
time for men
not in that way, anyhow.
O, the curls on that lovely girleen
they used to say
aye, men and women alike they
used to remark on it
as she swept her bow
why, this way, & then that
that it’d make you think of a flock of
birds itself.
With her maybe getting everyone
well way overexcited
because that, as I recall,
was the very same night
that Maddie Lynam,
God rest her soul
(long since deceased, in a car crash
in Italy, outside Naples)
who had also stayed at 45
on any number of occasions
& never complained of anything untoward
now awoke in the night
being short-taken
&
going off to have a piddle
when what did she see
half in shadow
or so she said
when she was going
to the bathroom
only the suspended figure of our
very own mother
still attired in her assistant nurse’s
uniform
yes, none other than poor Dots Fogarty
herself
who had spent some time
in that very same
room
hanging there, unmoving
from a bare wooden rafter
with a few drops of fuil
yes, the darkest of blood
falling ever so slowly
ploc!
they went
& then
ploc
again
ploc!
ploc!
ploc!
& such a scream as poor Maddie
Lynam let out of her
when one of the droplets
say, about the size of an old Irish
sixpence
didn’t it land smack
dab in the middle of
her forehead
yes, right in the
centre
that it was like nothing on earth
that ever you have heard
is all could say
– as regards poor Maddie’s scream, I mean.
Wake the dead.
And how did all this
come about
do you ask
for to make me little
more than an obstetrical hembridge
going ploc ploc ploc
what exactly happened
far away in
the long ago
to make all this sadness
& madness come to pass
because make no mistake
ba bhrónach é, cinnte
it certainly was sad.
Anyhow, to make a long story
short
God bless ye all, if you’re listening,
you patient old craythurs
what happened
do you see,
wasn’t it that Doreen ‘Dots’
late in 1953
she encountered this latchyco
(that is to say, an irresponsible,
if charming, rascal)
after drinking most of the day and
a goodly part of the night in
Nano’s
yes, she met this fellow
who went by the name of
Slack Port-au-Prince
Or Slack John Timmoney
as they called him in The Bedford
a sailor, rarely home,
a high seas wanderer o
a rare fellow too
cagey, talking out of
both sides of his face
a rum currahanach indeed
which means restless soul
& one to be wary of
but poor Dots was tipsy
& what would she care about
that or anything more than
the liking that she’d taken
to his jet-black curls
and cheeky smile
& agreed, in the heat of the moment,
to perform the mickey-jump-jubbly
with him in an alley just off
the Commercial Road
yes, got stuck in enjoying a spot
of that good old:
ruaille
buaille
No Sex Please, We’re British?
Not ’arf!
& which she definitely
most certainly
had enjoyed at the time
but then, as so often happens
& will continue to do so
sight nor sign of him was
ever seen again in spite
