introduction · 1 introduction brendan de caires i remember it well. sitting anxiously in a room at...
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Introduction
Brendan de Caires
I remember it well. Sitting anxiously in a room at the Mercy Hospital after my father had suffered
his first heart attack, trying to stay calm while he talked with the modest energy that remained.
Somehow Ian McDonald's name came up and he grew fierce. "That man!" he said, with careful
overemphasis, "Is. A. Giant!" I knew immediately, given the drift of our conversation, that this
was no paean to Ian's learning, nor a verdict on his friendship, loyalty, or any such sublunar
trifle. No, this was an editor's wide-eyed admiration for a columnist who honoured deadlines.
"Day in and day out", Daddy marvelled, "he keeps his word. He files letter-perfect copy before
it‟s due. I don't how he does it.” Looking out the window briefly and pausing to catch his breath,
he continued: “He's one of the busiest men I know … but if you want something done well, give
it to Ian." I never forgot the advice.
Posthumously, I learned that Dad had made brief notes on the life and work of a few of his
closest friends – perhaps for a memoir that never got written. His lines on Ian began: “Antiguan
by ancestry, Trinidadian by birth, Guyanese by adoption, West Indian by conviction.” Coming
from my father, that last phrase was no small compliment. He had endured the soul-leeching
pettifoggery of public life in Guyana long enough to admire anyone with larger hopes, especially
those who didn‟t just wish the country well but actively sought to ensure that something better –
socially, culturally, politically – would eventually take root here. Ian‟s dual existence – successful
executive by day, man of letters in his spare time – made his perseverance all the more
remarkable. Like several of my father‟s circle he could easily have prospered elsewhere.
Instead, they held fast to the dream that we would eventually find light at the end of our
postcolonial tunnel – even if the journey was lasting much longer than expected.
From a literary perspective, the hospital bed was the right place to call Ian‟s name. A few years
earlier, I'd done a very green review of his first full collection of poems, Mercy Ward. Ian had
been very gracious about its eager, undergraduate tone and I'd marked him out as one of my
father's kinder friends. In time we began to chat about books and fell into the easy rhythms of
my father's friendship. Those conversations continue to this day. Every few months we gather at
a little pub on Bloor Street, Toronto, to talk books, politics, and West Indies cricket for an
afternoon. Occasionally we dwell on lesser matters such as the maddening diffidence of
Canadians, or the surprising eloquence of post-match Ultimate Fighting interviews. We often
discuss poetry - shamingly, I've never asked Ian about his own work – mostly the usual
suspects (Auden, Eliot, Pound, Stevens) and, inevitably, Martin Carter. Occasionally, when the
drink is flowing, we move onto poets that – in very different ways – haunt us: Blake, Coleridge,
Donne, Larkin, Milton and Yeats.
For me, Ian's poetic voice is probably closest to Robert Frost's, but I also sense an underlying
Englishness in the tone, something that would not have been out of place in Thomas Hardy, or
Edward Thomas. Like Frost's, the poems are beguilingly simple and conceal their craft. Often
they save their sole rhetorical flourish for the end – as in the striking final line of "God's Work" or
the closing couplet in "Calypso" which ends" … the ward is waltzing they calypso." This refusal
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to overstate matters often lends a Stoical quality to the observer, and makes him sound like a
man disabused of easy hopes. Sometime there are hints of Martin Carter's poetry too, most
noticeable in the pervasive sympathy for the ordinary folk who live at the margins of West Indian
middle-class life, men like Jaffo the Calypsonian, the lady who sells pine at Stabroek market, or
the charming misfits in the Mercy Ward.
While much of this is undoubtedly a question of temperament and personal taste, some must be
circumstantial too. In “Irrational Man”, his classic introduction to Existentialism, William Barrett
describes societies in “dissolution” as places where: “The individual is thrust out of the sheltered
nest that society has provided. He can no longer hide his nakedness by the old disguises. He
learns how much of what he has taken for granted was by its own nature neither eternal nor
necessary but thoroughly temporal and contingent. He learns that the solitude of the self is an
irreducible dimension of human life no matter how completely that self had seemed to be
contained in its social milieu. In the end, he sees man as solitary and unsheltered before his
own death.” I have always read Ian this way, as someone with a patrician education who was
also temperamentally unsuited to conventional thinking about race, class or any of our usual
middle-class hangups; a man who held his nerve amidst much that was 'thoroughly temporal
and contingent" and persisted in conditions of cultural solitude that would have silenced most
writers.
Wilson Harris and Martin Carter, unblushingly, could have cited the philosophy of Heidegger
and Sartre as glosses to their work. I can't imagine Ian claiming either, far less using a term like
geworfenheit (the sense of „thrownness‟, of being cast into a bewildering world) that Heidegger
used to describe the starting point of the individual‟s quest for authenticity. Perhaps that is
because Harris and Carter met these problems head-on, politically and philosophically, and
strove for definitive answers. Ian does not seem to have suffered – at least on the page –
anything comparable to their existential angst, and his has been a sotto voce agnosticism in the
face of larger doubts and questions. Even so, much of his poetry begins from a similar point of
view. He observes landscape with as much awe as Harris – his lyricism in his Essequibo poems
is as reverential as anything in The Palace of the Peacock, just without the complexities. And
while Ian registers the belittlement of ordinary people as sensitively as far more radical writers
his poems tactfully refrain from judgements, political or otherwise.
I would argue that the key to this middle way is Ian‟s long experience of Guyana, specifically the
breadth of his knowledge of our relationship with sugar. Nobody familiar with the unremitting toil
of the estates can harbour pastoral illusions about rural life, or poverty, in this country. But when
you also have firsthand knowledge of the near impossibility of doing business with a society
driven by racial politics and misplaced political experiments, you are unlikely to stake your future
on anything like Carter‟s rousing “dream to change the world.” Ian's commitment to – his
convictions about – Guyana are as intense as any I have known, but they have never embodied
themselves in party political terms. Like my father he was intimately familiar with local politics
and thoroughly skeptical of its necessary simplifications.
If Ian is guided by an attachment to something transcendent, I believe it his commitment to the
power of the written word. His unshakeable belief – one I share – that a few rare documents
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(the American Constitution, Shakespeare's plays and poems, the King James Bible, the work of
a small handful of poets) carry within them the power to reshape societies, to open up brand
new ways of finding a home in the world. In a secular age these revelations are largely passed
on through the arts, but their effects are quite similar.
In the last few months we have both enjoyed Stephen Greenblatt‟s fascinating book on the
recovery of Lucretius' De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) and the consequences of its
reintroduction to the Western canon. Unable to encompass the full scope of Lucretius' legacy,
Greenblatt at one point simply lists some of his major insights, among them the idea that: The
highest goal of human life is the enhancement of pleasure and the reduction of pain. Life should
be organized to serve the pursuit of happiness. There is no ethical purpose higher than
facilitating this pursuit for oneself and one‟s fellow creatures. All the other claims – the service of
the state, the glorification of the gods or the ruler, the arduous pursuit of virtue through self-
sacrifice – are secondary, misguided, or fraudulent. ... A failure to recognize the boundaries of
these needs leads human beings to a vain and fruitless struggle for more and more.
After re-reading Ian's Selected Poems, and savouring the new poetry collected here, I can see
that his instincts run along a similar path. William Blake memorably wrote that "He who binds
himself to a joy/ Does the winged life destroy. / He who kisses the joy as it flies / Lives in
eternity's sunrise." I believe this distinction nicely catches what will last in Ian's work. For
although he has chosen to remain in a culture that tends to drive its creative class towards the
angst of Existentialism, Ian has withstood that temptation through a natural proclivity towards
pleasure in things that are too sublime, or inconsequential, for politics; he has kept faith with this
Epicurean view of life, in Guyana and other parts of the Caribbean, and argued for it in Lucretian
lucidity.
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Anger
I mistook the falling moon
for a white hawk in the night
aloft amid the splintering cloud
it screamed but it was only the harsh wind
a wolf raced across the songless land.
Storm-bursts of light cracked
the heavens not long a jumbled jar of stars
dark-wrapped glittering darts of gold
changed utterly the gentle passions of the day
the patterned peace of quiet long routines:
caverns of fire, a wheel of iron turning,
the wild wind screaming like a hawk.
Ian McDonald.
ANY POEM
You can make a poem about anything.
In fact, that would be the first line of it:
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about life, how it passes
about death, how it comes
about beauty, how it lasts
while it lasts
about love, which is a strong thing
but strong things break
about the old lady in lace
who lived a hundred years
and is forgotten
about home, which is bright
about great men, who wear out
quicker then stones
about truth which is fidgety
and will not stand still
about eternity, which time contains
about God, who invented Himself
like a poem.
Ian McDonald.
at the end
the path not cleared, steep and wild,
thorn bush and small birds beaked like eagles
rock-scuttling spiders small as berries
twelve wolfteeth white as a hill of chalk
gleamed to a snarl on the vined bridge
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barring the way to heaven, no going there,
the scent of smoky candles, the accordion
whine of green and delicate crickets
endlessly sound under grey cloud shot with red
the rainbow-caverned, swallow-haunted gulf
din not dimmed by distance now, an altar’s rising mist.
I cannot reach the end of words
I cannot fix a tether on the truth
the archive still to come of newer meanings
I should go back before it is too late
the fallintoforever and fierce final rush of wind
the blue light of void endless and content.
Ian McDonald.
Dream Heron
The glory, the shining, the certainty, the silence,
the marvelous peace, the gleam of water-glade.
Age grips me but I feel young again,
such beauty is the spur to live forever.
The great white bird tugs itself to heaven,
it seems to step upwards in the morning air.
In my memory it lives, my eyes are clear
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as when I was a boy all the days before me,
time still in the shadow of green trees,
flowers pouring from the freshened earth,
a froth of colours, a cauldron rush of brightness,
that white ascension! Life intact and new
summoned from an empty season.
Ian McDonald.
Goat Boy The goat boy grows old:
under the burning sun he worked,
under the moon he worked,
he vanished in days of changeless labouring.
His bones begin to crack,
he cannot fall on mountains anymore,
roll down to the bright stream,
laugh, shake the bright hair of the sun
out of his green eyes.
Life is perfect in the lair of wolves.
The smell of bird-dung.
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the taste of bread from the fireplace
the sweetness of water in a red jar
the hours that spin into splendid years.
Small additions blessed him,
mangoes plucked from the abundant tree.
The goggle-eyed scarecrow he feared
never came to claim him.
Ian McDonald.
Homecoming (For Young Brian Lara)
There was such a mass of people there was so much joy. We stood in the sun for hours sweat-soaked, hungry, happy. A gust of rain came, we exulted.
At first there was a barrier but that broke, a surge of people
flooded to the platform’s foot.
I was carried in that surge jostling for position, good-humoured
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police just part of the crowd.
The whole world echoed with his fame he was ours: we waited to consume him feed on his glory in those thin times.
We roared when the young prince came we threw our hands high in praise: the crowd had a full throat! Everyone was in good voice, some singing everything vivid, a bird soaring, black ant on the skin this was when life gathers and unfolds as at a wedding, a birth, a deliverance.
He said a few simple words: it was from God the runs came it was for everybody, not him alone a few more words he said that he was glad he had done it for his father, for his mother, for us he thanked us, it was a blessing he waved the bat, full of the sweetness of those runs!
What a glory to be there! We drifted away in our sodden clothes heavy with tiredness, satisfied we walking into our other lives. Ian McDonald.
Last Days
I cannot walk without stumbling
in the unlit garden. The shower of gold
in its beauty dismays me. I remember
children crying in a stranger’s arms.
I am always reminded of death. Everything
reminds me of death, the frequency of flowers,
the sharpness of knives. I rise again.
The moon is a badly shaped heart.
Ian McDonald.
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Lightning in the Fall
From morning light I stayed out in the fall air
never wanting to come in, to miss anything,
how the sun shone, how the clouds traveled across the land
the cold land and the golden trees
once were green pastures of quiet.
I walked abroad as far as I could
I was surprised at the calmness of people
in this sepulchre of bright days
this burial ground of lions.
Everything was ordinary, only a murmur on the wind
and two strangers, bent old women, walking
slowly raised thin hands in triumphant style.
All the day long history had cleared its throat
preparing at last to cough out long- collected phlegm.
I stayed outside to wander in the night
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to see what beauty might still be hidden
after the day had gathered in its toll of deaths
and marveling, marveling at the jagged stars.
Ian McDonald.
SILENCE
I walk here alone among sea-birds:
the graveyard slopes to the sea
a sheet of gold at sunset.
Mahogany trees set against the sun-gold,
Small green leaves appearing after last week’s rain,
overhang moss-mottled gravestones
fearsome in their silence
Solid and serious and unending rock,
they terrify me in their silence.
The sea-birds without motion sway in the wind.
It is a long time since I spoke with those I loved.
Ian McDonald.
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SPEAKING TO THE GODS
On the village outskirts, by the water’s edge,
where great disaster struck, stands a church,
white, wooden, new, built on sacred ground.
In that place before were modest habitations
in which no one atall escaped the killing sea
when it rose up one night cascading in
to smash and drown every single soul,
dissolving corpses torn and withered by the sea.
As memorial the village fathers chose a church
to honour the dead with prayers and song
so they be not forgotten and the sea not rise again.
Those who planned the shrine did this
to get the Gods to listen: collected randomly,
as Fate is random in what it does not save,
remembrances that survived the mortal wreck
and blessed, anointed, cared and placed
them to fill an excavated place beneath a simple altar.
There they rest forever speaking to the Gods:
tables, kitchen pots, portraits, a fishing spear,
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an intact necklace of great beauty, an axe, a bucket,
school uniforms and dresses, caps and shawls,
a fat carved owl which was a toy or amulet,
Christmas balloons of joyous red and green:
miscellany of living before sudden, awful death.
And bells, bells which a few households kept
which whisper still for those who come to mourn
and forever will when all are gone to dust.
Ian McDonald.
Tanner Loses the Sun Tanner has a lesser mind
Tanner is full of love
He runs everywhere and laughs
Tanner throws his arms out wide
Tanner wants to hug the world
He sometimes spins in rapid circles
like a top and he falls down
Sometimes Tanner is still as stone
asks desperate questions with his eyes
Every day death closes in
Tanner is going to lose the sun
As it darkens fear shakes Tanner
Tanner points to heaven and ducks
black lizards haunt the hidden sky
frantic, frantic, Tanner frantic
Some nights Tanner screams non-stop
Pray for Tanner, everyone,
Pray for morning in the world.
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Testimony
I saw a child, a thin girl, about six
carrying a weight of water, two pails on a stick.
She made staggering, small steps, the water splashed
and wasted in the burning sun on her.
I could not bring myself to run to her
I told myself it would do no good
the child would be frightened, spilling the pails.
I remembered urchins in bustling Regent Street
a long, long time ago, dancing for money,
thin faces stern and sad, old eyes.
I flung the money and hurried by
they danced on collecting the coins as they spun.
Once at a restaurant’s fancy door
children accosted me, uttering not a word
it seemed they were too near, hustling me
putting out their hands almost touching me.
I offered them nothing with an ugly face
they were disturbing my peace of mind.
Whatever good I did in my life is cancelled
by such deeds, these anguished memories.
Time is just. This night seems long.
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The Bone-Trip
Bone-trip, he called it, his brutal name
for dying: “The bone-trip is always hard.”
I remember his face lit by fire,
cracked into a thousand creases
as he bent over, hardening nails:
he repaired boots for working men in Gentle street.
One day his smiling partner wasn’t there.
“Well, bruds gone to make his bone-trip now.”
Wiped his sweaty face with rag
went on nailing the rough, strong boots.
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The Comfort of All Things
I went out for an evening swim alone
a perfect pendant of lightning blazed
deep in a far thunder-head as I walked.
I was astonished how it lit the world
revealing smallest details I would have missed
now they really exist. I pick a stone up,
feel it, smell the wet dirt, rub it clean
its shape is marvelously unique
I wrap it in a gold leaf I have also noticed
walk on, wind rising over the wide water
the ancient lantern of the moon aloft
for aeons gone and to come, the river washing
and retreating, swaying in the vertigo of time.
Immensities surround me, infinity of sky
swimming a long way out, full of peace
I think how old I am compared with the stars.
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The Edge of Night
Watchman by the seawall koker
twenty years I met him on my walks
seawind and sunset I see recalling him.
He smoked his curly pipe, we talked
fireflies sparking in the low, protected fields.
I often thought what a life he’s lived
but what a life is any life that’s lived.
He was old when he began this job
guardian of the tidal gates of town.
Got away from a rum-soaked father’s home
wandered far to other lonely lands
and home again he never built a home
or had one woman or concerned himself with God
“Ah live from then to now an’ don’ remember how.”
Eyes far away as stars beyond our counting
an old man stranded on the edge of night.
Long ago he was a forest guide
went with Museum teams in Essequibo
and made a name for his strange collections.
One day he brought for their inspection
a black and shiny scorpion whose helmet-head was gold
They honoured him, he was named discoverer
the keepsake plaque engraved in Latin script.
I tell him it is beautifully done
he gestures, the sea in tumult rises at our feet.
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The Golden Barns of God
Life has been long and good
but it is not forever.
I will not come again to the savannahs
out of the green, beloved trees
root-red streams we passed, the silvered banks
I will not see again this far horizon
where the great rock silos rise
thunder of the Gods around them.
Is there meaning in what we are and do?
Ah, the end and purpose of all creation!
Endless time has brought this to my eyes:
the wild winds throwing the birds
the air becoming marvellously bright
the large sun sinking to the very
edge and end of the world
the golden barns of God ablaze.
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The Universe Illustrated by Hubble
Godlike are the great valleys of the sky.
The immense and glowing spires of heaven
soar upwards in gold and purple masses,
endless voids pricked with starry worlds
extend beyond time in marvelous successions
of bright stone-encrusted endless abysses.
Explosions vast as half of space are frozen
in all the colours of a billion sunsets,
cargoes of jewels spilled down precipices
collect in heaped and brilliant treasure piles.
Fruits of a million stars stain and ripple
the sheer sides of green pavilions built
on perilous black cliffs above deep seas of blue.
Vaulted heavens writhe with clothes of gold,
waterfalls of silver and blaze of comet tails.
See shining deserts of cold white ice reflect
Mexican gardens of burning yellow blooms.
And there is pooled molasses all a-swirl
with mercury drops and sumptuous leaves of gilt.
Beyond the climb of chasms rain curtains ascend
and hallways shadowed by tall fretwork arches
march in tremendous ranks towards the end of time.
Out of nothingness, endless purity of white,
this came and briefly wakes into being
life, beauty, wonder, eternity of dreams,
thought, the phantom world of numbers, love even.
Sudden blaze of cathedral colours in the night:
in this walk towards God, what happens next,
why does birth come, why are we privileged?
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Walter Ralegh’s Police Dossier, 10TH August, 1618
His last adventure to the fabled land,
“Guiana, whose rich feet are mines of gold,
Whose forehead knocks against the roof of stars,”
failed. Returning to a king’s wrath, he tried escape.
His heart was hardly in it: tricked and trapped, remembering much of love and seas of storm and treasure,
weary, old, Fate beckoned and he surrendered: the scaffold may have seemed the last brave thing to do. His person gave up all the Indies:
£50 in gold coin
A wedge of 22-carat gold A stobb of coarser gold A chain of gold with diamond sparks Sixty-three gold buttons with diamond sparks A diamond ring of nine sparks
A naval officer’s whistle set around with small diamonds
An ancient silver seal bearing roebucks from Ralegh’s
coat-of-arms A Symson stone set in gold A sprig jewel mounted with soft stones and a ruby One ounce of ambergris, pungent flotsam of warm oceans One spleen stone from Guiana, for the cure of melancholy A lodestone in a scarlet purse A diamond finger ring given him by Elizabeth the Queen A gold-cased miniature of the Lady Elizabeth, his wife, its frame set fair with diamonds
Three sea cards or charts of the West Indies which, out of everything, Ralegh was most reluctant to hand over One plott or map of Guiana and the New Kingdom Another plott and description of the river Orinoco Five silver-mine samples
One jacinth seal engraved with Neptune’s figure and, tied
with string to it, a specimen of Guiana ore An idol from Guiana made of gold and copper.
He got one ring to keep, deep ocean blue. Marvel, dream: centuries pass, the shaken loom of history gleams.
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What It Was Like Once Forever
The perfect day is upon me.
I wake to see the gleaming salmon
spring in the dark river of the morning,
the wind full of sea-salt and garden-flower,
the trees brimming slowly with green.
Mongoose, snake-catcher, sleek as a seal,
darts out of sight: I give him a sharp salute
I give life a salute, the beauty it provides.
The day progresses well, people are well-disposed,
what is owed to business is efficiently transacted.
At home I leap heavenwards as high as I can,
not far but bravely done: my wife smiles,
she shakes her head, after all I am close to seventy-five.
There is no limit to our love,
even death will set no limit.
Our sons are content, healthy as snorting horses,
they will be coming soon.
I write this absurdly happy verse
To tell what it was like once forever.
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15 more poems_ for “The Comfort of All Things” by Ian McDonald
A Gathering At The World’s End
It was a bad year for the people
a comet set trees blazing far and wide
the rivers rose past history’s highest mark
drowning the most solid encampments
a swarm of eagles completely hid the sun
with their flashing talons and burnished wings
at the foot of a far mountain
a giant was unearthed
eye-sockets filled with gold.
In such times what could be foretold
except mysteries and death?
Yet here was a child whispering to its mother
a man embracing his kin
sounds that seemed like music
a sword set aside in a corner
and the warmth of the roasted loaves
brought the message of endless blessings.
Ian McDonald
De Rerum Natura
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Nothing so beautiful
their brightness on the evening air
the sun hurling down spears of colour
I have taken up my garden seat
to read Lucretius’s great poem
eat white-kernelled almonds
life wakening on the shores of light.
their shimmering and gleam
amid the green leaves
flower to flower flashing
incandescent blessings on the wing
Long ago they skimmed the trees
their inch-long skeletons
bound in age-old crystal rock
and still they fly this very day
you cannot cage their fire
they drop and drably die
their shoulders miniature as watch-gems
rotate the hurry of their humming wings
incomparable intricacies of flight.
The sun goes down beneath the sea
still they fly and shine for me
their wonder and corn-scatter of the stars.
Ian McDonald.
EASTER BELLS
Western breeze
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Sweet and lovely Carrying bells In swirls of silver: Running, calling, Dream-awakening, Calling people Easterward. Bells rung before Light of morning: Cool-dark time And candlelight,
Sound of houses Church-preparing. Look and glory: Trees are hung With ancient stars. Life is holy, Who can doubt it?
Western breeze Sweet and holy, Carrying bells In swirls of silver: Running, calling, Loving, surely, Calling people Easterward.
Ian McDonald.
Exploration Of A Dream The changing nature of desire: passion drives us until we covet peace. This need we share with all the world to fill our lives with lasting satisfactions.
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The impermance of what is gone and coming,
journeying without a sorcerer’s direction,
deftest fingers cannot grip the air. Think if time could be devoured a feast laid before us being born the days continually like wine. Sadly time is without any savour it has no substance, colour, scent less than oranges sucked dry a dry bone or desert husk of corn less than blood buried in a grave. It passes and is still to come no meanwhile ever comes to rest. We are phantoms running towards a fire. Ian McDonald.
GEOMETRY OF THE DYING MIND
These are bad days now Geometry of the dying mind decrees zero makes into zero the enduring primes of life. It is not the mournful rain or the cough deep in the chest that must be given serious attention
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or the cracks widening in the wall which must be strongly plastered and the unmown grass, the unraked golden flowers going brown. The defects again appearing as they have always appeared are willingly corrected. It is not the income and the bills their measurement and balancing the habit of dealing with matters as they arise the responsibility of getting things done for others the birthrights, the schooling, the protection and the love. In the fullness of life everything is good A wondrous maze of problems and of joys everlasting harvest of desires. Now the doing and the doing over will not have to be done again. Ian McDonald.
Idea into Word
In time’s eternal mist
resting between red flowers
green leaves glistening
heron perched on a flamboyant tree.
Strange and graceful silhouette
silver water still beneath
sun-pierced rain-cloud over all
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sky-dark and honey-fall.
The gleaming cut
and polish of creation
beauty invents the song of words.
Ian McDonald.
In The Ice Factory
I loved how they skidded the ice-blocks down
feeling the cold air as each one passed
the men in blue overalls doing an ordinary thing.
I read how gold Castilian swords are made
for ceremony by veteran scholars in the art.
Plunged in the green canals of Venice for a dare
scraping the mossy walls of age-old chapels.
In the kitchen of a restaurant in Sherriff Street
a chef with huge black eye-brows stirring soup
I remember that as exactly as anything I ever saw.
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In the Anglican Cathedral of St. Johns Antigua
by the high altar hangs a fighter-plane propellor,
wooden and scarred, in honour of my cousin.
In Essequibo mists the sun breaks through
makes lovely patterns they could be mermaids swimming
and that river air is so new and the stars
when the rain cleans the sky, the stars!
A rose-coloured water-jug perfect
in one of the old wooden houses in Kitty.
Never forgotten: Uncle Bertie showing the bat
that made centuries for his country.
Ah! my wife’s thirty-year old garden, full of peace.
The limitless wonder of the world!
I walked once high as clouds and saw
a pathway of blossoms and grasshoppers
the strangeness of the tops of trees.
Ian McDonald
I Learned It All In One Kind Meeting (for Frank Collymore)
I learned it all in one kind meeting he praised a small thing I had sent young and eager to make an instant mark. He showed me how it could be better done important to get it absolutely right, he smiled, so much at stake, so much at stake. He walked quietly in the history of his people pointing out, not screaming, this matters, this is good. Write words carefully, they will last longer then empire, they will shake our world.
Ancient and useful as the farmer’s trade
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cultivation of language is an equal craft. Constructions of the mind bequeath the most tales told well are told for evermore. What he meant and wanted us to do: hourly practise the measurement of truth sort out the saying of good stories set forth as daily food the privileges of art. Build him a monument of a green tree growing With fruit to pick for generations to come.
Ian McDonald.
LEGACY Our garden grew an old, gnarled orange tree when I was young, its fruits were sugar-sweet. Spent hours in its branchy shade, reading, meanwhile picking, peeling, sucking fruit thinking how good life is, sweet, shaded from the bright sun, a wind blowing and the book falling open at beloved passages.
I remember the sun’s soft, musky warmth, the cool shade,
the beautiful sweetness of the oranges, the book on the grass unfurled by my side. I searched the sky for hawks, coasting on air, messages on high of strength and grace. It is such a perfect day, boyhood is summed up. What I speak of is past sixty years and more so alive I hear the gold wasps buzz,
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feel the squeezed juice drip upon my finger-tips licked to get the last full drops of sweetness. And every page so good to read and think about I savour all, then returned to savour all again. I did not want their end to come, I did not want the day to end. Nothing is lost, mind stores up for wondrous use a world of beauty hidden in the head not to be conveyed from life to life completely, only in this fade and pale of words, This deep pleasure which awakens and gives solace
I would have my sons inherit above all things –
but that is legacy not for me to leave. They will love, imagine, beyond my measure.
Ian McDonald.
Listen To The Wolves
From the peaceful forest a disturbance of kings. Nothing is rightfully ours
the Monastery’s fine crop of sorrel
will not be reaped this year there is hardly one child left in the settlements. Walls with strong foundations have been built against the tall seas that are coming the thunder of horses across the sunlit heavens avalanches of ice descending. Deeper than that, newly discovered atoms swerve and weave through restless time everywhere the wreckage of stars. Listen to the wolves their strange music comes on the wind
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splinters of gold fall from their coats. My heart drums against my side in my dreams lately I hear voices call for healing. Ian McDonald.
NIGHTFALL (For Mary)
The day so sweet before night falls Let us love forever until night falls
I’ve grown old
my night falls soon I will leave you far too soon You know our love it will not fail Without end my love until night falls Ian McDonald.
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STRANGE PLOT
Strange fellowship of the earth, Stones in the graveyard side by side. The new one brightly cut and shone For Meg Longstreet died at ninety-three, And one time-darkened, cracked and crooked, Inscribed for Meg who died at six months old She never walked upon this golden earth Nor heard the drum of life go rat-a-tat-tat and boom. It never ends through long and fruitful years The joy, the love, the hope, the good times passing,
The first-born’s never-ending loss endures.
“Lay me to rest by my beloved daughter Meg.”
Ian McDonald.
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PAINTING These strange moments he painted, so still, so silent: cold grass in the dark forest moonlight dripping through tall clouds his shredded lungs paper thin rattling in the night wind. He walked upriver in the old forest a summer midnight sweeter than springtime how he loved the green and towering trees! The girl weeping on the forest floor he tasted her salt tears felt her beating heart under the small breasts and her breath gasping for another he never saw the girl again: only the memory of a slip of lace, an indrawn breath, tears salt as the sea but as they lay, beyond her shoulder a huge toad came flopping slowly, dully shining, on the grey grass towards them slowly the helpless tumbling of things through time. Ian McDonald.
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On Being Shown Around His Room By The Poet
A bed-chamber full of mirrors
awash with moons which fly between the clouds.
A drawer tips open dusty with some half-made poems
“Do not go near water
if you want to see the moon.”
Slowly he shakes his head again, again
finger to his lips as if for silence
his eyes are lit with fire
lit with fire and with joy.
Rocks an empty chair
he says he never sits in.
He offers a few plums on a plate
I am trying to tell exactly
as I can what that room was like:
“what the thing is, not what it should be.”
Tip-toed around the mirrors
“the beauty of doors that never open.”
I wish I remembered everything he said
“tear-stains on a poem, throw it in the fire!”
Ian McDonald.
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NOTE
Add “Marigolds”
Total of 34 Poems