Derek Mahon

Its practically my subject, my theme: solitude and community; the weirdness and terrors of solitude; the stifling and the consolations of community. Also, the consolations of solitude. But it is important for me to be on the edge looking in. Ive been inside, Ive spent lots of time inside. Now again, I appear to be outside; perhaps Ill be inside once again. I dont know. On the formal side . . . I was talking recently to a very nice young woman who seemed to be coming from the current literary orthodoxy; she used two phrases of her studentsone was about giving them permission to write and the other was about creating a warm space for them to write. Now, poetry written with permission in warm spaces, theres far too much of thatand that is the voice of community. What interests me is forbidden poetry written by solitaires in the cold, written by solitaires in the open, which is where the human soul really is. That for me is where poetry really is. (from an interview with Eamonn Grennan, The Paris Review)

Grandfather
Theme: This sonnet paints a picture of his grandfather as a mysterious but reassuring presence. This is an affectionate portrait of a family member. Its warmth is so untypical of the other poems by Mahon on the course that one could be excused for thinking it was by Seamus Heaney.

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St Andrew's College 2011

The first image we have of him is as he is carried in on a stretcher - perhaps after an accident in the shipyard where he worked - where he is 'wounded but humorous'. The second encourages us to believe his childhood is mysterious. His native landscape is unknown but certainly not the industrialized Belfast familiar to Mahon. In the third snapshot he passes his time engaged in inexplicable tasks that involve nails and bits of wood, amusing himself in a harmless way 'like a four-year-old' and, again mysteriously, 'never there when you call'. In the sestet, this frail, childlike presence gives way to a craftier, reassuring figure. After dark, a time when children sometimes lie awake listening anxiously to strange sounds, his great boots thump reassuringly in the hall. The words 'boots' and 'thumping' create a sense of power or weight. He is far from being senile: he is sharp and alert -' as cute as they come'. His eyes are not the weak eyes of old age; they are shrewd and capable of bolting the door and even stopping the hands of time ('set the clock against the future'). He seems omniscient - 'nothing escapes him'. His wisdom is such that no one in the family can fathom him - 'he escapes us all'.

After the Titanic

Bruce Ismay

Theme: The theme of this poem is the pain of living with the consequences of one's actions. The poem is in the form of a monologue or soliloquy by Bruce Ismay (1862-1937), manager of the White Star Line, the company that owned the Titanic. He survived the

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sinking of the ship and was afterwards accused of having encouraged the captain to sail the ship too fast, of ignoring ice warnings, of having abused his position of authority to gain access to the lifeboats and of having given orders to lower his lifeboat in to the water while there were still empty places. He denied these charges, claiming that he assisted women and children into the lifeboat, which he boarded only when the decks were clear. [] Captain Smith gave the order to clear the boats. I helped in this work for nearly two hours as far as I can judge. I worked at the starboard boats, helping women and children into the boats and lowering them over the side. I did nothing with regard to the boats on the port side. By that time every wooden lifeboat on the starboard side had been lowered away, and I found that they were engaged in getting out the forward collapsible boat on the starboard side. I assisted in this work, and all the women that were on this deck were helped into the boat. They were all, I think third-class passengers. As the boat was going over the side Mr. Carter, a passenger, and myself got in. At that time there was not a woman on the boat deck, nor any passenger of any class, so far as we could see or hear. The boat had between 35 and 40 in it; I should think most of them women. There were perhaps, four or five men, and it was afterwards discovered that there were four Chinamen concealed under the thwarts in the bottom of the boat. The distance that the boat had to lower was, I should estimate, about 20 ft. Mr. Carter and I did not get into the boat until after they had begun to lower it away. When the boat reached the water I helped to row it, pushing the oar from me as I sat. This is the explanation of the fact that my back was to the sinking steamer. The boat would have accommodated certainly six or more passengers in addition, if there had been any on the boat deck to go.
- Ismay's personal statement cabled from New York published in The Times 23 April 1912. Source: http://www.titanichistoricalsociety.org/articles/ismay.asp

In fact, the records show that he was one of forty-two people rescued from the lifeboat known as Collapsible C, of whom thirteen were male and twenty-nine were female. He was one of only two first-class passengers in Collapsible C. Ismay was questioned at length during official enquiries held in New York and London. His answers were always brief. He rarely volunteered any information and was unable to answer questions that required the detailed knowledge that might be expected of the owner of the most prestigious ship ever built. He maintained that, despite being the managing director of the shipping line, his status on the 'Titanic' was identical to that of any other passenger. The following is a transcript of part of his testimony: When you got into the boat you thought that the "Titanic" was sinking? - I did. Did you know that there were some hundreds of people on that ship? - Yes. Who must go down with her? - Yes, I did. Has it occurred to you that, except perhaps apart from the Captain, you, as the responsible Managing Director, deciding the number of boats, owed your life to every other person on that ship? - It has not.

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However, the report exonerated Ismay of any misconduct: As to the attack on Mr. Bruce Ismay, it resolved itself into the suggestion that, occupying the position of Managing Director of the Steamship Company, some moral duty was imposed upon him to wait on board until the vessel foundered. I do not agree. Mr. Ismay, after rendering assistance to many passengers, found "C" collapsible, the last boat on the starboard side, actually being lowered. No other people were there at the time. There was room for him and he jumped in. (Ismay, 18559) Had he not jumped in he would merely have added one more life, namely, his own, to the number of those lost. (See: http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/bio/p/1st/ismay_jb.shtml for more information on Ismay and the Titanic; if you've nothing better to do, a woman who believes she was Bruce Ismay in a past life has a site at: www.bruceismay.com [ January 2004]) 'After the Titanic', he spent most of his time in his fishing lodge in Casla, in Connemara. He donated huge sums of money to charitable societies that looked after retired seamen. This poem allows Ismay not so much to give us his version of the events of that night as to let us see that while he 'got away in a boat' he did not get away scot-free. Now he 'hides' in a 'lonely house'. However, the sea still haunts him; it washes 'broken toys and hatboxes' up in front of his door, ghostly reminders of the people who drowned. He has paid a terrible cost over the years in terms of guilt and remorse. His nerves appear to be shattered and he is addicted to cocaine. 'After nights of wind', he is confined to bed and relives the events of the Titanic's sinking and sees again the drowning faces of those who did not make it into the lifeboats. In the last lines of the poem, the monologue becomes a prayer as Ismay asks to be included in 'your lamentations'. This word has biblical connotations as it recalls the Book of Lamentations, a series of five prayers for mercy for those who survived the fall of Jerusalem in the sixth century BC. The last prayer ends with lines that call into question the mercy of God: Why dost thou forget us for ever, why dost thou so long forsake us? ...hast thou utterly rejected us? Art thou exceedingly angry with us?1 The implication is that Ismay, also a survivor, feels equally abandoned by God and will live the rest of his life in a kind of hell on earth. He too is one of the lost souls.

Lamentations 5.19-22 St Andrew's College 2011

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Ecclesiastes
Theme: This poem is a scathing attack on religious bigotry, especially as it manifests itself in Northern Ireland. The Book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament was thought to have been written by King Solomon. It questions the meaning of life. Ecclesiastes has various meanings: 'churchman' or 'preacher' but can also mean community or assembly. The word ecclesiastical means related to the Church or Church matters The poem attacks a narrow-minded, joyless, puritan strain of Christianity often associated with fundamentalist sects in Northern Ireland. Mahon strikes a mocking, taunting note from the outset. He castigates them for their duplicity ('wiles and smiles'), their belief that children playing on Sunday is sinful ('the tied-up swings') and their refusal to engage fully with the world around them ('shelter your heart from the heat of the world'). He points out the contradiction inherent in the behaviour of many so-called spiritual people: they make a great show of being abstemious but refuse to 'understand and forgive' their neighbour. Instead of having a real conversation with their neighbour, they speak only with 'a bleak afflatus'. Afflatus can be taken to mean here 'words with religious connotations that have been learned off by heart'. It comes from the same Latin root that gives us 'flatulence' and therefore contains the notion of 'hot air' or meaningless words. In other words, they repeat bleak religious messages to their neighbour instead of really communicating. Ironically, therefore, the preacher does the opposite of what Solomon does in the Book of Ecclesiastes: Solomon questioned everything; the preacher merely repeats ready-made answers. The harsh curtness of the adjectives bleak, black, dark, dank convey the joylessness of these sects and the grimness of their churches. When Mahon instructs the preacher to 'bury the red bandana and stick, that banjo' he is evoking a way of looking at the world that is directly opposed to that of the bigots. The bandana, stick and banjo are emblems of the devil-may-care wanderer, the adventurer, the hobo, the drifter who has left a broken-hearted sweetheart behind in every town he has visited. He is someone who has little thought for anything beyond his next glass of whiskey, and least of all for attending a dank church on Sundays. He continues to pour scorn at the preacher when he tells him to 'close one eye and be king'. (The allusion is to the saying 'In the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed man is king.') The implication is that these people have a blinkered view of the world and that the only reason they are in a position of power is that their followers are even more 'blind' than they are. The grandiose tone of 'Your people await you' is undercut by Mahon's dismissing them as 'a credulous people'. (Credulous means 'gullible'.) His final jibe at the preacher is to portray

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him standing on a street corner preaching, promising 'nothing under the sun'. His promises are as empty as his view of life is.

As It Should Be
Theme: This poem, like the previous one, was born out of the poet's experiences in Northern Ireland and, also like Ecclesiastes, looks at the effects of a blinkered view of the world. Although the poem alludes to a play by Denis Johnston that deals with the Irish Civil War of the 1920s, it is more likely to have been inspired by, and to refer to, the wave of paramilitary murder that started in the late 1960s. As with many of Mahon's poems, this is a monologue. Here, the speaker is a killer who presents a justification for his actions. It is the same justification behind all political violence: namely, that the world will be a better place for it. But in this case, he does not plead the superiority of any one political system over another; there is no reference to complex theories concerning the nature of power; nor, as is frequently the case in Northern Ireland, is there any reference to the injustice of living under 'an occupying force': it is simply a question of quality of life - the air will blow softer after the 'departure' of the victim. He enlists our sympathy immediately by referring to his victim as 'the mad bastard' and describes quickly but vividly how he and his associates chased him over bogland, cornered him in a lorry yard and gunned him down. In the second stanza he tells the reader to dismiss any notions of lofty political ideals ('the moon in the yellow river'): his murder was prompted by practical considerations and the world is a better place without him. The idea that the killer is performing a service to the community is reiterated in the next stanza. The knowledge that the community's children no longer have 'bad dreams' and that their happy cries can be heard along the coast is justification enough. The dogmatic voice of the last stanza is that of someone who will not listen to another person's point of view. He expects the murder to be accepted unquestioningly as a good thing. The speaker is unshakeable in his belief that future generations will thank him and his associates for their actions.

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St Andrew's College 2011

A Disused Shed in County Wexford

All mankind is us, whether we like it or not
Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett

Theme: This poem looks at the issue of human suffering. The breadth of its scope, temporally and geographically, from Pompeii to World War II, from Peru through India to Wexford strengthens its universal relevance. It is a plea to us all to acknowledge our common humanity; to realise that 'all it takes for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing'.2 It asks, in effect, that we all become 'resistance fighters' in the struggle against evil. The poem begins by looking at some remote, secluded places 'where a thought might grow' - abandoned mines in Peru, compounds in India, crevices, places where dogs bury bones and, finally, a disused shed in Co Wexford. Stanza two narrows the focus in a manner reminiscent of the cinematic effect where the camera seems to progressively close in on an object until we almost seem to see its molecular structure. It's as if we are observing the earth from a satellite-mounted camera and have chosen to look first at the planet as a whole, then Ireland, then Wexford, then the burnt-out hotel, then the shed and, finally close in on the keyhole of the shed in order to observe the inside through the keyhole. Line thirteen signals a surprising leap in terms of viewpoint: now we see the world from the perspective of 'a thousand mushrooms'. It is probably better at this stage just to accept unquestioningly that Mahon, in an extraordinary metaphor, is using the mushrooms to represent the numberless victims of suffering since the dawn of time, but especially those
2

Usually attributed to Edmund Burke (1729-1797), Irish political writer and politician. St Andrew's College 2011

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who suffered in the concentration camps of the Second World War. For those prisoners who huddled together in the near darkness of a squalid cell, the meagre light from a keyhole would be a 'star in their firmament'. Inside, they wait patiently in silence; sounds filter through from outside - 'rooks querulous in the high woods'. Stanza three emphasises the squalidness of their conditions. Their 'cell' is so overcrowded that they wait in a 'foetor' of sweat ( foetor means 'overpowering smell'). They have been abandoned since the departure of the owner of the hotel. He is described as an 'expropriated mycologist', i.e. a mushroom expert whose property (the hotel) has been confiscated or taken from him. During the Civil War in Ireland, many Anglo-Irish families, especially the owners of large country homes, were forced to abandon their properties as a result of intimidation. The fourth stanza attempts to convey something of the claustrophobic conditions of the 'cell' and of the fighting for survival that takes place among the 'prisoners'. Such details will be familiar to anyone who has read accounts of conditions in Nazi concentration camps such as can be found in the works of Primo Levi3. The infirm have died and been trampled into the earth; the strong have forced their way towards the light and the air; the rest have been waiting so long 'for their deliverance' that their bodies have stiffened into a posture of appeal. In the fifth stanza we witness their 'release'. It is described in a way designed to remind us of the release of the prisoners from the concentration camps at the end of WW II. Their incarceration for so long has made them sensitive to the light of flash bulbs and because of their frailty they can manage only 'the ghost of a scream'. They seem unnatural, inhuman, on the point of death. In the final stanza the mute victims, the 'lost people of Treblinka (a concentration camp in Poland) and Pompeii, implore us, the rest of the world, to do something, 'to speak on their behalf', to make a stand for what is right. They pray to be saved. The years they spent imprisoned are years that have been stolen from their lives. They feel they have endured so much. Their prayer is that we should not be like many tourists who visit the concentration camps for whom Auschwitz or Treblinka is just another stopping point on a busy whirlwind tour of Europe: Monday-Eurodisney, Tuesday-Auschwitz, WednesdayVenice. Their final prayer is that something positive should come out of their suffering 'Let not our nave labours be in vain.' The sentiments and tone of the last stanza bear a striking resemblance to a passage in Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, an Irish writer who, - interestingly, given the subject matter of this poem - was marked by his involvement as a Resistance fighter in WWII. Spoken by Vladimir, these lines refer to mysterious cries he hears at night. They serve to remind us that we all bear a responsibility to our fellow man: Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. Not indeed that we personally are needed. Others would meet the case equally well, if not better. To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or
3

An Italian Jew who was imprisoned in Auschwitz, author of If This Is a Man. St Andrew's College 2011

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not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late! Let us represent worthily for once the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned us! What do you say? . The tiger bounds to the help of his congeners without the least reflection, or else he slinks away into the depths of the thickets. But that is not the question. What are we doing here, that is the question.

Antarctica

Lawrence 'Titus' Oates

This poem dramatizes a moving event that occurred during the final days of Captain Robert Scott's 1911-1912 expedition to the Antarctic. Lawrence 'Titus' Oates was in poor physical condition. His feet and hands were suffering from frostbite and he was hampering his companions' already slim chances of returning safely. The issue of suicide had been discussed among the men as Scott's diary entry of 11 March 1912 clearly shows: Titus Oates is very near the end, one feels. What we or he will do, God only knows. We discussed the matter after breakfast; he is a brave fine fellow and understands the situation, but he practically asked for advice. Nothing could be said but to urge him to march as long as he could. One satisfactory result to the discussion; I practically ordered Wilson [the team's doctor ] to hand over the means of ending our troubles to us, so that any one of us may know how to do so [] We have thirty opium tablets apiece and he is left with a tube of morphine. Nearly a week later, on either 16 or 17 March (Scott was unsure of his dates), the following is recorded: [] Poor Titus Oates said he couldn't go on; he proposed we should leave him in his sleeping-bag. That we could not do and we induced him to come on [] At night he was worse and we knew the end had come [] Oates's last thoughts were of his mother, but immediately before he took pride in thinking that his regiment would be pleased with the bold way in which he met his death [] He did not - would not - give up hope until the very end. He was a brave soul. This was the end. He slept through the night before last, hoping not to wake; but he woke in the morning - yesterday. It was blowing a blizzard. He said, 'I am going outside and may be some time.' He went out into the blizzard and we have not seen him since.
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Scott's last diary entry is dated 29 March 1912. Everyday we have been ready to start for our depot eleven miles away, but outside the door of the tent it remains a scene of whirling drift. I do not think we can hope for any better things now. We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far. It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more - R..Scott Below this, in a lighter pen and in unsteadier handwriting: Last entry. For God's sake look after our people. The frozen bodies of Scott, Wilson, and Bowers were found in their tent by a search party on 12 November of that year. Wilson and Bowers had died in their sleeping bags; Scott, presumably in an attempt to speed his death, had thrown back the flaps of his sleeping bag and had opened his coat. Oates's body was never recovered. On a spot near the tent from which he had walked to his death, the men erected a cross with the following inscription: "Hereabouts died a very gallant gentleman, Captain L. E. G. Oates of the Inniskilling Dragoons. In March 1912, returning from the Pole, he walked willingly to his death in a blizzard to try to save his comrades, beset by hardship". (For a less heroic version of Oates and the Scott expedition, read I Am Just Going Outside by Michael Smith or go to: http://website.lineone.net/~polar.publishing/captainoates.htm ) The poem raises questions concerning the obvious issues of heroism and self-sacrifice. But one issue raised is that of the inadequacy of language. The poem suggests that language fails to convey adequately the complex reasoning and motivation that give rise to any human action. It is sometimes unable to rise to the occasion, thereby making what should be sublime seem ridiculous. This recurring line is not original to Mahon: Thomas Paine (1737-1809) is credited with 'The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related, that it is difficult to class them separately. One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous, and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again'. This may have been the basis for Napoleon Bonaparte's comment in 1812 after his failure in Russia, 'The ridiculous is only one step away from the sublime'. Memory of these reasonably well-known quotations was perhaps triggered by the words of the expedition photographer, Herbert Ponting, who recalled a conversation with Oates

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in the winter of 1911. Oates said that each man should carry a pistol and 'should have the privilege of using it' on himself in the event of anyone becoming a burden to the others. Ponting added, 'There can be no question about the quality of Oates' sacrifice. It was sublime.'4 The poem takes as its starting point the contrast between the understatement of the actual words and the magnificence of the gesture to which they refer. Oates announces his selfsacrifice - it cannot accurately be termed suicide - as though he were popping down to the shops. The others, colluding in this fiction, nod as if stepping out in temperatures of minus forty-three were perfectly normal. By line five, he is already transforming into a ghost; by line seven, the tent has faded into the snow and Oates has lost consciousness. The last three stanzas seem to emphasise the nobility of Oates's decision: it will somehow 'glow' like a sublime light in the darkness of the meaningless night. The last stanza especially, perhaps alluding to Macbeth's 'Tomorrow and tomorrow' speech, portrays the world as a ridiculous and ignoble place - an 'earthly pantomime' - but one that Oates walks away from in a dignified manner.

Scott's Last Journey, ed. Peter King, (Duckworth, 1999), p.186. St Andrew's College 2011

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