And so the ordeal presents itself
in the detail of a life lived.
We know only what we have experienced.
The substance of our lives is what we know.
And in this next poem, which is quite a long poem--
it's called "Nightwalker"--
many of the details of my own experience,
which of course, is that of one born and bred in Ireland,
are brought into use.
"The nightwalker is someone who is taking a walk in a Dublin
suburb, leaving home, heading down
towards the seafront at Sandycove,
where as, you may remember, the Martello tower at the opening
of Joyce's Ulysses stands.
And Joyce is, at one section in the poem, the hero of the poem,
so to speak.
And indeed, the method of the poem, which is essentially
an interior monologue, is partly a tribute
to the method of Ulysses.
Also in parenthesis, any curious outbursts
you may hear towards the center of the poem
are quotations from Finnegans Wake.
The nightwalker is in a state of despondency,
he is reacting to memories of his day
and to things and happenings about him.
He is also acutely aware of the sort of thing
that anybody who had the same kind of upbringing as I
have had would be aware of.
For instance, when things become significant,
one thinks of one's history.
And here the references are, for instance,
to the famine which over 100 years ago reduced
Ireland's population by a catastrophic percentage.
Queen Victoria, under whose reign the famine took place
and who has left her mark on a great deal of our way of life
ever since, the rebellion of 1916
and the Civil War of great brutality
which followed shortly after.
Also certain contemporary facts of life
which it would be impossible to ignore,
living in Ireland at this time, mainly, curiously,
the idea of economic development,
which in a great sudden burst of drama and popularity,
became part of everybody's consciousness
about five or six years ago to such a degree
that people would be as likely to talk
about the gross national product as they would about say horse
racing or football in the pub.
And they are still as caught up in this.
The revival of the Irish language
is something which is the great part of our consciousness.
The official attempt to revive the Irish language
as the spoken language of the majority of the people.
I doubt myself that this has any hope of success,
but anything can happen.
The mismanagement of the Abbey theater and so on,
these are references which you may catch.
I hope you will, but if you don't, I
don't believe that they will make a great deal of difference
to the point of the poem, which I stress again
is not really satire, it's not social comment.
It is simply what the nightwalker is most aware of,
the context of violence inside and outside
and it's a sad poem about violence.
I only know things seem and are not good.
A brain in the dark, unborn, out exercising shadowy flesh.
Fitness for the soft belly, fresh air
for lungs that take no pleasure any longer.
The smell of gardens under suburban lamplight, clipped,
private, a wall blotted with shadows, monsters of ivy,
squat in lunar glare.
There above the roof that hangs like a fat skull or the pearl
knob of a pendulum at the outermost reach of its swing,
motionless.
It is about to detach its hold on the upper night
for the return.
Yes, I remember talk of it, though, only a child.
Not far from here, it passed through remorseless,
cratered face swift as the wind, a bludgeon tears
free from the world's bones, spikes breaking off,
millions of little sharp limbs, jets of blood
petrified in terror, jetted screams, then plunges upward
far into the darkness.
It meant little to me then, though, I remember
playing in the silence when the rain of fragments
dropped in the streets afterward.
Bone splinters, silvery slivers of screams,
blood splinters rattling like crimson flint.
There behind, a mask of gray dismay sagging
open in the depths of torture, moron, voiceless moon.
That dark area the mark of Cain.
My shadow twists about my feet in the light
of every passing street lamp.
Will of the wisp in a bay window, a shadow slumped
in the corner of a living room in blue trance
buried alive two blank eyes.
On a tiny screen, mouths open and close,
and bodies move obliquely and stoop flickering.
Embalmers in eerie light underground, their arms
toil in silence.
A laboratory near necropolis.
It is midnight.
A shade enters patrolling the hive of his brain.
Window after window, the same unearthly light
consumes pitiless.
Surely, we can never die sick spirits.
The minions stretch at rest.
Pale entities wound in a drowsy humming at the brink of sleep.
They snuggle in their cells, faintly luminous like grubs.
Abdominal body juices and paper thin shells in their thousands,
in the smash ball wax old moon.
Musing thus, I stroll upon my way, a vagabond tethered.
My shadow twists at thy feet.
I must lie down with them all soon
and sleep and rise with them again when
the new dawn has touched our pillows and our wet pallor
and roused us.
We come scratching in our waistcoats
down to the kitchen for a cup of tea.
Then with our briefcases through wind or rain
passed our neighbors garden, Melrose Bloomfield,
to wait at the station, fluttering our papers,
assembled for the day's toil tapping the cool wind.
Is it not right to serve our banks and businesses
and government?
As together, we develop our community
on clear principles with no fixed ideas.
And twitching our thin umbrellas, acceptable.
But during a transitional period,
development should express itself in forms
without principle based on fixed ideas.
Robed and sputtered iron, at the harbor mouth,
she stands, productive investment,
and beckons the nation through our gold half door.
Lend me your wealth, your cunning, and your drive,
your arrogant refuse.
Let my people serve them bottled fury in our new hotels,
while native businessmen and managers
drift with them chatting over to the window
to show them our growing city, give them
a feeling of what is possible, our labor pool, the tax
concessions, the foreign capital, how
to get a nicer state, though, German,
even collect some of our better young artists.
Morose condemnation, it is a weakness and turns on itself.
Clean bricks are made of mud.
We need them for our power.
Spirits skeletons are straggling into view
from the day's depths.
You can pick them out in the night
sky with a little patience, pale influences, the wakeful twins,
Bruder und Schwester, two young Germans, I had in this morning
wanting to transfer investment income.
The sister, a business figurehead.
Her brother Arthur faced with exasperated smiles,
assuming, pressing until he achieved response.
And last, I do not exist.
I cannot take my eyes from their pallor.
A red layer plays on their faces livid with little splashes
of blazing fire.
The oven door closes.
All about and above me, the officials on the corridors
or in their rooms work or overwork
with mixed motives or none.
We dwell together in urgency aborting vague tendencies
with buttery smiles, dominate, entering middle age,
sobs serve.
Among us, behind locked doors, the ministers
are working with a sureness of touch found early
in the nation's birth.
The blood of enemies and brothers dried on their hide
long ago.
Dragging old men, upright and stately and blind
are shuffling in the corridor finding a key.
Their youth cannot die in them.
It will be found beating with violence when their bodies rot.
What occupies them as they sit-in their rooms?
What they already are?
Shadows life claimed by pattern still living
linked into constellations with their dead.
Look, the wedding group.
The groom, the best man, the fox,
and their three ladies, a tragic tale.
Soon the story tales.
Enmity sprang up between them, and the fox took to the wilds.
Then, to the groom, sorrow.
His dear friend left him also vowing hatred.
So they began destroying the groom substance.
And he sent out to hunt the fox, but trapped his friend instead.
Morning, he slaughtered him.
Shortly, in his term, the groom was
savaged on a Sunday morning.
No one knows by whom.
But was known the fox is a friend of death
and rules nothing.
Over here in the same quarter, the two executioners,
groom and weasel, 77 turning into each brow.
And look, the vivid weasel dared again,
dancing crookbacked under the player king.
A tragic comical tale, how the fox long after
found a golden instrument one day,
a great complex gold horn left at his door.
He examined it with little curiosity
wanting no gold or music.
Observed the mouthpiece.
Impossible to play with fox's lips
and gave it with a dull humor to his old enemy,
the weasel, who recognized the horn of the player king
and bared his needle teeth.
He took it, hammered on it with a stick,
and pranced about in blithe pantomime.
His head cocked to enjoy the golden clothes
while the fox, from time to time, nodded his mask.
The human taste grows faint.
It is gone, leaving a taste of self and laurel leaves
and rotted salt. The gardens begin to smell of soaked sand
and half stripped rocks in the dark.
My bones obey the sighing of the tide.
Another turning, a cast iron lamp standard
sheds yellow light on the sea wall.
Other lamps are lighting along a terrace of Victorian red brick,
not a breath of wind.
Joyce's Martello tower rises into the dark near the 40 foot
on a prow frozen to stone.
Crossing the road, I hear my footsteps echo back
from the terrace.
A sheet of newspaper gleams yellowish in the gutter.
The Morning Times, our new young minister stares
from a photograph on horseback in hunting things
from a low angle haunch on haunch, snigger, and by God.
The tide is drawing back from the promenade far
as the lamplight can reach trickling under the weed
into night cave.
Note the silence.
Light never strays there.
Nothing has a shadow there.
When a wind blows there, a rustle in the gutter, the hair
stirs stealing over the waters through the smell of seaweed,
a spectral stink of horse and riders' sweat.
What's that outside the light?
Water in the tower, be with me now
at your parapet above the glare of the lamps.
Turn your milky spectacles on the sea on unblinking,
cock your ear.
A rich darkness alive with signals.
Lights flash and wink.
Little bells clunk in the channel near the harbor.
Holt twinkles across the bay.
Ship lights move by invisible sea lanes.
The bailey light flickers as it sweeps the middle
of darkness on some commotion.
A dripping cylinder big as a ship's funnel
pokes into sight picked out by the moon.
Two blazing eyes, then a whole head.
Shoulders of shadowy muscle lit from within by joints and bones
of light.
Another head, animal, with nostrils straining open
red as embers, goggle eyes, a spectral whiny.
Four hooves scrape up the night.
A rider grunts and urges.
Father of authors, it is himself in silk hat and jowls
accoutered in stern jodhpurs.
The son husband coming in his power mounting to glory
on his big white hearse.
He climbs the dark to his mansion in the sky
to take his place in the influential circle, a new sign,
fox hunter.
Subjects will find the going hard but rewarding.
You may give offense, but this should pass.
Marry the boss's daughter.
The newspaper settles down in the gutter again.
The archbishop on marriage.
New moves to restore the language.
The new Ireland.
Still awkward in the saddle but able and willing
for the foul ditch.
You'll sit as well as any of the killed, dark brother.
What matter what iron Fausts open the gates?
It has begun, the curs mill and yell at your heels,
bite snapping and grinning, they eye your back.
Watch the smile of the dog.
They wait your signal the kick of dirt
and the teeth to turn them in the old miracle
to a pack of lick spittles running as one.
The foot of the tower, an angle where the darkness is complete.
The parapet is empty.
A backdrop of constellations crudely done
and mainly unfamiliar.
They are arranged to suggest the chart of the brain.
Music far off.
In the part of the little harbor that can be seen,
the moon is reflected in low water
beyond the lamps on the terrace.
The music fades snuggled into the skull.
Total darkness wanders among my bones.
Long tips flutter.
Wavelets lap the shingle.
From the vest darkness smell of my body,
chalk dust and flowers faint brutality.
Shoes creak in peace.
Brother Burke flattens his suit hand against the desk.
But the authorities use the national schools
to try to conquer the Irish national spirit,
at the same time, exterminating what
they call our jargon, the Irish language, in which St
Patrick, St Brigid, and St Colmcille taught and prayed.
Edmund Ignatius Rice founded our order
to provide schools that were national in more than name.
Pupils from our schools played their part,
as you know, in the fight for freedom.
And you will be called in your different ways
to work for the native language to show your love by working
for your country.
Today, there are Christian brothers, boys, everywhere
in the government.
The present Taoiseach sat where one of you is sitting now.
It wasn't long before Her Majesty gave us the famine,
the starvation as Bernard Shaw, a godless writer,
called it more accurately.
A hand is laid on my brow.
A voice breathes.
You will ask, are we struck down by the unsimplifiable.
Take these, bread of certainty, scalding soup of memories
from my drowsy famine.
Markers in a dish of scalding tears.
Food of dragon men and my own dragon half, fierce pity.
The blessed Virgin smiles from her wax pedestal
like young Victoria.
A green snake wriggled under her heel beside a vase of tulips.
Adolescents, celibates, we offer up our vows to God and Ireland
in her name, grateful that by our studies
here, they may not lack civil servants in a state of grace.
A glass partition rattles in the draft rain against the windows.
A shiver clothes the flesh bittersweet.
A sea mew passes over hinging era, era.
Is there none to here?
Is all lost?
Not yet all.
A while still, your voice.
Alas, I think I will dash myself at the stones.
I will become a wind on the sea or a wave of the sea again
or a sea sound.
At the first light of the sun, I stood on my rock.
I have seen the sun go down at the end of the world.
Now, I fly across the face of the moon.
A dying language echoes across a century of silence.
It is time, lost soul, I turned for home.
Sad music steals over the scene hesitant, cogitating, exit.
Home and beauty, her dear shadow on the blind.
The bread knife, she was slicing and buttering a loaf of bread.
My heart stopped.
I starved for speech.
I believe now that love is half persistence, a medium
in which from change to change, understanding may be gathered.
The return, virgin most pure, bright in the dregs
of the harbor, moon of my dismay, quiet as oil,
enormous in her shaggy pool.
Her brightness reflected on Earth in heaven
consumes my sight.
Gradually as my brain at a great distance
swims into steady light, scattered notes,
scraps of newspaper, photographs begin
to flow unevenly toward the pool and gather into a book
before her stare.
Her mask darkens as she reads to my faint terror,
but she soon brightens a little and smiled warmly.
It was a terrible time, nothing but sadness and horrors
of one kind and another.
We came to take the waters.
The sun shone brightly, which was very pleasant
and made it less gloomy.
But my tears flowed again and again.
When I drank, I felt my patience and trust coming back.
From time to time, it seems that everything is breaking down,
but we must never despair.
There are times it is all part of a meaningful drama that
begins in the gray mists of antiquity
and reaches through the years to unknown goals
in the consciousness of men which is very soothing.
A wind sighs.
The pool shivers the tide at the turn.
Odor of love light sour soil.
The seabed passes like a ghost the hem
of her invisible garment.
Our mother rules on high, queenlike, pale with control.
Hatcher of peoples, incline from your darkness into mine.
I stand at the ocean's edge.
My head fallen back heavy with your control and oppressed.
That mad stare.
The pulse hisses in my ear.
I am an arrow piercing the void unevenly
as I correct and correct but swiftest thought.
I arrive enveloped in blinding silence.
No wind stirs on the dust floor.
Far as the eye can see, rock needles
stand up from the plane.
The horizon, a ring of sharp mountains like broken spikes.
Hard bluish light beats down to kill any bodily thing,
but a million dead voices hide from it in the dust
without hope of peace.
A cloud bursts from the ground.
Rock fragments scatter in total silence, a true desert
naked to every peril.
The shadows are alive.
They scuttle and flicker among the rock needles,
squat and suck the dry juice, inspect the eggs of shadow
beneath the surface twitching madly in their cells.
The Earth at the full hangs in blue splendor in the sky.
I believe I have heard of this place.
In the mind, darkness tosses.
The light deceives.
A vivid ghost sea quivers and dazzles for miles.
Let us take the waters, stoop down, run the fingers
along the brink.
It has a human taste, but sterile, odorless.
Massed human wills, a dust plain flickering.
I think this is the sea of disappointment.
[APPLAUSE]