Monday, February 12, 2007

Mairéad Byrne

THE IMPORTANT LOOKING MEN

The important looking men are not always the important looking men. Sometimes the important looking men are women. Sometimes the important looking men are the woman with the brown helmet of hair, head tilted attentively. Sometimes the important looking men are not the important looking men but visitors from out-of-town where they are not important either. The tortured artist is not always the tortured artist. The tortured artist is not always the guy in the thin cardigan smoking a cigarette outside the studio. That might be the electrician. The tortured artist is sometimes the small priest who stands in the corner of the salon balancing his cup of tea. Or the woman nobody sees. The lover is not always the lover. The lover can be a liar, refracting images of himself back into infinity. The lover might be this beagle, this couch, this slipper, this child who shouts out to me this morning late for school—tumbling from his father's car & again from the side-walk—Clio's Mom! Or this other child, this evening, alone, walking home, who tosses his glorious hello across Camp Street to land at my feet.


DRINKING MY POEM

I was gloomy all through the paella & the paella was beautiful: a vision of shellfish & chicken nestled on succulent rice. It tasted as good as it looked & looked as good as it tasted & there was texture too. You could have worn this paella as an Easter bonnet in Cannes or Antibes or even somewhere singular like Madrid. But I was thinking of racism, of poverty, of American cities & public schools. I tried to talk about it but just got gloomier & made everyone else gloomy too. It was one of those glooms like a shroud: you couldn’t see beyond it. I could see a little girl crossing the street by herself. Gloom. I could see a small boy walking very slowly to school. Gloom. I could hear a teacher screeching & shaming. On & on & on & on. I could see the little kids taking it. Gloom upon gloom. I could see a bunch of white people at a meeting in a room saying what they want & how they deserve it & how they’re going to go about getting it. Are these my people? Who are my people? First I was confused & now this inarticulate yet communicable gloom. So I’m gloomy as I pick at nuts & little crunchy things that look like nuts & other crunchy things that look like banana slices. Gloomy through excellent salad with shaved cheese. Gloomy through chocolate mousse surrounded by fat blackberries & sliced strawberries: another vision & explosion of texture & taste. Gloomy when I accept from Lisa’s hand—the same hand that laid a dish of shiny black olives on the burnished orange cloth & raised still furled roses around lilies in a tall vase on a low table in the other room—in a fluted green cup, coffee. It is rich, black & very strong. And my gloom is gone.


of course

of course
     my father brought home books to us every Saturday
of course
     they were second-hand
of course
     he had 8 children to think about
of course
     he brought us to art classes in the National Art Gallery
of course
     he brought us to the Young Scientists Exhibition
of course
     he brought us to the country & all the castles & ruins & forts
of course
     he brought us to the Phoenix Park & parked in the grass & held
     the door open & said Out!
of course
     he brought us to Dollymount Strand every Christmas morning
of course
     he made trifle
of course
     he made ice-cream "wavers"
of course
     he bought small bars of chocolate & divided them in 8
of course
     he divided up the heels of sliced pans & sliced loaves & made us
     all eat a piece
of course
     he mended our schoolbags
of course
     he built bookshelves
of course
     he loaded the groceries into the cupboard
of course
     he made lists
of course
     he kept a file on each one of us with all our school reports
of course
     he took me to the theatre
of course
     I danced around so much under my small umbrella that he told
     my mother he would never take me out again
of course
     he took my sisters with him on trips to weather stations in
     remote parts of the country
of course
     he loved Irish
of course
     he went to his own church
of course
     he walked home for lunch every day, with the Irish Times
     under his arm
of course
     he never really knew his parents
of course
     his father rejected him
of course
     he was an intellectual without any pretensions
of course
     I teased him & called him Baldy
of course
     he brought us Spangles from the North
of course
     he called from the phone-box down the street & said he was
     in Malin Head
of course
     he came strolling in 10 minutes later & we all laughed our
     heads off
of course
     life stopped when the knock came to the door & we were told
     that he had drowned


Mairéad Byrne is one of the 11, no the 17, most important Irish poets (living). She has published poems. Born in Dublin in the second half of the last century, she became an American citizen in January 2006. Her ambition, achievable only by virtue of the broadest redefinition of terms, is to talk only in poetry. Her poem was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.