MORE ON THE SUBJECT OF BEWILDERMENT

      In the words of an Irish-language poet, bewilderment had the effect of 'coming steadfastly between him and God'. The Irish language poet, however, wasn't talking about bewilderment in the abstract, he was talking about a young woman by the name of Oona (Úna) who came steadfastly between him and God. Perhaps he was a priest who 'lost his vocation on account of a woman', as they used to say. And it appears that, to add to the poet's bewilderment, he also lost the young woman.

      But belay there! It doesn't always happen that way. I too 'lost my vocation' on account of a young woman, and I also lost the young woman. But after a while, I met another young woman. In a London pub called 'The Drum and Monkey'. She is now my wife and we sometimes speculate jokingly as to which of us is the Drum and which is the Monkey. We celebrate the anniversary of our first meeting in that pub as much as we celebrate our wedding anniversary. We usually celebrate both in 'The Mustard Seed' in Ballingarry, Co Limerick.

      'The Drum and Monkey' is no longer there, on Junction Road, near the Archway. But we are still together, we have outlasted our meeting place.

         

      

NEW POEM: THE SPELLING OF AUTUMN

For the benefit of the Bewildered, of which group I am a fully paid up member, here is my latest poem, composed earlier in the year:

THE SPELLING OF AUTUMN

1.

When I said that it was autumn,

I could sense the soft departure

of my deity and calling

as they left me to the wasteland.

This occurred as I was moving

from the failure of my harvest

in ’25, though pausing

to admire the elegant spelling

of autumn and its bonding

of m and n that made

a tacit kind of music.

“What a lovely word,” I mumbled

vocationless and godless 

at my computer screen.

‘The rest of this existence

may flounder into nothing

but the graceful spelling of autumn

has what it takes to stay.’

2.

When I said that it was autumn, 

autumn said that it was me –

we were identical 

creatures losing leaves.

Heeding the long-range forecast,

I’m busy bailing out

the bilgewater at last

to sail the Stygian seas 

between here and hereafter,

both cabin boy and captain

of a craft with a single mast.

Reluctant, not the least

resigned to my departure

from the shores of everyday,

I’ll keep a cherished charm

against demons and delay – 

the graceful spelling of autumn

my travel pass and totem.

3.

When I said that it was autumn,

with the stripping of the trees 

and the leafy agitation,

with the failure of my harvest

and the death of my vocation,

with my fear of nervous breakdown,

distressed by all events

I prayed Emitte lucem

tuam et veritatem

but was granted no assurance,

not a prayer of breaking into

the light and truth away from

life’s headlong floundering.

What keeps me compos mentis,

my one and lone asylum,

is the minuscule epiphany

of a needle’s-eye redemption,

the graceful spelling of autumn.

© Ciaran O'Driscoll 2026

NOTES:

* “a craft with a single mast”:  craft, boat or calling; a single mast, the t in autumn perhaps??

* “Emitte lucem tuam et veritatem (tuam)”: Send forth your light and truth (Psalm 43) 

 Of my two grandmothers, my father’s was the most popular with us as children. My mother’s mother was a grimmer kind of person. I eulogised ‘Granny-in-Cork’ in my memoir A Runner Among Falling Leaves (Liverpool University Press 2001). The poem below is a characterisation of my maternal grandmother whom I spent many a night with when I was seven or eight, ‘to keep her company’. This is yet another poem I had forgotten about as my literary trajectory took various swerves and directions. As I now realize, it is no joke to be the age my ‘Granny-in-Callan’ was when I was seven or eight!

GRANDMOTHER

Blackcurrants, apples

in the back garden, turf

and wood heaped in the yard.

The hens’ feeding troughs

were halves of a sliced tyre.

She had the electric light,

a chemical latrine.

The acre was well let.

Fresh eggs in the morning

from the roosting shed.

Mick Reilly brought goats’ milk.

“How bad we are,” she said.

Tom Butler brought her pheasants

with half an eye to the acre.

“I’ve no meas on game,”

she declared and kept them for

my aunt and uncle who’d come

to keep her weekend company.

With precious little patience

for children on the stray

she’d be on the road with a switch

to beat me under the knees.

“Galang outs that,” she cried.

“Wait till your father hears.”

Funeral attendance

rates were of importance

to her: she’d count the cars

from behind her kitchen curtains.

With carving knife or breadknife

she’d cut hens on the head

and pluck them on the table.

“We’ll ate our ’nough,” she said.

Published in Trio 4 (Blackstaff Press, Belfast, 1985)

I WAS ON THE POINT OF GIVING UP ON THIS BLOG.....

 ....when I saw two responses today that weren't totally off the wall and irrelevant, as most of the previous responses were, sadly to say.

The first was a beautifully relevant appreciation of my sonnet, 'The Heart in the Wall', with some questions which I tried to answer. I was somewhat late in getting back to the pseudonymous enquirer, as the appreciation was published on 05 January last! Coincidentally, I have just come back from a poetry festival in Italy in which I read the same poem with an Italian translation by Rita Castigli. 

I am encouraged to post the same poem again, as it is one very dear to me.

THE HEART IN THE WALL

In the boundary wall of a convent school

close to my home, there’s a heart-shaped stone

beneath hanging leaves. Half-meshed in sleep,

I’m waiting at a bus-stop by the wall

to join the Monday morning's obsequies, 

and notice that the stone has been redone 

bright red, the scrawl of teen initials gone:

a valentine shines nameless under boughs.

A boy once loved a girl who took the veil,

choosing the ghostly company of saints.

An old man now, at night he travels still

once or twice a year to rejuvenate

the heart contained within the convent wall.

Somebody holds a torch for him; he paints.

The other query was from a secondary school student in London asking some probing questions about 'Please Hold', which is on the EdExcel A Level English Literature Course. And as the fella said, 'If ya haven't heard of it by now, you're not really in the loop.'

POEM FROM NEARBY WHERE I LIVE

 

This sonnet from my latest collection Angel Hour (2021) is based on a heart-shaped stone in the wall of a former convent school on O'Connell Avenue, Limerick City, not far from where I live.

Who keeps re-painting the stone bright red?

I suggest an answer to this question in the second part of the poem.

THE HEART IN THE WALL

In the boundary wall of a convent school

close to my home, there’s a heart-shaped stone

under hanging leaves. Half-meshed in sleep,

I’m waiting at a bus-stop by the wall

to join the morning rush-hour’s obsequies, 

and notice that the stone has been redone 

bright red, the scrawl of teen initials gone:

a valentine shines nameless under boughs.

A boy once loved a girl who took the veil,

choosing the ghostly company of saints.

An old man now, at night he travels still

once or twice a year to rejuvenate

the heart contained within the convent wall.

Somebody holds a torch for him; he paints.

© Ciaran O'Driscoll 2021

AREN'T POETS GAS ALTOGETHER!

 THE CATCH IN THE  SNIB

A fellow poet once conversed with me

about opening a door, telling me

how to open a certain door

after I had given a reading

at the Cork Spring Poetry Festival.

He went to great lengths to tell me

about the catch in the snib,

an Irish Oxford poet who ought

to know the art of conversation

but I think he rather overdid it.

I suppose it was his way

of being helpful: not wanting

to be poetically helpful in terms

of my career advancement,

he told me about the catch in the snib

of the door I was about to go through,

the door of my exit from the lounge

of the Long Valley in Winthrop Street

towards the closest toilet in the pub.

At least he was expecting me to return

and not wishing me to be on my way

because I was merely on my way

to the bathroom. But boy did he go

to great lengths explaining the catch in the snib!

He could have explained to me the catch

in the snib of getting an Oxford reading

or the catch in the snib of a reading tour

in the Ivy League Colleges but instead

he explained the catch in the snib

of the door on the way to the Jakes

of the Long Valley Lounge in Cork,

and he was a Cork Poet himself

who lectured in Oxford and could 

have invited me to give a reading 

in Oxford University but instead

he bored me blank-faced with details

about a trick to open a rest-room door. 

Perhaps it was meant as a metaphor

for my ostracised condition,

a cryptic exhortation to wise up.

And indeed, reflecting afterwards 

on the intensity of his admonishments

concerning the importance of knowing

about the catch in the snib 

of the door that led to the Long Valley Gents,

I came to the conclusion that

it was a coded communication

somewhat along the following lines:

You need to find a bogus mode of discourse

That deflects things. Tell it slant.

The slanter the better. Whatever you say

Say nothing. Well of course you have

to say something, but don’t be a dipstick.

The snib on the door of Oxford University

is particularly difficult. Always was.

Begin with the snib on the door that leads to the Jakes

 from the Lounge of the Long Valley Pub

and work your way up from there.

COPYRIGHT © CIARAN O'DRISCOLL 2024

POEM REMEMBERING A COLLAPSED LUNG

 

MY POST-OP CASE

For days I carried about

A case containing a whirlpool

When I exercised my battered frame

Walking up and down

The cardiac recovery ward.

Inspectors came at evening

To observe the swirling liquid.

Well, is it slowing down or not?

I asked when one of them

Had stared for far too long

At my body’s agitated humours.

But they found it hard to call,

Like watchers for the shape

Of Proteus in the waves

That tumbled on Grecian shores.

© CIARAN O'DRISCOLL 2023

KNUTE SKINNER POET AND HUMANE SPIRIT, RIP

 

QUEUING

(i.m. Knute Skinner)

Oh yes, there is queuing beyond the grave

And sometimes it spills over to this side.

Take the example of Knute Skinner, poet,

Whose voice was stolen by a stroke and who

For two years queued in silence, not quite gone

Beyond the world but inching onwards. Once                                                 

I published a piece of his about a driver

Stalled in the top spot of a traffic queue,

But yesterday his family, friends and neighbours,

Assembling in a tumbled Clare graveyard,

Saluted him for getting the green light.

O'Brien's Tower, Cliffs of Moher

Poem © Ciaran O'Driscoll 2023