MY PANDEMIC POEM

 I think one of the things that helped me during this Pandemic is the fact that I once spent ten years in a religious order. Another is that my wife and I share a sense of humour that verges on the graveyard type. It has also helped that, although I left a religious order, I haven't left my belief in God and the afterlife: matters are all going to be sorted, but not necessarily down here.

Having enough money to live on is a great help, as is having a healthy appetite and an ability to cook something appetizing, and thereby to look forward to dinner time. What else is there? Watching rugby on TV, although the home channels have by now shamefully abandoned the Heineken Cup and the Pro-14 to commercial channels. All I can watch live are the Six Nations fixtures. Hence during this Pandemic I have watched old recordings of outstanding games over and over, and depend on highlights for Heineken Cup and Pro-14.

The news at five-thirty is a must, bringing the latest Pandemic facts and figures. Together, on week evenings, we have been watching crime dramas. On weekends we play music together and drink a few glasses of wine. We have a couple of friends whom we Zoom and my siblings to phone. Our son, living in London, and his partner, have given us a grandson, whom we hope to see in the flesh post-lockdown. 

I have made strides in learning new tunes on my concertina. I have miraculously survived visits to the local grocers and the off-licence, and am now fully vaccinated. The last holiday we had was a 'staycation' in Donegal in July 2020, which was pleasant. Having had more time to write means that half of the extra time was spent avoiding writing, but I hope to publish a new collection of poems this year.

Many many people have written Pandemic poems. I, too, have written one. Even though I cannot begin to comprehend the horror that other people have suffered from Covid 19, I think there's at least a surreal line or two in this poem which point toward it. 

THE RIP

There’s a rip in my green trousers

just above the knee, 

a rent in the scheme of things

on the edge of my patella.

I don’t know how it got there

and can’t be arsed to mend it

or go searching for a seamstress

because when I am asked  

to recite or be a mentor,

viewers on Zoom can’t see

my body’s lower segment

and within my five kilometers 

other walkers keep their distance, 

too far to spot the tear,

because it’s the Pandemic.

And the TV took it on

to report the daily numbers

of the stricken and the slain

and told us wash out hands

or we'd become statistics

but many didn't wash

because it seemed too simple

a cure-all for such pestilence.

Some were plague-deniers,

others held raucous shindigs

and there were those unfortunates

who once only, before

they brushed an eyelid's itch,

forgot to swab their fingers

although it's the Pandemic.

And even when I go 

for groceries to the Aldi

not a soul remarks the snag

on the edge of my patella

and it’s not because they’re blind

to rips or rents in garments,

it’s because they’ve got the jitters

and the one and only detail

they look at is my mask

which is now a part of me,

it’s become my lower face.

So I’m not at all put out

by the rip in my green trousers,

I’m glad of any trousers 

because it’s the Pandemic. 

© Ciaran O'Driscoll 2021

PASTA SAUCE RECIPE

 Here is a recipe which I improvised today for a quick pasta sauce which I found particularly tasty:

Ingredients

Cold-pressed olive oil

Half a small onion, finely chopped.

Tiny amount of leftover juice from a ribsteak braised with onions

Roma Passata

Half an Avocado, mashed

Chicken stock cube dissolved in hot water

Red chilli pepper deseeded and chopped

Saute the chopped onion in the olive oil and add the leftover ribsteak juice

Add a shake of Roma Passata and the mashed Avocado. Fold together.

Add the chopped chilli pepper

Pour in enough chicken stock liquid and stir to thin sauce to required consistency.

Add salt to taste.

Heat and serve over cooked tagliatelle, with or without grated parmesan.

Saute the chopped onions

 

DEATH OF MARK WHELAN, POET

 

Mark Whelan died in Limerick University Hospital yesterday. The most recent poem of his I have read was in The Hong Kong Review, Volume II, No 2, edited by another Limerick man, John Liddy. Presciently, it was called 'My Death', and in it Mark writes:

There is a song to be sung

     to break the windows of light

and to have nothing more

to do with time

I published the poem above, called 'Prelude', when I was guest-editor of Cyphers No 37. It is a poem which shows some influence of Beckett, to whose work Mark was devoted, but it also shows his very striking originality as a poet, and this originality is also revealed in the lines quoted from 'My Death'. A poem which Mark frequently recited to Limerick audiences, whether off the cuff in taverns such as Tom Collins' of Cecil Street and Flannery's of Catherine Street, or in more formal readings, is called 'A Shine Easy' and it ends:

  A shine easy light

               making the day reincanate

like a star

fallen into water

There's a lot more to be written about Mark, but let this suffice for the moment from a fellow practitioner and admirer of his unique poetic talent, following on the shock of his untimely death. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a hanam. (This latter wish is fairly certain to be fulfilled, I'd say.)

                                        Mark Whelan (right) with Paul Sweeney 2019
                                          

ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF A DISAPPEARANCE, FOR TREVOR DEELY.

DISAPPEARED

(on the 20th Anniversary, 08/12/20)

There’s a map and a line on a map

that moves from one identified place

in Dublin to another, past premises

still standing as they stood that night  

among the city's transformations.

A line which comes to an end

at his last confirmed sighting.

There’s a clear-cut journey traced

to the last CCTV footage

where he is seen in wind and rain,

bent under an umbrella, passing

an ATM on Haddington Road,

a man in black not far behind him.

And beyond that, mystery,

and all that it entails.

O day and night but this...

The journey on the map

has a clear and verified progress,

the kind which many follow

after an office Christmas party –

moving on to a night club

and walking home in the small hours,

calling to collect an umbrella 

at his workplace on the way.

A time recorded to the millisecond 

by a phone's answering machine

on which he left a message

spoken in good spirits.

And then the cruel hiatus

of twenty years, a young man

who should be in his forties now 

an uncle to grown children,

but is nothing more than the point

where a line stops on a map

some distance from his home,

no voice or sight or touch

and nothing making sense.

A trail that vanishes before

reaching the frontier of meaning,

a sinkhole in the city’s heart.

O Hades, may Persephone

soften your heart to those

who loved this youth and who

have parented for far too long

the night’s unkindest mystery.

© Ciaran O'Driscoll, 2020

A 'FOUND POEM' ABOUT A CITY BUS TOUR

 

CITY BUS TOUR

Our city is a tort, with the cherry

in the middle. And this is Schwartzenberg

on his horse after the battle of Leipzig,

and you can see he was victorious.

And here is a street that was built to bring

beer to the poorer kind, not to disturb 

the elegant people in the centre circle.

There was no food in the old coffee houses –

they didn’t want to have the smell of onions.

And this is the Town Hall – in German called

the Rathaus, with the Christmas Tree in front,

which is not ready yet. A different window

is opened every day to bring the gifts.

And here is the Ministry of War, now called

the Ministry of Defence, but in those days

they called it what it was. The city has

four railway stations, but for fifty years

it had no trains that travelled to the East.

And there you see the Church of St Charles,

patron of Black Death and various plagues.

Here is the Natural History Museum,

it is ranked among the first ten of the world.

Everything is in it, like pockets of boys.

This is the New River. The Old River

is now a lake. The artists used to live

over there, but they had much scandal,

and so they were not given galleries.

And this is Metternich, who told Franz Joseph

‘You don’t discuss with the people, you thump them.’

Later, we go to Concert Hall for Strauss.

Watching the shops is also interesting

but in the fog you can’t do anything.

© Ciaran O'Driscoll 2020

ITALIAN POETRY FESTIVAL RIFLESSI DIVERSI POSTPONED UNTIL 2021

The long-running Umbrian poetry festival, Riflessi DiVersi, which occurs around the end of September, has had to be postponed this year until 2021 on account of the Coronavirus. That is to say, the intended participants for 2020 will be the participants, hopefully, in the 2021 edition of Riflessi DiVersi.

    In the meantime, a website has been created, "Irlanda in Umbria", which features the work of the postponed poets, as well as the musicians, together with items from past incarnations of the festival. 

    Click on the link below the picture to view the website

L to R: Aurelio Stoppini, Vera Lucia di Oliveira, Ciaran O'Driscoll, Margarita....., Rita Castigli, Andreina Panico; Riflessi DiVersi 2015.

http://irlandainumbria.ie/

SPLEENWORT PLANTS AND LICHEN ON THE OLD WALL

 

A fresh growth of Spleenwort spotted on the ancient wall between our garden and the school grounds of Scoil Máthair Dé, Limerick.

Do you like lichen? Or does it rouse your spleen?

The Spleenwort plant reminds me of winter because its fronds remain green throughout the year and I first noticed them in winter.

NOVEMBER DAYS

Parsley pales. The cat craps in the flower box.
Round the garden table, garden chairs still range,
an icebound working group on climate change.
The car door’s frozen doorhandle unlocks

when blessed by water. Christmas rules TV.
Although no visitor’s appeared in weeks,
the feeble latch-grip slips, the front gate creaks
its winter wolf-crying expectancy.

Our neighbour takes his DIY indoors,
no longer deafens us with power tools.
Spleenwort fronds survive on old stone walls,
each finger-lobe a blister-strip of spores.

© Ciaran O'Driscoll 2020