The Reed Bed Page 4

  for familiars to arrive,

  folk seated in places

  with their hats

  on the seats

  beside them;

  and moments later

  these strangers

  on the seats beside them.

  They fall into each other’s step,

  take the same breath

  as they cross the bridge

  to the monument

  and, laughing, make it home

  at last; then somewhere

  in the kitchen,

  in the drenched garden,

  comes the moment

  when they realise

  that the least

  is known about the one

  they love best —

  we have been making each other up —

  that look is made,

  the look that

  begs the question,

  who are you

  and who am I

  and who are all the rest?

  Reaching the Rockies

  In the middle of a gale

  with the peelers high

  I found myself going back to Canada

  in an old notebook I’d kept;

  I turned the Apple on

  and took a seat at the back of the plane

  and was amazed again to find

  that the steward serving food

  was the spit of a gay dancer

  I’d seen in Barcelona

  break into tears

  on the last night of the panto;

  we’re airborne, we’re off;

  to make the long journey

  that leads back

  to endless trivia:

  Did Frank Brady meet

  James Coyle the piper? And if they did,

  did they get on? And so on …

  while the air thins

  over snow pitted with wind steps;

  a lonesome white place,

  sleeping in our consciousness,

  as we sleep in it,

  on a lake of white

  these dark hoof-prints of wind

  run, these thumb-prints,

  toe-prints,

  then the white turns windless.

  The ghost animals stop.

  All becomes the same above and below.

  The line between blue and white sharpens.

  And back to my right a Japanese couple,

  with their eyes glued tight to the video screen

  and their ears in earphones,

  continue to play pontoon.

  As she boxes the cards

  he taps the table. She deals. He turns.

  She deals again! Where am I?

  I look out, look in.

  In a blink I lost a hundred miles.

  The ice cracks like weak tea

  and civilization blinks on and off

  like a bulb going.

  The cracks make roads.

  There’s the glint of sun on aluminium.

  The snow lifts like the skin of an ass

  shedding winter hair.

  A world of squares begins.

  Ice cool in buckets.

  A river is thrown onto the land

  like a scarf left after the night before.

  The rings of the jet

  are silent, round, oozing power —

  then the whole thing disappears.

  Canada is gone.

  I jump back in fright.

  The computer gives with a start.

  For a minute I sit suspended

  high in the chilled air

  till I realise the electricity

  has given, a transformer is down somewhere,

  and I’m left in crackling space

  alone, in darkness —

  just as we reached the Rockies

  with nothing saved

  and whatever happened after

  never to come again.

  Somerset Maugham on Bass with The Harp Jazz Band in Enniskillen

  for Roddy

  The other night I came across

  Somerset Maugham

  playing his heart out

  on double-bass and mouth organ

  along with Spencer Tracy on piano

  and a few other dudes

  in a version of ‘Ain’t Misbehavin’

  in Enniskillen.

  Somerset Maugham was huge and lived-in

  and kept his eye on the bar;

  Spencer on the other hand

  kept time with his chin —

  What a din! What a do!

  Jazz in Orange Halls.

  Jazz down The Falls where old pros turn

  into old film stars,

  then later, going home, I think of

  this Somerset Maugham

  lying down in his room

  just before dawn

  somewhere off the Crumlin Road

  where old LPs line the walls.

  He sleeps among the greats

  and wakes hearing a tune

  he fell asleep playing

  in a small café

  in the South of France, yes,

  in Marseilles perhaps.

  He is playing a tune for the cast of Casablanca

  who just dropped in

  on the off-chance.

  He’s away now with ‘A kiss is just a kiss’;

  ‘A smile is just a smile’,

  he sings to the pimps.

  Henry Fonda is on his feet.

  Duke Ellington steps

  out of the shadows

  to applaud Maugham on mouth organ,

  and the plane carrying the Glenn Miller Band

  has not yet left the ground.

  Father and Son

  for Phil Lawlor

  At any given moment of the day

  my eye will light

  on the plaster cast

  of Joseph and Jesus

  as they sun themselves

  on the cluttered sill,

  sometimes with their back to all

  that’s out there,

  and other times facing towards —

  snug in their robes —

  the wine skies

  and teeming rain.

  He has him in the crook of his arm,

  the hollow father,

  and the child’s fixed gaze

  never wavers

  from a point on Raughley

  where the blowhole

  is. Out of pagan China or Korea

  they came

  and they came in thousands,

  this porcelain pair,

  to look down from kitchen walls

  in farthest Cracow,

  to light up

  when the driver strikes the brake

  of taxis in Quito.

  They are there

  in the dark nooks of chapels

  in Crete. With all the art about

  you’d wonder how they persist

  in being lovely.

  The carpenter looks out

  on the flooded fields —

  fences of storm-tossed

  fertilizer bags,

  black plastic, nappies —

  with the benign eye

  of a man who has seen worse.

  The red-haired child

  is awake before anyone

  else in the house —

  up into his father’s arm with him.

  Last thing at night

  the pair are there,

  closer, somehow content,

  with the father’s skirt

  hitched up,

  and the hollow son smaller,

  shadowed by the wide black

  of all that is beyond

  the reflecting glass.

  They are watching

  for the return

  of the woman who’s away

  in Sligo town.

  May she come soon,

  that I do not resort to prayer!

  I’ll put them on the step outside

  to guide her home.

  First Thi
ng

  First thing in the morning

  I saw a stoat

  sloping along the turf.

  Another member

  of the extended family!

  One morning soon

  I’ll glance out

  and find an elephant in the surf

  looking off into the middle distance,

  and it’ll only be a matter of time

  before I’ve trained him

  to lift stones

  from the soft belly

  of the wet flowing seaweed,

  the yellow pods of sea-corn.

  After him will come

  tigers, ostriches, elks,

  and we will make wonderful fossils,

  all of us, woman,

  cats, dogs, tern,

  sculpted in time

  beneath a maidenhead fern.

  About the Author

  Dermot Healy was born in Finea, County Westmeath, in 1947. His books include Banished Misfortune (stories), Fighting with Shadows, A Goat’s Song, Sudden Times and Long Time, No See (novels), and The Bend for Home (memoir).

  The Gallery Press has also published the following collections of poems: The Ballyconnell Colours, What the Hammer and A Fool’s Errand. Dermot Healy lived in Ballyconnell, County Sligo, until his sudden death, aged 66, in 2014.

  Also by Dermot Healy

  in print editions

  from The Gallery Press

  The Ballyconnell Colours (Poems)

  A Fool’s Errand (Poems)

  Copyright

  The Reed Bed

  was first published

  simultaneously in paperback

  and in a clothbound edition

  on 9 November 2001.

  The Gallery Press

  Loughcrew

  Oldcastle

  County Meath

  Ireland

  www.gallerypress.com

  All rights reserved. For permission

  to reprint or broadcast these poems,

  write to The Gallery Press.

  © Dermot Healy 2010

  ePub ISBN 978–1–85235–6262

  A CIP catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library.

  The Reed Bed receives financial

  assistance from The Arts Council