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| ISBN-13: | 9781775582021 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Auckland University Press |
| Publication date: | 11/01/2013 |
| Sold by: | INDEPENDENT PUB GROUP - EPUB - EBKS |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 80 |
| File size: | 305 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Pop-up Book of Invasions
By Fiona Farrell
Auckland University Press
Copyright © 2007 Fiona FarrellAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-77558-202-1
CHAPTER 1
The invasion
A hundred and fifty we were,
who set sail. Young and
clear-skinned, driven to the
edge of a bony country.
Some sat amidships
where the ride was easy.
Others bent to their paddling.
And three men amongst us.
So there we were on our good
ships, with their striped sails.
We crossed water to a long cloud
where we wrecked on a reef.
Fifty we were who came ashore.
Soaked from the sea and with
stonebruised feet. We lay down
in dry grass, and shared the men
around.
Till all of us had babies wriggling
up the dark stream, leaping all
obstacles.
We milked the men dry. One
died, another lived, and the
third became a salmon. He
turned cold in my arms and
silver-skinned. His eyes were
round and glassy. He flipped
from me to the stream and
got away. So I was left in
the long grass.
Slick drying on my belly,
the tiny fish swimming
The Way of the Dishes
Today I followed the
Way of the Dishes.
From Kinvara to Keelhilla
along the greasy road.
The dishes flew before me.
Cups, plates and bottles of
red wine, a joint of beef,
stewed leeks and white
bread, sliced for eating.
I could see them floating
just ahead, set upon a white
cloth. I could see the flap of
it, rising to cross a hedge
like a flat fish swimming
through clear water and
me beneath like a small
sprat following.
To follow was not easy. The
dishes rode across country,
taking hedges and ditches on
their white wings, while I was
trapped by my car and the
narrow ways of men. I had
to turn corners and guess at
my final destination.
I saw the dishes fly to a
cliff face and drop behind
bare branches, hazel and ash.
I parked the car and found the
cloth come to ground,
embroidered hem fluttering
by the saint's bed. A heap
of fallen stone.
The saint was a lean man.
He picked at the beef and
poured salt over the leeks,
lest he be tempted.
He tossed his bread to the
sparrows and foreswore
the red wine, preferring
water from his blessed spring.
But his servant gnawed the bones
bare and spread good butter on his
bread. He drank his wine, thanking
whatever power it was that had
sent cloth and dishes, whatever
white hand it was that cooked
this food, and the kindly air that
carried it.
I watched from behind a tree as he
feasted while his master picked and
prayed. I watched his belly swell. I
heard him groan as his starved guts
cramped.
Within the hour he will be dead and
buried under a heap of stone.
While the saint will live,
revered by all for his restraint.
And the feast will grow mould,
the white cloth will rot and the
wine will turn to vinegar in
a tarnished cup.
Spades
I have come to the land of
a thousand spades. And that's
only the one-sided spade.
Think another thousand with
two sides where a man might
press down with either foot.
Blunt-cornered or curved,
short-handled or long,
whole dialects of digging.
Men walked the roads here
carrying their chosen spade.
The fields were too small
for ploughs. Just room for
one man and the breadth
of his spade.
I think of my father and his
three spades: the one with the
square handle, smooth from his
hand. The long-handled shovel.
The narrow spade that was the
one preferred to dig the long
shaw.
And me allowed to follow
in his muddy track, carrying
the bucket and setting each
potato in black Kakanui loam
as he had shown me,
with its green shoot facing the sky.
The Book of the Dun Cow
This is the book of the dun cow.
It is to be treated with reverence.
Stowed bound in silk, in silver.
The book is revered for the skin
from which its pages are made.
Skin of the dun cow.
Blessed cow of the saint. His
heifer with her twisted horn,
milk spilling from her swaying udder.
He loved her, followed her
wandering. Slept pressed to her side
on frosty upland. Her spindly calf.
And when she died cradled in straw
he skinned her, blade tugging at tufts
of belly hair, slitting neck and knee.
He stretched her skin, pegged it to
dry, legs splayed. Soaked it in his own
piss to soften, then cut it in squares,
shaven and stitched to make a book.
Now he is seated in a stone cell
to write the words that matter most
to him, on the skin of his dun cow.
But when his eyes tire with writing
he can rest his forehead on the desk
and smell it:
the scent of the dun cow and the
winding way she led him, the
damp lick of buttercups, the
green plop where he could
warm bruised feet, when the
way was all stones and frost
made the ground
too hard.
The winner
The poet always wins
or the blind singer.
Butcher's shambles in
dust by the city wall or
spilled on office floor,
deals wrought behind
veneer while bullets
pierce the bronze wings
of angels. One two three.
Small arguments at
kitchen tables, doors
slamming on never.
Small hatreds small
betrayals small deaths
in smoke and falling
stone. Days that fade
to shouting.
No sign of victory in
the guts. A bloody mess.
Then the poet comes and
sees in the flop of failure
the outlines of some old
hero whom another poet
made from grunt and stab
on some muddy hill. And
there's that girl again, in
her buttoned coat, waiting
at the prison gate till her
husband dies.
She is listening for the
sound of bullets piercing
cotton shirt and snuggling
into lung and heart.
One two three.
And that's how
the song
will start.
Blow-in
That bird has a name.
But I don't know it.
It may have three names:
Latin, English and Irish.
But I know none of them.
That wall, that road,
that hill, that precise
arrangement of stones
all have names. But I
don't know them.
That game, that song,
that man on TV, that
face on the magazine,
that town we passed
on the road in the dark.
That tree, that kind of
boat, that shop, that
street, that local hero,
that precise arrangement
of cloud.
They all have names.
But I can say only
road
hill
tree
cloud.
My great-grandparents
could not write. A shaky
cross marked receipt for
birth or death.
I can write, but in their
country I speak like a
bird whose tongue has
been split. Cut off at
its root. I perch on a
tree I cannot name and
chirrup:
road
hill
cloud
with my split tongue.
A straggler here.
A straggler there.
Blown in by
mighty winds.
The little girl
My daughter looked for her
always. 'Where's the little
girl?' In pictures where
there was no child, she'd
look for her in rabbits,
cats or mice. The little
girl. Herself. 'That's me,'
she'd say, holding her
down with one finger.
'Now I'm in the story.'
And still I'm looking for
her: the little girl. In
history book or traveller's
guide, in footnote and news
report and the long record
of battle, law and poetry,
I look for her. The little girl.
The woman. The one who
looks like me.
The rabbit.
The cat.
The dancing mouse,
setting off on her adventures.
Following cows
The road ends in a muddy yard.
Cows with their calves tear at
hay. We stand confused in
muddy boots. Lost our way.
The map shows a solid road.
Turn left, then right. The curve
of the hill harnessed to contour
lines. The end of a short day,
a single star, fading light.
The cows breathe deeply. Stretch
their heavy necks and trumpet at
walls of fallen stone. The country's
theirs, taken long since.
The rivers are named for them:
Boyne and Borora for white
cow and red, lakes where
calves wait under water.
Saints followed in their path
trusting their direction.
Roads twist and wind, woven
like the borders of a book and
following the slow saunter of
cows to water, byre or upland field.
We stumble over puggy ground
in sodden boots till we find tarmac
and the way home. While the path
forms over our heads: spilled milk
from a full udder, between banks of stars.
Echo
These streets were water once.
Ships came to anchor where
there are shoe shops now, and
sandwich bars.
And tonight, rain making silk
of stone, the boats are back.
Patrick Street and Grand
Parade are become canals,
the skinny alleys their
tributary drains and ditches.
How this wet world glistens,
how it splashes!
And here's a drunk set sail
across the rolling tide. Yaws
and goes about then tacks
toward Shandon.
While the god with one
eye calls from the Post
Office corner.
How the wet world listens,
how his cry flashes,
marking the hidden reef!
Echo!
Echo!
Echo!
The canoe in the National Museum
'Boardlike, noble and strong was his canoe.'
— Partholón, The Book of Invasions, Vol. 3
Black boat from a brown bog.
The line of it like a new moon
sailing. Cut from a single log.
Such hero oaks have gone, cut to
sail against Spain. There's hazel
brush over the stones, ranks of
spindly spruce squeaking on the
hilltops.
So this is how you feel, my
friend, before the waka that
had sailed clear through the
walls of the museum to
beach among whale bones.
Its feathers drab, no wind
to make them fly, no wave
to lift, no island to nudge aside.
This is how you feel, seeing
the adze bite left by a man
careful of bare toes, sweat
making his shoulders slick.
This is how you see them,
setting sail, baskets at their
feet and a little dog barking,
smoke rising from the huts
they are leaving, the river
opening out to the sea. Their
heads visible above the thwart
of the new moon.
You think of yours as I think of
mine, setting sail in their black
canoe.
The people the people the people.
Beckett
He is everywhere, his head like
a bittern, pin feathers raised
among bulrushes.
He's festival of the month. Next
time it'll be Joyce or Flann O'Brien.
One City, One Book. A municipal
promotion.
His face is big in this dim room
where ladders reach to the top
shelf and the air is silent but
smells of shaven skins and
the quill feathers of dead
geese and ink squeezed from
oak gall and all those words
flying.
And on the street the man who
looks like Beckett sleeps on
torn cardboard. He is silent in
his blue sleeping bag, as silent
as if he slept on a river bank
among flag lilies and sweet
rushes. The noonday crowd is
brisk. It steps around him or
over him or around him,
while he lies still.
Waiting.
Waiting for ...
No.
Just waiting.
Lace
The girls are making crochet lace.
Barefoot, big toes splayed on
muddy stone, cracked skin stone
bruised, the blisters burst at night
with a scalding needle.
They stand with busy fingers,
serious for the camera. The
pattern lies in the twisting
thread. The hook dabs in
and out to find it and they
have no need to check. They
can make lace and talk or
watch the road, see the young
men pass by, their spades upon
their shoulders.
They face the camera squarely.
Don't pity us, they say. Or turn
us into postcards. And just to
make their point, they wear
their handiwork. White lace on
each dark dress. The web that
sets the face fair and underpins
their beauty.
Cursing stones
My father was mannerly,
not given to swearing.
Perhaps among men, but
not in front of children.
When angered, he swore
in Irish.
Dom
in
um
deal.
Dom
in
um
deal
and slammed the door.
We did not know the words.
We heard only the syllables
of anger.
But now I know what he was
saying. In the only Irish left to
him he sent souls to the devil.
't'Anam 'on diabhal.'
The soul of Holyoake and
Lyndon Johnson the soul
of the car that would not
start the soul of the wife he
could not love the soul of
the work he could not stand
the soul of the war he could
not forget the soul of the
country he had left behind
the soul of the country he
had found the soul of the
evening paper the soul of the
wounded hand the soul of the
quarter-acre section the soul
of the roof that would not
stop leaking the soul of the
walls that would not stop
rotting. Turning the stones
and turning the stones
and turning the stones, sending
it all to that little grinding devil.
Potatoes
I come from potato country.
The Potato Capital of New
Zealand. Gourmet King
Edwards laid out in boxes,
white stones set in gold.
King Edwards.
Ilam Hardy.
Cliffs Kidney.
They grow well, on sweet
soil. Limestone country,
thick loam on white bones.
My father planted his
quarter acre, dug the
ground in ridges, the
habit of farmers in a
boggy country, raising
their seed above rot.
Ridges like mountain ranges,
valleys between. Then the
leaves broke through and
we could crawl the length
of the green tunnels. Hidden
in the garden till the count
of ten when someone came
with a flaming sword and set
the roof on fire and we were
hunted out,
ready or not.
Politics and economics
Abbeystrewery, Skibbereen
It's all politics, isn't
it? This patch of rough
ground where 9000
lie buried like spuds.
That's politics.
And this: the act of
writing. A hundred
years ago, these
fingers held a sacking
needle. My lungs
choked on jute.
Dead at 50. And a
needle in my hand,
not this sharp pen.
That's economics.
Tarmac
They come ashore
scrambling like rats
for cover in the
tunnels under the
motorway, or
among coastal scrub.
Or crated, stacked
for dispatch, their
white bones visible
to the camera
through the walls
of a truck.
They all look the
same. Like that man
who is spreading
tarmac on the road.
Hooded, his eyes
averted, his bones
visible only to the
camera. Irish navvy
digging his canal,
Jewish ragman
wheeling his barrow,
Chinese miner
shouldering his shovel,
Russian whore
painting her wet mouth.
And those Italian
organ grinders
who turned the
handle to play
the same tune
over and over
while the monkey
danced on the
tarmac the
Sicilians had
newly laid
in Holborn.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Pop-up Book of Invasions by Fiona Farrell. Copyright © 2007 Fiona Farrell. Excerpted by permission of Auckland University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Dedication,
Epigraph,
Introduction,
The invasion,
The Way of the Dishes,
Spades,
The Book of the Dun Cow,
The winner,
Blow-in,
The little girl,
Following cows,
Echo,
The canoe in the National Museum,
Beckett,
Lace,
Cursing stones,
Potatoes,
Politics and economics,
Tarmac,
The Butter Road,
Line,
The News,
The Speckled Book,
Gobnait,
Genealogy,
Sheela-na-gig,
The dogs of Ireland,
Betting,
Gold,
Rolling over,
Ballad,
How I'd take the country,
Midden,
Waving,
Well,
The Lonely Planet visits the dead,
Rail,
Crop,
Lissadell,
Hunting,
The Battler,
Poet, Novelist and above all Patriot,
The brown bull,
Seed,
The flood,
Road,
The long way round,
Hair,
The Hag of Beare,
The Lament of the Nun of Beare,
Dance,
Bed,
The verb 'to be',
The Pop-Up Book of,
Daffodils,
Marginalia,
Copyright,