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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781847772879 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Carcanet Press, Limited |
| Publication date: | 08/01/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 86 |
| File size: | 258 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
This is Yarrow
By Tara Bergin
Carcanet Press Ltd
Copyright © 2013 Tara BerginAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84777-287-9
CHAPTER 1
Looking at Lucy's Painting of the Thames at Low Tide Without Lucy Present
Water is terribly difficult to paint –
and to drink, also, don't you find? – it's terribly difficult
to drink water. In winter in particular.
Lucy says we must drink eight glasses a day,
but the truth is I can't abide it.
Lucy's face looks terribly bruised, do you find?
Especially under artificial light.
Is everything all right with Lucy, do you think?
She seems quite abstracted, most of the time –
and artists will insist on painting water,
despite its obvious difficulty
and, above all, its secrecy
(they say the marine world is notoriously 'close-knit').
I detest it, of course – the work.
I simply can't stand the academic realism of the whole endeavour.
That's not to say it isn't worth something.
On the contrary.
Acting School
Tomorrow is the day of the main performance:
I play, not by choice, a spritely, foul-mouthed American.
Generally, the cast is following the Strasberg Method:
we never try to be jealous, or stirred up for no reason at all.
In today's rehearsal we begin, as always,
with articulation:
Lips: trill
Jaw: spring
Palate: soft
Tongue: pointing
pointing out from the mouth and we are humming all the while,
humming all the time
and all the time centring –
rubbing the centre
and rocking and aligning:
pulling the string up from the crown and not the chin
and looking out with the eyes not the chin
and before speaking,
before singing,
all the time increasing
our capacity for breath.
The Director has told us that exiting well is an art.
It will prove no less vital to your life as an artist,
he says,
than entering.
While the good entrance might be slightly more central,
exiting well could be a turning point in your career.
And now we must practise how to drink water
when there is no water.
Once Aoife ceases to argue
about the fact that we have nothing in our mouths,
we can get on with the task of learning.
Swallowing air, as the Director says,
might not be the same as swallowing water,
but for our purposes at least,
there is a sufficient amount of physical truth
in what we do.
Water is Difficult
Oxygen and hydrogen in liquid state,
convertible by heat into steam,
and by cold into ice
(Mr. H. Fowler, Mr. F. Fowler,
you do make things sound nice).
In summary: water is a liquid consisting chiefly of this.
Just one of these things, so the Fowlers say,
is due to appetite.
But I have a thirst /
I have a fear of / I have a sin of –
and Lucy is on her knees before you, water,
admitting that she might not believe.
'What does it do, what does it do?'
she asks, 'except leave?'
Tell her before she herself decides to go:
Things break – even water.
Water must break
if we are to enter and live.
All Fools' Day: An Academic Farewell
No negotiation.
No negotiation before departure.
In this paper
I will make no direct reference to the above title,
or expand on the possible relevance of my argument,
symbolic or otherwise,
to the main topic.
I will go on to plagiarise
several well-known poets and writers
without citing their work
or acknowledging their influence on my thoughts in any way.
See, for example, the epigraph to this abstract,
a quote which was taken from the leader of the opposition in Cairo (2011)
yet used here out of context in an entirely inappropriate setting.
Finally, I will put to myself the same questions
that my examiners –
so I have been warned –
will put to me.
Each of my answers
will be indirect,
unsuitable,
and ultimately unclear.
I shall fail, in other words, to satisfy the criteria
set by the examiners and their governing board.
Don't ask who's keeping house –
no one's keeping house today.
Questions
1. Did you ever play the piano again after your mother died and if so, what did you play?
2. Could you sing and did you ever sing later on in life when you were married and living away from Moscow?
3. If you can remember (and please try) what songs exactly did you sing?
4. What did you think when you took your pen in your hand and wrote that letter to Stalin?
5. Did you feel a kind of heat of the mind and also a chill somewhere in your stomach?
6. Did your hand shake?
7. Is time mostly to do with feeling and thought?
8. Is time a trap, in your opinion?
9. Am I completely responsible for what I do with time, or not at all, or partly?
10. How powerful – would you say – is a poem not to do with war?
11. Did you like the violin?
12. Were you an insomniac?
13. Compared, I mean, to one about war?
You Could Show a Horse
(an experiment in collage)
You could show a horse, you might see some riderless horse,
galloping among the rushing among the enemy with its mane in the
wind with his mane flying in the wind causing heavy casualties and
doing no little mischief with his heels. Or you could show a man,
mutilated, some maimed warrior may be seen lying on the ground
fallen to the earth shielding himself in some way covering himself with
his shield with his enemy bent over him and trying to while the enemy
bending over him tries to deal him a deathstroke – or show a lot of
people fallen on to a dead horse A number of men fallen in a heap
over a dead horse – and you could show the men you would see
some of the victors, leaving the fight, abandoning the conflict emerging
from the and issuing from the crowd using both hands rubbing their
eyes and cheeks with both hands, to clean their faces, to clean them of
the dirt made by their watering eyes now coated smarting from the
dust and smoke in tears which have poured from their dust-filled eyes.
Himalayan Balsam for a Soldier
They don't see me but I walk
into Fitzgeralds with them the half-wounded,
I sit in there at the high table with my pint,
half-wounded, thinking, I will drag my
wounds in here.
I drag myself in and up to the high stool
among the guys with one arm and they
don't see me.
Here is your talisman I say, I whisper
hold it in your good hand and sing one
of your songs for me.
How does it go? Oh how does it go again?
There is blood on my hand, la la,
there is blood on my hand, la, la.
Your talisman, I say, a foul flower.
Hold it in your hand and how full your good
hand will be with the
exploding.
Dancing
All the branches of the plum tree
are in flower and you are dancing
in your sleep.
Serbia is in your hair.
It is a white flower.
It is your right foot.
Serbia's arm is young
around your waist.
All the flowers are gone.
The plum tree's branches
are bent with weight.
Sonnets for Tracey
i. Permission to Fire
Oh Tracey you have pre-empted me –
You know I feel you do it with my tongue in your cheek,
Rob me of my weakness and my tricks.
Yes, we can open our soft white thighs,
But everyone is so deeply chauvinistic
Don't you think?
Even we are, with our naivety.
You with your misspelt words,
And your off-kilter eye,
Like a wall-eye on a sick horse,
Me with my envy and my Capitals,
My longing to lie down on your rags.
I can see that in all this trickery we are the same.
Oh Tracey we should be ashamed.
ii. Handbook
It's easy to handle girls once you've been introduced to them,
but this one's hard, with her sweet physique,
always wiping her face, always wiping and pushing at her lovely cheeks.
Her left hand seems trapped, but her right hand is free –
What will I say to this one, Tracey?
Last night I saw my lover
in the agony of death.
First she fell on her knees and then onto me.
I picked her up and wrapped her in a sheet.
She was as light as an empty box might be.
I checked my Dictionary of Dreams:
I will have improper thoughts,
or do improper deeds.
Come over and talk to me.
iii. X Prostitutism
'The fat bud of the peony is a whore if I am –
we can see her on her back, plump and ready to open,
and I could paint her torn-open bloom, posed out in the open,
but I am not a peony-painter and I am
not a rich fat whore like the peony:
I am a poor girl from a poor town.
I was a young girl in a young town
when I dreamt that I was stung.
The red and swollen bud of my thumb
throbbed with false pain all morning.
I mixed a poultice and put it on,
and my thumb turned white with kaolin.
I am a dirty girl in a dirty town,
but men prefer me.'
iv. Tambour Café, Marienstr. 16
Tracey sat without a soul in sight,
without a soul looking in, as if she had no light
on inside, as if she herself had not been in the café
but perhaps sitting in the theatre nearby,
privately performing in her seat.
The waitress wore neat shoes and a short skirt –
such a strange combination but alluring almost.
If it weren't for the loneliness pinning her in,
Tracey might have asked her back – asked her to lift
her chin, while balancing the tray on her hip.
Tracey pouted her lips,
then didn't know what to do.
Awkward and vain she sat at the black-green glass,
while the small crowd laughed, over in the Theater-Kasse.
Composition for the Left Hand
Last night I met a trophy hunter
who admired my slender fingers –
he held my left hand up to the light
and praised the pretty white skin
on my palm and let me flare my fingers
out like the antlers of a stag – he took my wrist
and I didn't insist on a phone number –
I gave him mine,
even knowing what his game was.
I played it and all the time I knew
he'd want to claim some trophy or some prize.
He was a trophy hunter –
believe me, he had guns
in a glass cabinet like the one
my grandmother kept her champagne glasses in
(such rich families I've been involved in)
and he cleaned them regularly
with a long thin pipe
and a soft oily rag –
he was a paying hunter, you see,
the best in the country,
and he really didn't want me at all.
He only wanted some kind of trophy,
something pale and palmate
that he could hang on his wall
after the whole ugly thing was over.
Christmas Window, Armistice Day
What a shame he chose that day to come to town –
a mistake, of course – his timing was bad –
but how awful it should happen just as he passed –
just as he was passing the ridiculous toys and
the overwhelming noise of the Christmas music –
that he should choose that day and that time to pass!
Eleven o'clock! so that when they shut the music off
for two whole minutes
and turned off the movement of the toys
for two whole minutes,
and all the light and the noise
turned off from inside the huge window,
the silence and the stillness
that he found himself looking in at
was most marked, and most terrifying.
The stilled elves with their open jaws
and upraised hands –
how cruel their little bodies had become,
how wooden, like men who die,
their stiff jaws unhinged
and their hammers like little guns,
paused and false-seeming.
Was it a mistake?
Was what a mistake? We don't know –
the two minutes finished and the stiff,
shot-off little jaws started to sing once more.
Down came the hammers he'd mistaken for guns,
up came the arms he'd mistaken for arms.
Oh gaudy, gaudy little things,
the foolishly mouthing jaws never meeting the song,
always off-kilter, always getting their timing wrong.
And what had he done?
And what was he going to do now?
We don't know.
Sonnet for Catherine Who Never Turned Up
That night after class I dreamt of you, Catherine Mooney –
at home and unable to come –
I had you forgetful and
wearing fingerless gloves,
writing a sonnet with couplets
that didn't sound like couplets,
and one of the best villanelles
in the English tongue.
Brave Catherine.
Don't be afraid to stay away –
sometimes it's all that can be done.
Our secretary rings and rings
your unplugged phone,
while the envious ones push on.
Military School
The analysis of battle begins here at our desks.
The voice of violence enters our mouths
and our skin, and under my own nails
I hear it seduce me. I argue with nothing it says.
The voice is a swan of the estuary.
It laments, it recites:
Sixteen Dead Men; The Rose Tree,
out of pages yellowed from 1953 –
it bangs oh it bangs
a bodhran.
I agree.
I denounce my motherland,
propose fidelity to my fatherland.
It begins here,
the voice of beauty begins here,
lovely out of the desk.
We mark our youth on the
photocopied maps with black crosses,
obediently we mark our youth.
White Crow
Come here little white crow,
let me stroke your soft fur.
Let me take your white fur
and wear it as a long coat.
I will wear it for my wedding day.
I will make vows in the fire station
where bells like sirens deafen:
they will warn of burning,
on that day of our wedding,
and on the hour of our wedding
for every year after that.
I am unwell, little crow,
I am unwell and far from home
where longing lives in my house.
The Undertaker's Tale of the Notebook Measuring 1 x 2 cm
For forty years I have had in my possession:
A notebook, morocco-bound and blue in colour
which was so small it could be covered over by a thumb.
I found it at the bottom of her
apron pocket;
And for forty years I have had in my throat
the rotten apple of Mordovia
which for forty years
I could not swallow;
And I have held in my possession
the year Nineteen-Forty-
One:
a year too small for her
to write in.
Rapeseed
He thought my clothes were my skin.
He thought these soft things,
this lace and these buttons,
were things I belonged in,
but I do not belong in them.
I told him but he didn't see.
Look, he went on stroking my gloves
and my things,
thinking, what fine skin – Oh
Mister My, My –
I did take thee and thou me.
And after the ceremony?
Quiet, quiet.
We drove past rapeseed.
Fields of it through the window
on the full hot air – oh sweet,
oh stale, oh clinging to the air –
oh shame, oh full, oh cruel.
How we feared its fierceness!
How we worried it would overlook us!
We feared too much,
thinking the world
is reached only in violence.
Red Flag
Once one of them showed me how to:
You turn this (the right) hand to grasp the stock.
You turn this (the left) hand to grasp the barrel.
He touched my knee,
and I hid my surprise –
but now he's changed his tune.
36, 37, 38.9
I've a fever little sparrow, I am sick.
Their flag is flying red,
I can hear it from my window,
I hear it tattered like a torn red rag.
Go and get it little bird,
go and tell them danger! danger!
I will wear it as my Sunday Dress.
I'll wear it walking on the moor
where they practise with their guns.
38.9, 37, 36
How ashamed they'll be
to hurt a young and pretty
girl like me.
The Passion Flower
I don't drink in front of the barman.
I don't shake his hand or lift the drink
to my mouth while he is watching,
for fear he will exclaim at the sight
of my hands.
How red, he will say,
how almost black with the cold.
He thinks me rude but it's the
muteness in my hands.
When he has looked away
I take my glass and my change
to the small dark table.
I hear the big voices, pointing away
from thought, to speaking,
but I cannot talk.
I sit in the corner with my clenched
tongue and my tight, swollen hands.
I sit and I think of the single ringlet
and the green star of leaves.
I think of the meaning found for these things.
That the leaves are the clutching hands of soldiers,
that the tendrils are the whips –
that the five sepals and five petals are ten disciples,
that the five stamens are the wounds.
That's what they say it represents.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from This is Yarrow by Tara Bergin. Copyright © 2013 Tara Bergin. Excerpted by permission of Carcanet Press Ltd.
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,
Looking at Lucy's Painting of the Thames at Low Tide Without Lucy Present,
Acting School,
Water is Difficult,
All Fools' Day: An Academic Farewell,
Questions,
You Could Show a Horse,
Himalayan Balsam for a Soldier,
Dancing,
Sonnets for Tracey,
Composition for the Left Hand,
Christmas Window, Armistice Day,
Sonnet for Catherine Who Never Turned Up,
Military School,
White Crow,
The Undertaker's Tale of the Notebook Measuring 1 x 2 cm,
Rapeseed,
Red Flag,
The Passion Flower,
The Sick Child, at the Time of the Diamond Jubilee,
Restriction,
Bridal Song,
The Confession,
Glinka,
The Pressed Iris,
Pilinszky at the Tenshi no Tobira,
Swiss Station Room,
St Patrick's Day Address, 1920,
Photograph of Thérèse of Lisieux Holding Lilies,
Jack-go-to-bed-at-noon,
Studying the Fresco of St Nikolai of Myra,
At the Garage,
from The Ballad of Tom Gun,
Training Camp, Whit Monday,
My Personal Injuries Claim,
Garrison Supermarket,
At the Lakes with Roberta,
Portrait of the Artist's Wife as a Younger Woman,
Stag-Boy,
If Painting Isn't Over,
Queen of the Rodeo,
Candidate,
Feverfew,
This is Yarrow,
Notes,
Acknowledgements,
About the Author,
Copyright,