Body and Soul E-Book

Anthony Cronin

• Herausgeber: New Island
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

In this exciting new collection, veteran poet Anthony Cronin draws on his years of writing experience to create mesmerising poetry. Resonating with history and memory, Cronin's elegant writing and consummate poetic skill shine through in the poems in Body and Soul.

Leseprobe

BODY AND SOUL

Also by Anthony Cronin, available from New Island Books:

POETRY

The Minotaur

The Fall

Collected Poems

NOVELS

The Life of Riley

ANTHOLOGIES

Personal Anthology:

About the author

As well as eleven collections of poetry, Anthony Cronin has written a number of admired prose works, including biographies of Flann O’Brien and Samuel Beckett; collections of essays; the classic memoir of Dublin in the 1950s, Dead as Doornails; and novels including The Life of Riley, which has recently been reissued by New Island Books in the Modern Irish Classics series.

He is married to the writer Anne Haverty and lives in Dublin. He is a founding member of Aosdána, of which he was made a Saoi in 2003, a distinction conferred for exceptional artistic achievement.

Body

and

Soul

Anthony Cronin

BODY AND SOUL

First published in 2014

by New Island Books

16 Priory Hall Office Park

Stillorgan

County Dublin

www.newisland.ie

Copyright © Anthony Cronin, 2014

Anthony Cronin has asserted his moral rights.

PRINT ISBN:    978-1-84840-399-4

EPUB ISBN:      978-1-84840-401-4

MOBI ISBN:     978-1-84840-400-7

All rights reserved. The material in this publication is protected by copyright law. Except as may be permitted by law, no part of the material may be reproduced (including by storage in a retrieval system) or transmitted in any form or by any means; adapted; rented or lent without the written permission of the copyright owner.

British Library Cataloguing Data. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

New Island receives financial assistance from The Arts Council (An Chomhairle Ealaíon), 70 Merrion Square, Dublin 2, Ireland).

For Donal Lunny,

Praise for Anthony Cronin

‘Anthony Cronin’s The Fall has marvellous poems in it which are formally perfect, wise, surprising, filled with dark knowledge and animated by a glittering mind.’

– Colm Toibin,The Irish Times

‘Above all he is a lover of life, a friend to women and the young... Despite his disabused – i.e. realistic – take on the world, he can’t help being in love with it and its radiance of magic moments on windy cliff or in sunlit garden... And despite a brisk refusal of sentimentality there is a delicate wholeheartedness throughout... He tells no lies. This is the real world; we live in history. He wouldn’t want to be considered a ‘national poet’ (we have several) but in a certain way he is, albeit a contrarian one. The comparison, mutatis mutandis, might be with Pablo Neruda of Chile, who also saw poetry and politics as part of the same activity. He too has spent thoughtful hours on the heights of Machu Picchu, though we call them the Cliffs of Moher.’

– Derek Mahon, An Unflinching Gaze, Selected Prose

‘Cronin is a major voice; he is Ireland’s modern-day Dryden, a master of the public word in the public place.’

– George Szirtes

Table of Contents

The Lesser Yellow Celandine

Nikolaus Nikolayevich

The Madness of Mammon

Endangered Species

The Life of Man

Talking

Shining Through

The Supreme Commandment

Blessings

A Recession

God

Forgiveness

Body and Soul

Impossibilities

After Thomas Moore

Memories of a Lifetime

Community Spirit

Final

Spring

Adam Expelled

A Spiritual People

The Lesser Yellow Celandine

When the Lesser Yellow Celandine

Took William Wordsworth’s eye

English poets soon began

To think they had to try

To find on walks past coppices,

In dingles, dells and nooks

Flowers for reflection on

In their poetic books.

And even Irish poets sought

Among thistles, ragwort, dock,

In boggy fields and bouldered,

Among droppings of the flock,

The same illumination

The old sharp-shooter found

(Or was it consolation?)

As he went upon his round

In his white stock, black stockings

And serviceable shoes

(His serviceable greatness too

Easing so many woes).

But the flowers of the handbook

Are in Ireland hard to find

Though you search among the sceachs and thorns

Until you think you’re blind,

And nature’s subjects generally

Are shy, retiring, rare,

Retreating from the human gaze

As does the Kerry hare.

While some most famous fauna

Are chimeras that we know

Mostly from English literature,

A rich source of such woe.

Where are the munching moles that eat

Old England in their excavation

And solve by way of shapely mounds

The problem of its defecation?

Where are the nightingales that sob

Superbly in each bush

On moonlit nights at midnight in

A wide and starry hush?

Yes, Ireland is a poorish place,

Few poorer to be found,

Nikolaus Nikolayevich

Nikolaus Nikolayevich was killing himself,

But he said he was not afraid.

No one could be afraid of death

Who has endured this life, he said...

Does the east wind cut you in half there

Or the treachery of a friend?

Do you shiver under the bridge there

Awake or asleep at the end?

He gulped from his vodka bottle,

Making his Adam’s apple swerve,

I suppose it could be quicker, he said,

But I haven’t got the nerve.

Nor could I defy the Creator like that

Although I owe him small thanks.

When I was a lad it was the ultimate sin,

Far beyond lies and wanks.

And the vodka’s good for a while, he went on,

Watching the wavering snow fall

From under the roof of the railway shed,

Becoming the world’s white pall.

The Madness of Mammon

When Mammon finally went mad

And refused to leave the inner palace

His priests decided the people were so docile

That everything could still go on as before.

And so priests and people chanted together:

The sins of the rich shall be visited on the poor.

The poorer we are, the more honest we are required to be.

Monetary value is the only value.

Education is a means to self-advancement.

You do not work to live. You live to work.

The expression ‘wasting time’ is obsolete,

There is only the problem of passing it.

Work is the best way of passing the time.

If we all work for less,

Then we can all have work.

And as the people happily chanted

The priests smiled with satisfaction,

Staring into Mammon’s glassy insane eyes.

Everything will be as before,