The President of Planet Earth E-Book

David Wheatley

• Herausgeber: Carcanet Poetry
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 103

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Shortlisted for the 2018 Irish Times Poetry Now AwardIn his fifth collection of poems, David Wheatley twins his birthplace and his current home, Ireland and Scotland, to engage issues of globalism, identity, and language. He takes inspiration from the Russian Futurist poet Velimir Khlebnikov, self-nominated President of Planet Earth, who in a state of apocalyptic rapture envisioned a new world culture, its rise and its dramatic undoing.In The President of Planet Earth Wheatley brings an experimental sensibility to bear on questions of land and territory, channelling the messianic aspirations of modernism into subversive comedy. We move between Pictish pre-history, the imaginary South American nation of 'Oblivia', and post-independence referendum Scotland.Wheatley marries classical, Gaelic, Scots and continental traditions. He deploys several styles - prose poetry; concrete poetry; translations from Middle Irish, Latin and French; sestinas and sonnets in Scots - to heady effect. The President of Planet Earth refashions language and the world it shapes, devising a transformative poetics.

Leseprobe

for my brothers

PHILIP, GAVIN & JOHN

A BEEHIVE

Sitting under the crook of the eaves

in my black and yellow jumper

I turn ultraviolet blue

in the gaze of a honeybee

I watch enter the roof.

Like a postman’s round, the sex

drags on all morning, its fine

filigree residue dispatched

journey by journey to our

asylum of honeycombed dark.

All round me masterpieces

of morbid secretions find their

invisible form, perfection raised

to the level of self-devouring,

a stomach digesting its body.

The bounty of innumerable

foxglove lips parted

slaveringly has brought us to this:

a jelly pleasure sea

I float on, hapless acolyte

of a queen I nourish and dread.

Am I so much as noticed, I wonder,

I and my furious labours? I feel

the jelly throb with her need for me, me

and those billions of others, my kind.

ON THE DEATH OF A POET

composed during the last illness of Eochaidh Ó hEodhasa

Poetry is touched by decline:

how can we come to her aid?

She is sure all hope is gone

in her poorly state.

Consider poetry’s plight,

fit only for the sickbed

as word of Eochaidh’s death is brought

to her who was his bride.

It is hard to witness the honour

once hers turn to scorn:

woeful indignity drawing near,

the cloud of abasement come down.

To Eochaidh above all men she gave

the flower in its prime

of her artistry and love;

and all to nourish him.

The hidden ore of his poet’s craft

burned with a gemlike flame

lighting up the art he left;

much died with his name.

Well he knew the schoolmen’s work,

who sat among the wise;

poet of the golden cloak,

a great lament shall be his.

He stumbled on the hazel of knowledge

in its secret grove,

and left its branches hung with flesh,

stripping the nutshells off.

Out of words both dark and subtle

the poet makes his art

with perfect ease, and in recital

omits no part.

It is no small help to his work

to add the gold relief

of learning to his every word:

such is the way of the beehive.

Bees all over brim their hoard

with the juice they collect

from the oozings of a milky gourd

or a flower unpacked.

They are examples to the bard

whose craft none can match;

no flower or fruit, soft or hard,

escapes his search.

It is he resolves the doubts

of those already skilled;

he who settles all debates,

he to whom all yield.

Who has not been touched by sorrow

at the master’s loss of life?

This disease goes to the marrow

and pierces like a spike.

Like a cow parted from her calf,

my wits are overthrown:

I make melody from my grief,

who now am orphaned;

and poetry is a widow unless

Maoilseachlainn’s son returns;

no one can make good her loss

but the man she mourns.

                              (from the Irish)

IN GLENMALURE

Crimson our halberds from the gore of the Saxons!

The firebrand soon secured and our sword arms aching.

Affliction our foes’ part and Fiach McHugh O’Byrne

honoured at the pig feast by rivers of mead;

shrill from the dark high glen the bleating of sheep

while in and out of the mist floats Lugnaquilla.

The Castle styles Michael Dwyer a common killer

and, be it hereby known, will spare no expense

in his apprehension. Caught, this felon will ship

to New South Wales there to lament, ochone,

at his leisure his exile from old Wicklow amid

Fenians who barely ’scaped hanging like Billy Byrne.

An old man I passed by the monument to the O’Byrne

deep in the glen, his face a sunburnt colour,

had about him so melancholy a mood

I felt the spirit of that mountainous expanse

convert us, strangers, into almost kin

in that quiet corner where a man could sleep.

Early one morning a fair maid I met on the slope

of Ballinacor, her dark eyes heavy with brine

from weeping for her dear one unjustly taken,

the blackbird of sweet Avondale who would call her

his leannán, his darling from the tree-top in accents

so soft that for that want of them she was unmade.

Farmyard cottages ready to view, all mod

cons, no chain. Give the recession the slip

where money doesn’t swear, it talks sense.

Take in the pine woods’ late autumnal auburn

round picture-postcard-pretty Lugnaquilla

between the waterfall and perennial bracken.

Driving down into Glenmalure, not speaking,

the road flooded, the wheels spinning in mud:

O Fiach McHugh! Waiting for the shower to clear,

getting out, walking, feeling the damp seep

through my boots down the accursed boreen

where I revved and tried in vain to turn on a sixpence.

And crueller than all weather loom again

those peaks on the line of the sky that still drive mad

the woebegone sheep astray where the gorse fires burn.

AT LOUGH OULER

all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all

all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all

all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all

all air all air all air all air iolar all air all air all air all

all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all

all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all

all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all

all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all

all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all

all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all

all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all

all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all air all

all air doiléir all air all air all air all air soiléir all air

all air douleur air all air all air all air all solar air all

all air dealer all air all air all air all air all sailor air all

ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler

ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler

ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler

ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler

ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler

ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler

ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler

ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler

ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler

ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler

ouler ouler ouler ouler iolar ouler ouler ouler ouler

ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler

ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler

ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler ouler

THE 1901 CENSUS

Farmer, farmer, railway clerk, scholar.

Read and write, read and write, not known.

Lifting the latch between two centuries

and calling each of his pigs by name,

a waistcoated hireling strikes up

the songs of his people lustily,

lazily, lingeringly,

a phonograph needle biting the wax.

Pillar-box patriarch, thumbs

in his fobs, prepares a time capsule

in family memory

of shoe leather, whiskers and bacon,

Victoria’s head on the stamps

later refranked with a harp.

His pigeon fancier’s scullery window

still opaquely beshitten

a century later, wipe

with scouring pad or old rag as you will,

that flurry of wings and droppings

ominously thick in the air:

hup there, ya lad ya, to hell owwadat!

TABLE-TALK OF JOHN JOLY, FTCD, ON THE GEOLOGICAL UNIFICATION OF IRELAND

‘The subduction of Laurentia by Avalonia’:

a geological allegory – the nymphs among the stones –

or Aesop’s fable for our Young Earth brethren.

Archbishop Ussher and his creationism, how are you –

sophistry, sir, the fossils placed ready-made

in the earth the better to test our faith!

I make but a poor iconoclast, chipping away with

a pocket hammer on the storm beach of the Word,

but in the decay sequence of uranium atoms

I find an Ireland radioactive with promise

and threat: a quaking sod, a clock whose counting

down to zero no clockmaker set. In the name

of the god of deep time and Ireland’s short

tradition of nationhood I annotate dark

visions of her unification half a billion years since

for the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, and not

a Kaiser’s rifle or teapot-armoured car in sight.

Laid down amid impossible magma plumes

and ramparts of volcanic isles the Paleozoic schists

and quartzite of Bray Head, the Himalayan

igneous basalts of Connemara, brew

like heat blisters where one floating continent

smashes against another. Ah, long perspectives!

– yet when all that unpleasantness went off

over the river in Trinity Term, tufts of flame

visible above Front Square, a rifle-crack brought

a tray of petrography slides down on my head: