12,47 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: Carcanet Poetry
- Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
Winner of the David Cohen Prize for Literature 2021.From the highly acclaimed author of Brooklyn, Colm Tóibín's first collection of poetry explores sexuality, religion and belonging through a modern lens.Fans of Colm Tóibín's novels, including The Magician, The Master and Nora Webster, will relish the opportunity to re-encounter Tóibín in verse. Vinegar Hill explores the liminal space between private experiences and public events as Tóibín examines a wide range of subjects – politics, queer love, reflections on literary and artistic greats, living through COVID, memory and a fading past, and facing mortality.The poems reflect a life well-travelled and well-lived; from growing up in the town of Enniscorthy, wandering the streets of Dublin and Barcelona, and crossing the bridges of Venice to visiting the White House, readers will travel through familiar locations and new destinations through Tóibín's unique lens.Within this rich collection of poems written over the course of several decades, shot through with keen observation, emotion and humour, Tóibín offers us lines and verses to provoke, ponder and cherish.
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Ähnliche
3
Vinegar Hill
Colm Tóibín
5
for James Shapiro
6
CONTENTS
VINEGAR HILL
12
13
SEPTEMBER
The first September of the pandemic,
The sky’s a watercolour, white and grey,
And Pembroke Street is empty, and so is
Leeson Street. This is the time after time,
What the world will look like when the world
Is over, when people have been ushered into
Seats reserved for them in the luminous
Heavens.
Moving towards the corner of
Upper Pembroke Street and Leeson Street,
An elderly man wears a mask; his walk is
Sprightly, his movements brisk. I catch
His watery eye for a watery moment.
Without stopping, all matter-of-fact,
He says: ‘Someone told me you were dead.’
14
IN LOS ANGELES
Who can say what he had in mind,
Or where he was headed,
The last man ever to walk a dog?
Water was scarce, and the sun
Burnished the paintings in the
Getty. About suffering, of course,
They were never wrong.
But none of us imagined that
Between two trucks on the 110,
I would see Icarus crawl. His
Bronzed smile and tanned legs
Hover in the mind as much else fades.
I told him about the forgiveness
Of sins, the resurrection of souls,
And life everlasting. But it was,
He said, too little too late.
Lux Aeterna; Tantum Ergo; Dies Irae.
Even the dear old hymns would not
Give light its shade, shade its dark.
People moved through their houses
Wondering where, in the name of God,
They had left their phones, their
Glasses, their e-cigarettes,
Their take on what must now unfold.
15
CURVES
Within the body is its own sweet sound,
It starts as echo and fades fast.
In the bricked-up burden of bone
Two old notes repeat, both fierce.
The city curves. The brightest will
Is open. I have been here for years.
There are lights and wires; there is
Some beauty. It is almost enough.
16
MYSTERIUM LUNAE
Last night
I saw that the moon
Was empty in the sky.
The stars around did
What they do.
They are
Millions of miles
Away
Or millions of years,
And are totally exhausted.
But the moon is blank,
Just a space to show
Where it might have
Been. We will tell
Whoever will attend
That the moon used to catch
Light from the sun
And waxed and waned:
Full, sickle, half-
Moon. And the songs:
Blue Moon, Song to the Moon
(From ‘Rusalka’),
Moon River, The Dark
Side of the Moon,17
The Moon and the Melodies.
It was all the rage, once,
The moon.
It was a large step,
A sad step,
For mankind.
Soon, the sun will run
Out of hydrogen
And it will all
Be gone.
The disappearance
Of the moon
Is just the start.
I am working day and night
On my book,
Knowing it will
Be the final word
On the matter.
I will compose,
With aid from scientists,
A description in concise
Prose, of the time before the bang,
The gorgeous vacancy
The pre-astral soup,
Gravity dancing like
A herring
On the griddle-oh,18
And the sly almostness
Of atoms and particles,
And how long a neutron
Took to be certain
That it was not a proton,
And the war
Between infinity and
Eternity that would have
Gone on for ever
Had the world,
Oozing immanence,
Not begun to roll,
With its built-in
Obsolescence,
Its sell-by date,
Its oomph, its ooh-la-la,
Its everything that
Is the case.
It is calm here
Now. Waves have
Stopped, of course.
The sea has settled
Down; soon it will
Be a fly-over state.
There is
Nothing to compel
Its tides.19
At gatherings, they read
Matthew Arnold’s poem
And marvel
At the lines about the
Sea being calm tonight.
What else is there?
But it wasn’t always calm.
I can swear to that.
I remember
Redondo Beach
And the waves high
And the sun
Going down
Over the horizon.
Strange, I have
No memory of the moon.
But it must have been there
Somewhere.
But, no matter what, you can
Look all you want,
The moon is in the past,
Like analogue,
Or the western seaboard,
Or the library at Alexandria,
Or Sic transit gloria
Mundi, a lovely
Old saying20
Long eclipsed
By more fashionable
Tongues that yet are
