Man Makes a Superhuman

Man Makes a Superhuman

In his last will and testament, Alfred Nobel wrote that the Nobel Prize for literature should be awarded to the person who “produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction.”

To date, the Nobel Prize for Literature has been awarded to four Irish writers and the work gathered together in this book shows how each of the four continued to strive towards ‘an ideal direction’ through their work. The pieces presented in this book also reflect their thoughts on life, aging, death, and ultimately the cyclical nature of life.

Man Makes a Superhuman

William Butler Yeats

3

George Bernard Shaw

25

Samuel Beckett

36

Seamus Heaney

57

William Butler Yeats

A Dialogue of Self and Soul

I

My Soul.

I summon to the winding ancient stair; Set all your mind upon the steep ascent, Upon the broken, crumbling battlement, Upon the breathless starlit air, Upon the star that marks the hidden pole; Fix every wandering thought upon That quarter where all thought is done: Who can distinguish darkness from the soul?

My Soul.

Why should the imagination of a man Long past his prime remember things that are Emblematical of love and war?

Think of ancestral night that can, If but imagination scorn the earth And intellect its wandering To this and that and t’other thing, Deliver from the crime of death and birth.

My Self.

The consecrated blade upon my knees Is Sato’s ancient blade, still as it was, Still razor-keen, still like a looking-glass Unspotted by the centuries; That flowering, silken, old embroidery, torn From some court-lady’s dress and round The wooden scabbard bound and wound, Can, tattered, still protect, faded adorn.

My Self.

Montashigi, third of his family, fashioned it Five hundred years ago, about it lie Flowers from I know not what embroidery – Heart’s purple – and all these I set For emblems of the day against the tower Emblematical of the night, And claim as by a soldier’s right A charter to commit the crime once more.

My Soul.

Such fullness in that quarter overflows And falls into the basin of the mind That man is stricken deaf and dumb and blind, For intellect no longer knows Is from the Ought, or Knower from the Known – That is to say, ascends to Heaven; Only the dead can be forgiven; But when I think of that my tongue’s a stone.

II

My Self.

A living man is blind and drinks his drop.

What matter if the ditches are impure?

What matter if I live it all once more?

Endure that toil of growing up; The ignominy of boyhood; the distress Of boyhood changing into man; The unfinished man and his pain Brought face to face with his own clumsiness; The finished man among his enemies? – How in the name of Heaven can he escape That defiling and disfigured shape The mirror of malicious eyes Casts upon his eyes until at last He thinks that shape must be his shape?

And what’s the good of an escape If honour find him in the wintry blast?

I am content to live it all again And yet again, if it be life to pitch Into the frog-spawn of a blind man’s ditch, A blind man battering blind men; Or into that most fecund ditch of all, The folly that man does Or must suffer, if he woos A proud woman not kindred of his soul.

I am content to follow to its source Every event in action or in thought; Measure the lot; forgive myself the lot!

When such as I cast out remorse So great a sweetness flows into the breast We must laugh and we must sing, We are blest by everything, Everything we look upon is blest.

7

Remorse for Intemperate Speech

I ranted to the knave and fool, But outgrew that school, Would transform the part, Fit audience found, but cannot rule My fanatic heart.

I sought my betters: though in each Fine manners, liberal speech, Turn hatred into sport, Nothing said or done can reach My fanatic heart.

Out of Ireland have we come.

Great hatred, little room, Maimed us at the start.

I carry from my mother’s womb A fanatic heart.

Blood and the Moon

I

Blessed be this place, More blessed still this tower; A bloody, arrogant power Rose out of the race Uttering, mastering it, Rose like these walls from these Storm-beaten cottages – In mockery I have set A powerful emblem up, And sing it rhyme upon rhyme In mockery of a time Half dead at the top.

11

II

Alexandria’s was a beacon tower, and Babylon’s An image of the moving heavens, a log-book of the sun’s journey and the moon’s; And Shelley had his towers, thought’s crowned powers he called them once.

I declare this tower is my symbol; I declare This winding, gyring, spiring treadmill of a stair is my ancestral stair; That Goldsmith and the Dean, Berkeley and Burke have travelled there.

Swift beating on his breast in sibylline frenzy blind Because the heart in his blood-sodden breast had dragged him down into mankind, Goldsmith deliberately sipping at the honey-pot of his mind, And haughtier-headed Burke that proved the State a tree, That this unconquerable labyrinth of the birds, century after century, Cast but dead leaves to mathematical equality; And God-appointed Berkeley that proved all things a dream, That this pragmatical, preposterous pig of a world, its farrow that so solid seem, Must vanish on the instant if the mind but change its theme; Saeva Indignatio and the labourer’s hire, The strength that gives our blood and state magnanimity of its own desire; Everything that is not God consumed with intellectual fire.

III

IV

The purity of the unclouded moon Has flung its arrowy shaft upon the floor.

Seven centuries have passed and it is pure, The blood of innocence has left no stain.

There, on blood-saturated ground, have stood Soldier, assassin, executioner.

Whether for daily pittance or in blind fear Or out of abstract hatred, and shed blood, But could not cast a single jet thereon.

Odour of blood on the ancestral stair!

And we that have shed none must gather there And clamour in drunken frenzy for the moon.

Upon the dusty, glittering windows cling, And seem to cling upon the moonlit skies, Tortoiseshell butterflies, peacock butterflies, A couple of night-moths are on the wing.

Is every modern nation like the tower, Half dead at the top? No matter what I said, For wisdom is the property of the dead, A something incompatible with life; and power, Like everything that has the stain of blood, A property of the living; but no stain Can come upon the visage of the moon When it has looked in glory from a cloud.

13

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

The Tower I

What shall I do with this absurdity – O heart, O troubled heart – this caricature, Decrepit age that has been tied to me As to a dog’s tail?

Never had I more Excited, passionate, fantastical Imagination, nor an ear and eye That more expected the impossible – No, not in boyhood when with rod and fly, Or the humbler worm, I climbed Ben Bulben’s back And had the livelong summer day to spend.

It seems that I must bid the Muse go pack, Choose Plato and Plotinus for a friend Until imagination, ear and eye, Can be content with argument and deal In abstract things; or be derided by A sort of battered kettle at the heel.

I pace upon the battlements and stare On the foundations of a house, or where Tree, like a sooty finger, starts from the earth; And send imagination forth Under the day’s declining beam, and call Images and memories From ruin or from ancient trees, For I would ask a question of them all.

II

Beyond that ridge lived Mrs. French, and once When every silver candlestick or sconce Lit up the dark mahogany and the wine.

A serving-man, that could divine That most respected lady’s every wish, Ran and with the garden shears Clipped an insolent farmer’s ears And brought them in a little covered dish.

Some few remembered still when I was young A peasant girl commended by a Song, Who’d lived somewhere upon that rocky place, And praised the colour of her face, And had the greater joy in praising her, Remembering that, if walked she there, Farmers jostled at the fair So great a glory did the song confer.

And certain men, being maddened by those rhymes, Or else by toasting her a score of times, Rose from the table and declared it right To test their fancy by their sight; But they mistook the brightness of the moon For the prosaic light of day – Music had driven their wits astray – And one was drowned in the great bog of Cloone.

Strange, but the man who made the song was blind; Yet, now I have considered it, I find That nothing strange; the tragedy began With Homer that was a blind man, And Helen has all living hearts betrayed.

O may the moon and sunlight seem One inextricable beam, For if I triumph I must make men mad.

15

And I myself created Hanrahan And drove him drunk or sober through the dawn From somewhere in the neighbouring cottages.

Caught by an old man’s juggleries He stumbled, tumbled, fumbled to and fro And had but broken knees for hire And horrible splendour of desire; I thought it all out twenty years ago:

O towards I have forgotten what – enough!

I must recall a man that neither love Nor music nor an enemy’s clipped ear Could, he was so harried, cheer; A figure that has grown so fabulous There’s not a neighbour left to say When he finished his dog’s day: An ancient bankrupt master of this house.

Good fellows shuffled cards in an old bawn; And when that ancient ruffian’s turn was on He so bewitched the cards under his thumb That all but the one card became A pack of hounds and not a pack of cards, And that he changed into a hare.

Hanrahan rose in frenzy there And followed up those baying creatures towards –

Before that ruin came, for centuries, Rough men-at-arms, cross-gartered to the knees Or shod in iron, climbed the narrow stairs, And certain men-at-arms there were Whose images, in the Great Memory stored, Come with loud cry and panting breast To break upon a sleeper’s rest While their great wooden dice beat on the board.

17

As I would question all, come all who can; Come old, necessitous, half-mounted man; And bring beauty’s blind rambling celebrant; The red man the juggler sent Through God-forsaken meadows; Mrs. French, Gifted with so fine an ear; The man drowned in a bog’s mire, When mocking Muses chose the country wench.

Old lecher with a love on every wind, Bring up out of that deep considering mind All that you have discovered in the grave, For it is certain that you have Reckoned up every unforeknown, unseeing Plunge, lured by a softening eye, Or by a touch or a sigh, Into the labyrinth of another’s being;

Did all old men and women, rich and poor, Who trod upon these rocks or passed this door, Whether in public or in secret rage As I do now against old age?

But I have found an answer in those eyes That are impatient to be gone; Go therefore; but leave Hanrahan, For I need all his mighty memories.

Does the imagination dwell the most Upon a woman won or woman lost?

If on the lost, admit you turned aside From a great labyrinth out of pride, Cowardice, some silly over-subtle thought Or anything called conscience once; And that if memory recur, the sun’s Under eclipse and the day blotted out.

III

It is time that I wrote my will; I choose upstanding men That climb the streams until The fountain leap, and at dawn Drop their cast at the side Of dripping stone; I declare They shall inherit my pride, The pride of people that were Bound neither to Cause nor to State. Neither to slaves that were spat on, Nor to the tyrants that spat, The people of Burke and of Grattan That gave, though f r e e t o r ef u s e – p r i d e , l i k e t h a t o f t h e m o r n , W h e n t h e h e a d l o n g l i g h t i s l o o s e , O r t h a t o f t h e fa b u l o u s h o r n , O r t h a t o f t h e s u d d e n s h o w e r W h e n a l l s t r e a m s a r e d r y, Or that of the hour When the swan must fix his eye U p o n a fa d i n g g l e a m , F l o a t o u t u p o n a l o n g L a s t r e a c h of glittering stream And there sing his last song. And I d e c l a r e m y fa i t h : I m o c k P l o t i n u s ’ t h o u g h t A n d c r y i n Plato’s teeth, Death and life were not Till man made up the whole, Made lock, stock and barrel Out of his bitter soul, Aye, sun and moon and star, all, And further add to that That, being dead, we rise, Dream and so create Tr a n s l u n a r P a r a d i s e . I h a v e p r e p a r e d m y p e a c e W i t h learned Italian things And the proud stones of Greece, Po e t ’ s i m a g i n i n g s A n d m e m o r i e s o f l o v e , M e m o r i e s of the words of women, All those things whereof Man makes a superhuman, Mirror-resembling dream.

As at the loophole there The daws chatter and scream, And drop twigs layer upon layer.

When they have mounted up, The mother bird will rest On their hollow top, And so warm her wild nest.

I leave both faith and pride To young upstanding men Climbing the mountain-side, That under bursting dawn They may drop a fly; Being of that metal made Till it was broken by This sedentary trade.

Now shall I make my soul, Compelling it to study In a learned school Till the wreck of body, Slow decay of blood, Testy delirium Or dull decrepitude, Or what worse evil come – The death of friends, or death Of every brilliant eye That made a catch in the breath – Seem but the clouds of the sky When the horizon fades; Or a bird’s sleepy cry Among the deepening shades.

19

The Crazed Moon

Crazed through much child-bearing The moon is staggering in the sky; Moon-struck by the despairing Glances of her wandering eye We grope, and grope in vain, For children born of her pain.

Children dazed or dead!

When she in all her virginal pride First trod on the mountain’s head What stir ran through the countryside Where every foot obeyed her glance!

What manhood led the dance!

Fly-catchers of the moon, Our hands are blenched, our fingers seem But slender needles of bone; Blenched by that malicious dream They are spread wide that each May rend what comes in reach.

George Bernard Shaw

We have seen that as Man grows through the ages, he finds himself bolder by the growth of his spirit (if I may so name the un-known) and dares more and more to love and trust instead of to fear and fight. But his courage has other effects: he also raises himself from mere consciousness to knowledge by daring more and more to face facts and tell himself the truth. For in his infancy of helplessness and terror he could not face the inexorable; and facts being of all things the most inexorable, he masked all the threatening ones as fast as he discovered them; so that now every mask requires a hero to tear it off. The king of terrors, Death, was the Arch-Inexorable: Man could not bear the dread of that thought. He must persuade himself that Death could be propitiated, circumvented, abolished. How he fixed the mask of immortality on the face of Death for this purpose we all know. And he did the like with all disagreeables as long as they remained inevitable. Otherwise he must have gone mad with terror of the grim shapes around him, headed by the skeleton with the scythe and hourglass. The masks were his ideals, as he called them; and what, he would ask, would life be without ideals? Thus he became an idealist, and remained so until he dared to begin pulling the masks off and looking the spectres in the face – dared, that is, to be more and more a realist. But all men are not equally brave; and the greatest terror prevailed whenever some realist bolder than the rest laid hands on a mask which they did not yet dare to do without.

Ideals and Idealists

26

And does your demonstration of the approaching sterilization and extinction of mankind lead to anything better than making the most of those pleasures of art and love which you yourself admit refined you, elevated you, developed you?

[To Don Juan]

Have you forgotten already the hideous dullness from which I am offering you a refuge here?

[To the Statue]

And all your philosophizing has been nothing but a mask for proselytizing!

[To Don Juan]

What! You are going back from your word!

THE DEVILÂ [alarmed]

[Act III, Man and Superman]

For the sake of precision, let us imagine a community of a thousand persons, organized for the perpetuation of the species on the basis of the British family as we know it at present. Seven hundred of them, we will suppose, find the British family arrangement quite good enough for them. Two hundred and ninety-nine find it a failure, but must put up with it since they are in a minority. The remaining person occupies a position to be explained presently. The 299 failures will not have the courage to face the fact that they are failures – irremediable failures, since they cannot prevent the 700 satisfied ones from coercing them into conformity with the marriage law.

We have plenty of these masks around us still – some of them more fantastic than any of the Sandwich islanders’ masks in the British Museum. In our novels and romances especially we see the most beautiful of all the masks – those devised to disguise the brutalities of the sexual instinct in the earlier stages of its development, and to soften the rigorous aspect of the iron laws by which Society regulates its gratification. When the social organism becomes bent on civilization, it has to force marriage and family life on the individual, because it can perpetuate itself in no other way whilst love is still known only by fitful glimpses, the basis of sexual relationship being in the main mere physical appetite. Under these circumstances men try to graft pleasure on necessity by desperately pretending that the institution forced upon them is a congenial one, making it a point of public decency to assume always that men spontaneously love their kindred better than their chance acquaintances, and that the woman once desired is always desired: also that the family is woman’s proper sphere, and that no really womanly woman ever forms an attachment, or even knows what it means, until she is requested to do so by a man. Now if anyone’s childhood has been embittered by the dislike of his mother and the ill-temper of his father; if his wife has ceased to care for him and he is heartily tired of his wife; if his brother is going to law with him over the division of the family property, and his son acting in studied defiance of his plans and wishes, it is hard for him to persuade himself that passion is eternal and that blood is thicker than water. Yet if he tells himself the truth, all his life seems a waste and a failure by the light of it. It comes then to this, that his neighbours must either agree with him that the whole system is a mistake, and discard it for a new one, which cannot possibly happen until social organization so far outgrows the institution that Society can perpetuate itself without it; or else they must keep him in countenance by resolutely making believe that all the illusions with which it has been masked are realities.

28

DON JUAN True; but since you have endured so much, you may as well endure to the end. Long before this sterilisation which I described becomes more than a clearly foreseen possibility, the reaction will begin. The great central purpose of breeding the race: ay, breeding it to heights now deemed superhuman: that purpose which is now hidden in a mephitic cloud of love and romance and prudery and fastidiousness, will break through into clear sunlight as a purpose no longer to be confused with the gratification of personal fancies, the impossible realisation of boys’ and girls’ dreams of bliss, or the need of older people for companionship or money. The plainspoken marriage services of the vernacular Churches will no longer be abbreviated and half suppressed as indelicate. The sober decency, earnestness, and authority of their declaration of the real purpose of marriage will be honoured and accepted, whilst their romantic vowings and pledgings and until-death-do-us-partings and the like will be expunged as unbearable frivolities.

Do my sex the justice to admit, Señora, that we have always recognised that the sex relation is not a personal or friendly relation at all.

Our 299 domestic failures are therefore become idealists as to marriage; and in proclaiming the ideal in fiction, poetry, pulpit and platform oratory, and serious private conversation, they will far outdo the 700 who comfortably accept marriage as a matter of course, never dreaming of calling it an ‘institution’, much less a holy and beautiful one, and being pretty plainly of opinion that idealism is a crackbrained fuss about nothing. The idealists, hurt by this, will retort by calling them Philistines. We then have our society classified as 700 Philistines and 299 idealists, leaving one man unclassified. He is the man who is strong enough to face the truth that the idealists are shirking. He says flatly of marriage, “This thing is a failure for many of us. It is insufferable that two human beings, having entered into relations which only warm affection can render tolerable, should be forced to maintain them after such affections have ceased to exist, or in spite of the fact that they have never arisen. The alleged natural attractions and repulsions upon which the family ideal is based do not exist; and it is historically false that the family was founded for the purpose of satisfying them. Let us provide otherwise for the social ends which the family subserves, and then abolish its compulsory character altogether.”

ANA It is all nonsense: most marriages are perfectly comfortable.

They will accordingly try to persuade themselves that, whatever their own particular domestic arrangements may be, the family is a beautiful and holy natural institution. For the fox not only declares that the grapes he cannot get are sour: he also insists that the sloes he can get are sweet. Now observe what has happened. The family as it really is is a conventional arrangement, legally enforced, which the majority, because it happens to suit them, think good enough for the minority, whom it happens not to suit at all. The family as a beautiful and holy natural institution is only a fancy picture of what every family would have to be if everybody was to be suited, invented by the minority as a mask for the reality, which in its nakedness is intolerable to them. We call this sort of fancy picture an IDEAL; and the policy of forcing individuals to act on the assumption that all ideals are real, and to recognize and accept such action as standard moral conduct, absolutely valid under all circumstances, contrary conduct or any advocacy of it being discountenanced and punished as immoral, may therefore be described as the policy of IDEALISM.

30

* The following are examples of the two stages of Shelley criticism: “ We feel as if one of the darkest of the fiends had been clothed with a human body to enable him to gratify his enmity against the human race, and as if the supernatural atrocity of his hate were only heightened by his power to do injury. So strongly has this impression dwelt upon our minds that we absolutely asked a friend, who had seen this individual, to describe him to us – as if a cloven hoof, or horn, or flames from the mouth, must have marked the external appearance of so bitter an enemy of mankind.”

(Literary Gazette, 19th May 1821.) “ A beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain.” (Matthew Arnold, in his preface to the selection of poems by Byron, dated 1881.)

The 1881 opinion is much sillier than the 1821 opinion. Further samples will be found in the articles of Henry Salt, one of the few writers on Shelley who understand his true position as a social pioneer.

But take the case of the man who has already served us as an example – Shelley. The idealists did not call Shelley a cynic: they called him a fiend until they invented a new illusion to enable them to enjoy the beauty of his lyrics – said illusion being nothing less than the pretence that since he was at bottom an idealist himself, his ideals must be identical with those of Tennyson and Longfellow, neither of whom ever wrote a line in which some highly respectable ideal was not implicit.*

How far they will proceed against him depends on how far his courage exceeds theirs. At his worst, they call him cynic and paradoxer: at his best they do their utmost to ruin him if not to take his life. Thus, purblindly courageous moralists like Mandeville and Larochefoucauld, who merely state unpleasant facts without denying the validity of current ideals, and who indeed depend on those ideals to make their statements piquant, get off with nothing worse than this name of cynic, the free use of which is a familiar mark of the zealous idealist.

What will be the attitude of the rest to this outspoken man? The Philistines will simply think him mad. But the idealists will be terrified beyond measure at the proclamation of their hidden thought – at the presence of the traitor among the conspirators of silence – at the rending of the beautiful veil they and their poets have woven to hide the unbearable face of the truth. They will crucify him, burn him, violate their own ideals of family affection by taking his children away from him, ostracize him, brand him as immoral, profligate, filthy, and appeal against him to the despised Philistines, specially idealized for the occasion as SOCIETY.

Now let us return to our community of 700 Philistines, 299 idealists, and 1 realist.

The mere verbal ambiguity against which I have just provided is as nothing beside that which comes of any attempt to express the relations of these three sections, simple as they are, in terms of the ordinary systems of reason and duty.

Here the admission that Shelley, the realist, was an idealist too, seems to spoil the whole argument. And it certainly spoils its verbal consistency. For we unfortunately use this word ideal indifferently to denote both the institution which the ideal masks and the mask itself, thereby producing desperate confusion of thought, since the institution may be an effete and poisonous one, whilst the mask may be, and indeed generally is, an image of what we would fain have in its place.

If the existing facts, with their masks on, are to be called ideals, and the future possibilities which the masks depict are also to be called ideals – if, again, the man who is defending existing institutions by maintaining their identity with their masks is to be confounded under one name with the man who is striving to realize the future possibilities by tearing the mask and the thing masked asunder, then the position cannot be intelligibly described by mortal pen: you and I, reader, will be at cross purposes at every sentence unless you allow me to distinguish pioneers like Shelley and Ibsen as realists from the idealists of my imaginary community of one thousand. If you ask why I have not allotted the terms the other way, and called Shelley and Ibsen idealists and the conventionalists realists, I reply that Ibsen himself, though he has not formally made the distinction, has so repeatedly harped on conventions and conventionalists as ideals and idealists that if I were now perversely to call them realities and realists, I should confuse readers of The Wild Duck and RosDiershobn more than I should help them. Doubtless I shall be reproached for puzzling people by thus limiting the meaning of the term ideal. But what, I ask, is that inevitable passing perplexity compared to the inextricable tangle I must produce if I follow the custom, and use the word indiscriminately in its two violently incompatible senses? If the term realist is objected to on account of some of its modern associations, I can only recommend you, if you must associate it with something else than my own description of its meaning (I do not deal in definitions), to associate it, not with Zola and Maupassant, but with Plato.

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The realist at last loses patience with ideals altogether, and sees in them only something to blind us, something to numb us, something to murder self in us, something whereby, instead of resisting death, we can disarm it by committing suicide. The idealist, who has taken refuge with the ideals because he hates himself and is ashamed of himself, thinks that all this is so much the better. The realist, who has come to have a deep respect for himself and faith in the validity of his own will, thinks it so much the worse. To the one, human nature, naturally corrupt, is only held back from the excesses of the last years of the Roman empire by self-denying conformity to the ideals. To the other these ideals are only swaddling clothes which man has outgrown, and which insufferably impede his movements. No wonder the two cannot agree. The idealist says, “Realism means egotism; and egotism means depravity.” The realist declares that when a man abnegates the will to live and be free in a world of the living and free, seeking only to conform to ideals for the sake of being, not himself, but ‘a good man,’ then he is morally dead and rotten, and must be left unheeded to abide his resurrection, if that by good luck arrive before his bodily death. Unfortunately, this is the sort of speech that nobody but a realist understands. It will be more amusing as well as more convincing to take an actual example of an idealist criticising a realist.

The idealist, higher in the ascent of evolution than the Philistine, yet hates the highest and strikes at him with a dread and rancour of which the easy-going Philistine is guiltless. The man who has risen above the danger and the fear that his acquisitiveness will lead him to theft, his temper to murder, and his affections to debauchery: this is he who is denounced as an arch-scoundrel and libertine, and thus confounded with the lowest because he is the highest. And it is not the ignorant and stupid who maintain this error, but the literate and the cultured. When the true prophet speaks, he is proved to be both rascal and idiot, not by those who have never read of how foolishly such learned demonstrations have come off in the past, but by those who have themselves written volumes on the crucifixions, the burnings, the stonings, the headings and hangings, the Siberia transportations, the calumny and ostracism which have been the lot of the pioneer as well as of the camp follower.

It is from men of established literary reputation that we learn that William Blake was mad, that Shelley was spoiled by living in a low set, that Robert Owen was a man who did not know the world, that Ruskin is incapable of comprehending political economy, that Zola is a mere blackguard, and that Ibsen is “a Zola with a wooden leg.” The great musician, accepted by the unskilled listener, is vilified by his fellow-musicians: it was the musical culture of Europe that pronounced Wagner the inferior of Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer. The great artist finds his foes among the painters, and not among the men in the street: it is the Royal Academy which places Mr Marcus Stone – not to mention Mr Hodgson – above Mr Burne Jones. It is not rational that it should be so; but it is so, for all that.

Samuel Beckett

39

Where then but there see – See for be seen. Misseen. From now see for be misseen.

Where then but there see now – First back turned the shade astand. In the dim void see first back turned the shade astand. Still.

Where then but there see now another. Bit by bit an old man and child. In the dim void bit by bit an old man and child. Any other would do as ill.

Another. Say another. Head sunk on crippled hands. Vertex vertical. Eyes clenched. Seat of all. Germ of all.

No future in this. Alas yes.

It stands. See in the dim void how at last it stands. In the dim light source unknown. Before the downcast eyes. Clenched eyes. Staring eyes. Clenched staring eyes.

That shade. Once lying. Now standing. That a body? Yes. Say that a body. Somehow standing. In the dim void.

A place. Where none. A time when try see. Try say. How small. How vast. How if not boundless bounded.

Whence the dim. Not now. Know better now. Unknow better now. Know only no out of. No knowing how know only no out of. Into only. Hence another. Another place where none. Whither once whence no return.

No. No place but the one. None but the one where none. Whence never once in. Somehow in. Beyondless.

Thenceless there. Thitherless there. Thenceless thitherless there.

Worstward Ho On. Say on. Be said on. Somehow on. Till nohow on. Said nohow on.

Say for be said. Missaid. From now say for missaid.

Say a body. Where none. No mind. Where none. That at least. A place. Where none. For the body. To be in. Move in. Out of. Back into.

No. No out. No back. Only in. Stay in. On in. Still.

All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

First the body. No. First the place. No. First both. Now either. Now the other. Sick of the either try the other. Sick of it back sick of the either. So on. Somehow on. Till sick of both. Throw up and go. Where neither. Till sick of there. Throw up and back. The body again. Where none. The place again. Where none. Try again. Fail again. Better again. Or better worse. Fail worse again.

Still worse again. Till sick for good. Throw up for good. Go for good. Where neither for good.

Good and all.

It stands. What? Yes. Say it stands. Had to up in the end and stand. Say bones. No bones but say bones. Say ground. No ground but say ground. So as to say pain. No mind and pain? Say yes that the bones may pain till no choice but stand. Somehow up and stand. Or better worse remains. Say remains of mind where none to permit of pain. Pain of bones till no choice but up and stand.

Somehow up. Somehow stand. Remains of mind where none for the sake of pain. Here of bones. Other examples if needs must. Of pain. Relief from. Change of.

All of old. Nothing else ever. But never so failed. Worse failed. With care never worse failed.

Dim light source unknown. Know minimum. Know nothing no. Too much to hope. At most mereminimum.

Meremost minimum.

No choice but stand. Somehow up and stand. Somehow stand. That or groan. The groan so long on its way.

No. No groan. Simply pain. Simply up. A time when try how. Try see. Try say. How first it lay. Then somehow knelt. Bit by bit. Then on from there. Bit by bit. Till up at last. Not now. Fail better worse now.

41

Back of black greatcoat cut off midthigh. Kneeling. Better kneeling. Better worse kneeling.

Say now kneeling. From now kneeling. Could rise but to its knees. Sudden gone sudden back unchanged back turned head sunk dark shade on unseen knees. Still.

Next sudden gone the twain. Next sudden back. Say now unchanged. So far unchanged. Backs turned. Heads sunk. Dim hair. Dim white and hair so fair that in that dim light dim white. Black greatcoats to heels. Dim black. Bootheels. Now the two right. Now the two left. As on with equal plod they go. No ground. Plod as on void. Dim hands. Dim white. Two free and two as one. So sudden gone sudden back unchanged as one dark shade plod unreceding on.

The dim. Far and wide the same. High and low. Unchanging. Say now unchanging. Whence no knowing. No saying. Say only such dim light as never. On all. Say a grot in that void. A gulf. Then in that grot or gulf such dimmest light as never. Whence no knowing. No saying.

The void. Unchanging. Say now unchanging. Void were not the one. The twain. So far were not the one and twain. So far.

The void. How try say? How try fail? No try no fail. Say only – First the bones. On back to them. Preying since first said on foresaid remains. The ground. The pain. No bones. No ground. No pain. Why up unknown. At all costs unknown. If ever down. No choice but up if ever down. Or never down. Forever kneeling. Better forever kneeling. Better worse forever kneeling. Say from now forever kneeling. So far from now forever kneeling. So far.

Hand in hand with equal plod they go. In the free hands – no. Free empty hands. Backs turned both bowed with equal plod they go. The child hand raised to reach the holding hand. Hold the old holding hand. Hold and be held. Plod on and never recede. Slowly with never a pause plod on and never recede.Backs turned. Both bowed. Joined by held joining hands. Plod on as one.

One shade. Another shade.

Head sunk on crippled hands. Clenched staring eyes. At in the dim void shades. One astand at rest. One old man and child. At rest plodding on. Any others would do as ill. Almost any.

Almost as ill.

They fade. Now the one. Now the twain. Now both. Fade back. Now the one. Now the twain.

Now both. Fade? No. Sudden go. Sudden back. Now the one. Now the twain. Now both.

Unchanged? Sudden back unchanged? Yes. Say yes. Each time unchanged. Somehow unchanged. Till no. Till say no. Sudden back changed. Somehow changed. Each time somehow changed.

The dim. The void. Gone too? Back too? No. Say no. Never gone. Never back. Till yes. Till say yes. Gone too. Back too. The dim. The void. Now the one. Now the other. Now both.

Sudden gone. Sudden back. Unchanged? Sudden back unchanged? Yes. Say yes. Each time unchanged. Somehow unchanged. Till no. Till say no. Sudden back changed.

Somehow changed. Each time somehow changed.

First sudden gone the one. First sudden back. Unchanged. Say now unchanged. So far unchanged. Back turned. Head sunk. Vertex vertical in hat. Cocked back of black brim alone.

xxxxxxxxxxxxx void cannot go. xxxxxxxxxxx unasking no. it cannot go. xxxxxxxxxxx The words too whosesoever. What room for worse! How almost true they sometimes almost ring! How wanting in inanity! Say the night is young alas and take heart. Or better worse say still a watch of night alas to come. A rest of last watch to come. And take heart.

First one. First try fail better one. Something there badly not wrong. Not that as it is it is not bad.

The noface bad. The no hands bad. The no –. Enough. A pox on bad. Mere bad. Way for worse.

Pending worse still. First worse. Mere worse. Pending worse still. Add a –. Add? Never. Bow it down. Be it bowed down. Deep down. Head in hat gone. More back gone. Greatcoat cut off higher. Nothing from pelvis down. Nothing but bowed back. Topless baseless hindtrunk. Dim black. On unseen knees. In the dim void. Better worse so. Pending worse still.

Next try fail better two. The twain. Bad as it is as it is. Bad the no – First back on to three. Not yet to try worsen. Simply be there again. There in that head in that head. Be it again. That head in that head. Clenched eyes clamped to it alone. Alone? No. Too. To it too. The sunken skull. The crippled hands. Clenched staring eyes. Be that shade again. In that shade again. With the other shades. Worsening shades. In the dim void.

Next – First how all at once. In that stare. The worsened one. The worsening two. And what yet to worsen. To try to worsen. Itself. The dim. The void. All at once in that stare. Clenched eyes clamped to all.

The void. Before the staring eyes. Stare where they may. Far and wide. High and low. That narrow field. Know no more. See no more. Say no more. That alone. That little much of void alone.

On back to unsay void can go. Void cannot go. Save dim go. Then all go. All not already gone. Till dim back. Then all back. All not still gone. The one can go. The twain can go. Dim can go. Void cannot go. Save dim go. Then all go.

On back better worse to fail the head said seat of all. Germ of all. All? If of all of it too. Where if not there it too? There in the sunken head the sunken head. The hands. The eyes. Shade with the other shades. In the same dim. The same narrow void. Before the staring eyes. Where it too if not there too? Ask not. No. Ask in vain.

Better worse so.

The head. Ask not if it can go. Say no. Unasking no. It cannot go. Save dim go. Then all go. Oh dim go. Go for good. All for good. Good and all.

Whose words? Ask in vain. Or not in vain if say no knowing. No saying. No words for him whose words. Him? One. No words for one whose words. One? It. No words for it whose words. Better worse so.

Something not wrong with one. Meaning – meaning! – meaning the kneeling one. From now one for the kneeling one. As from now two for the twain. The as one plodding twain. As from now three for the head. The head as first said missaid. So from now. For to gain time. Time to lose. Gain time to lose. As the soul once. The world once.

Something not wrong with one. Then with two. Then with three. So on. Something not wrong with all. Far from wrong. Far far from wrong.

No.

Joy! Enough.

On. Dim go.

Somehow on.

So on.

Dim whence unknown.

Say no.The voi Best worse.Only!

Unworsenable worse. The stare.

Void go.

The others gone.To be gone.

Least.

Unchanged.To dimmost dim.

Best wor Less seeing.

Void dimmed.

So far.

Somehow on.

The skull.

Blur yes. skull.

All? The The dim.By the staring eyes.

And take heart.

Never.

For poor best worst and all.

How lon The void. Shade dimmed.

Next – That head!

Those hands!

Less seen.

Say on.

Dim dimmed.

Longing go. void.

As when nohow. Alone in the dimThe stare.

Dimly seen.

Nohow again.

The eyes.

Say only vasts apart.

Alas yes.

Next two. From bad to worsen. Try worsen. From merely bad. Add –. Add? Never. The boots. Better worse bootless. Bare heels. Now the two right.

Now the two left. Left right left right on. Barefoot unreceding on. Better worse so. A little better worse than nothing so.

Next the so-said seat and germ of all. Those hands! That head! That near true ring! Away. Full face from now. No hands. No face. Skull and stare alone. Scene and seer of all.

On. Stare on. Say on. Be on. Somehow on. Anyhow on. Till dim gone.

At long last gone. All at long last gone. For bad and all. For poor best worst and all.

Dim whence unknown. At all costs unknown. Unchanging. Say now unchanging. Far and wide. High and low. Say a pipe in that void. A tube.

Sealed. Then in that pipe or tube that selfsame dim. Old dim. Whenever what else? Where all always to be seen. Of the nothing to be seen.

Dimly seen. Nothing ever unseen. Of the nothing to be seen. Dimly seen. Worsen that?

Next the so-said void. The so-missaid. That narrow field. Rife with shades.

Well so-missaid. Shade-ridden void. How better worse so-missay?

Add others. Add? Never. Till if needs must. Nothing to those so far.

Dimly so far. Them only lessen. But with them as they lessen others. As they worsen. If needs must. Others to lessen. To worsen. Till dim go. At long last go. For worst and all.

On. Somehow on.

Anyhow on.

Say all gone.

So on.

In the skull all gone.

All? No. All cannot go.

Till dim go.

Say then but the two gone.

In the skull one and two gone.

From the void.

From the stare.

In the skull all save the skull gone.

The stare.

Alone in the dim void.

Alone to be seen.

Dimly seen.

In the skull the skull alone to be seen.

The staring eyes.

Dimly seen.

By the staring eyes.

The others gone.

Long sudden gone.

Then sudden back.

Unchanged.

Say now unchanged.

First one.

Then two.

Or first two.

Then one.

Or together.

Then all again together.

The bowed back.

The plodding twain.

The skull.

The stare.

All back in the skull together.

Unchanged.

Stare clamped to all.

In the dim void.

Remains of mind then still. Enough still. Some whose somewhere somehow enough still. No mind and no words? Even such words. So enough still. Just enough still to joy. Joy! Just enough still to joy that only they. Only!

Enough still not to know. Not to know what they say. Not to know what it is the words it says say. Says? Secretes.

Say better worse secretes. What it is the words it secretes say. What the so-said void. The so-said dim. The so-said shades. The so-said seat and germ of all. Enough to know no knowing. No knowing what it is the words it secretes say. No saying. No saying what it is they somehow say.

That said on back to try worse say the plodding twain.

Preying since last worse said on foresaid remains. But what not on them preying? What seen? What said? What of all seen and said not on them preying? True. True! And yet say worst perhaps worst of all the old man and child.

That shade at last worse seen. Left right left right barefoot unreceding on. They then the words. Back to them now for want of better on and better fail. Worser fail that perhaps of all the least. Least worse failed of all the worse failed shades. Less worse than the bowed back alone. The skull and lidless stare. Though they too for worse. But what not for worse. True. True! And yet say first the worst perhaps worst of all the old man and child. Worst in need of worse.

Worst in –

47

Blanks for nohow on.

How long?

Blanks how long till somehow on?

Again somehow on.

All gone when nohow on.

Time gone when nohow on.

Worse less. By no stretch more. Worse for want of better less. Less best. No. Naught best. Best worse. No. Not best worse. Naught not best worse. Less best worse. No. Least. Least best worse. Least never to be naught. Never to naught be brought. Never by naught be nulled.

Unnullable least. Say that best worst. With leastening words say least best worse. For want of worser worse. Unlessenable least best worse.

The twain. The hands. Held holding hands. That almost ring! As when first said on crippled hands the head. Crippled hands! They there then the words. Here now held holding. As when first said. Ununsaid when worse said. Away. Held holding hands!

The eyes. Time to – First on back to unsay dim can go. Somehow on back. Dim cannot go. Dim to go must go for good. True then dim can go. If but for good.

One can go not for good. Two too. Three no if not for good. With dim gone for good. Void no if not for good. With all gone for good. Dim can worsen. Somehow worsen. Go no. If not for good.

The eyes. Time to try worsen. Somehow try worsen. Unclench. Say staring open. All white and pupil. Dim white. White? No. All pupil.

Dim black holes. Unwavering gaping. Be they so said. With worsening words.From now so.

Better than nothing so bettered for the worse.

Still dim still on. So long as still dim still somehow on. Anyhow on. With worsening words. Worsening stare. For the nothing to be seen. At the nothing to be seen. Dimly seen. As now by way of somehow on where in the nowhere all together? All three together. Where there all three as last worse seen? Bowed back alone. Barefoot plodding twain. Skull and lidless stare. Where in the narrow vast? Say only vasts apart. In that narrow void vasts of void apart. Worse better later.

What when words gone? None for what then. But say by way of somehow on somehow with sight to do. With less of sight. Still dim and yet –. No. Nohow so on. Say better worse words gone when nohow on.

Still dim and nohow on. All seen and nohow on. What words for what then? None for what then. No words for what when words gone. For what when nohow on. Somehow nohow on.

Worsening words whose unknown. Whence unknown. At all costs unknown. Now for to say as worst they may only they only they. Dim void shades all they. Nothing save what they say. Somehow say.

Nothing save they. What they say. Whosesoever whencesoever say. As worst they may fail ever worse to say.

Longing that all go. Dim go. Void go. Longing go. Vain longing that vain longing go. Said is missaid. Whenever said said said missaid. From now said alone. No more from now now said and now missaid. From now said alone. Said for missaid. For be missaid.

Back is on. Somehow on. From now back alone. No more from now now back and now back on.

From now back alone. Back for back on. Back for somehow on.

49 Back unsay better worse by no stretch more. If more dim less light then better worse more dim. Unsaid then better worse by no stretch more. Better worse may no less than less be more.

Better worse what? The say? The said? Same thing. Same nothing. Same all but nothing.

No once. No once in pastless now. No not none. When before worse the shades? The dim before more? When if not once? Onceless alone the void. By no stretch more. By none less.

Onceless till no more.

Ooze back try worsen blanks. Those then when nohow on. Unsay then all gone. All not gone.

Only nohow on. All not gone and nohow on. All there as now when somehow on. The dim. The void. The shades. Only words gone. Ooze gone. Till ooze again and on. Somehow ooze on.

Preying since last worse the stare. Something there still far so far from wrong. So far far far from wrong.Try better worse another stare when with words than when not. When somehow than when nohow. While all seen the same. No not all seen the same. Seen other. By the same other stare seen other. When with words than when not. When somehow than when nohow.

How fail say how other seen?

Less.

Less seen.

Less seeing.

Less seen and seeing when with words than when not.

When somehow than when nohow.

Stare by words dimmed.

Shades dimmed.

Void dimmed.

Dim dimmed.

All there as when no words.

As when nohow.

Only all dimmed.

Till blank again.

No words again.

Nohow again.

Then all undimmed.

Stare undimmed.

That words had dimmed.

The empty too. Away. No hands in the –. No. Save for worse to say. Somehow worse somehow to say. Say for now still seen. Dimly seen. Dim white. Two dim white empty hands. In the dim void.

So leastward on. So long as dim still. Dim undimmed. Or dimmed to dimmer still. To dimmost dim. Leastmost in dimmost dim. Utmost dim. Leastmost in utmost dim.

Unworsenable worst.

What words for what then? How almost they still ring. As somehow from some soft of mind they ooze. From it in it ooze. How all but uninane. To last unlessenable least how loath to leasten. For then in utmost dim to unutter leastmost all.

So little worse the old man and child. Gone held holding hands they plod apart. Left right barefoot unreceding on. Not worsen yet the rift. Save for some after nohow somehow worser on.

On back to unsay clamped to all the stare. No but from now to now this and now that. As now from worsened twain to next for worse alone. To skull and stare alone.

Of the two worse in want the skull preying since unsunk. Now say the fore alone.

No dome. Temple to temple alone. Clamped to it and stare alone the stare. Bowed back alone and twain blurs in the void. So better than nothing worse shade three from now.

Somehow again on back to the bowed back alone. Nothing to show a woman’s and yet a woman’s. Oozed from softening soft the word woman’s. The words old woman’s. The words nothing to show bowed back alone a woman’s and yet a woman’s. So better worse from now that shade a woman’s. An old woman’s.

Next fail see say how dim undimmed to worsen. How nohow save to dimmer still.

But but a shade so as when after nohow somehow on to dimmer still. Till dimmost dim. Best bad worse of all. Save somehow undimmed worser still.

Ooze on back not to unsay but say again the vasts apart. Say seen again. No worse again. The vasts of void apart. Of all so far missaid the worse missaid. So far. Not till nohow worse missay say worsemissaid. Not till for good nohow on poor worst missaid.

Longing the so-said mind long lost to longing. The so-missaid. So far so-missaid.

Dint of long longing lost to longing. Long vain longing. And longing still. Faintly longing still. Faintly vainly longing still. For fainterstill. For faintest. Faintly vainly longing for the least of longing. Unlessenable least of longing. Unstillable vain least of longing still.

Back unsay shades can go.

Go and come again.

No. Shades cannot go.

Much less come again.

Nor bowed old woman’s back.

Nor old man and child.

Nor fore skull and and stare.

Blur yes.

Shades can blur.

When stare clamped to one alone.

Or somehow words again.

Go no nor come again.

Till dim if ever go.

Never to come again.

Blanks for when words gone. When nohow on. Then all seen as only then.

Undimmed. All undimmed that words dim. All so seen unsaid. No ooze then. No trace on soft when from it ooze again. In it ooze again. Ooze alone for seen as seen with ooze. Dimmed. No ooze for seen undimmed. For when nohow on. No ooze for when ooze gone.

Back try worsen twain preying since last worse. Since atwain. Two once so one.

From now rift a vast. Vast of void atween. With equal plod still unreceding on.

That little better worse. Till words for worser still. Worse words for worser still.

Preying but what not preying? When not preying? Nohow over words again say what then when not preying. Each better worse for naught. No stilling preying. The shades. The dim. The void. All always faintly preying. Worse for naught. No less than when but bad all always faintly preying. Gnawing.

Gnawing to be gone. Less no good. Worse no good. Only one good. Gone. Gone for good. Till then gnaw on. All gnaw on. To be gone.

All save void. No. Void too. Unworsenable void. Never less. Never more. Never since first said never unsaid never worse said never not gnawing to be gone.

Say child gone. As good as gone. From the void. From the stare. Void then not that much more? Say old man gone. Old woman gone. As good as gone. Void then not that much more again? No. Void most when almost. Worst when almost. Less then?

All shades as good as gone. If then not that much more than that much less then?

Less worse then? Enough. A pox on void. Unmoreable unlessable unworseable evermost almost void.

Vast

of

atween void

for

gone

when words

53

Somehow again and all in stare again. All at once as once. Better worse all. The three bowed down. The stare. The whole narrow void. No blurs. All clear. Dim clear. Black hole agape on all.

Inletting all. Outletting all.

Nothing and yet a woman. Old and yet old. On unseen knees. Stooped as loving memory some old gravestones stoop. In that old graveyard. Names gone and when to when. Stoop mute over the graves of none.

Same stoop for all. Same vasts apart. Such last state. Latest state. Till somehow less in vain.

Worse invain. All gnawing to be naught. Never to be naught.

What were skull to go? As good as go. Into what then black hole? From out what then? What why of all? Better worse so? No. Skull better worse. What left of skull. Of soft. Worst why of all of all. So skull not go. What left of skull not go. Into it still the hole. Into what left of soft. From out what little left.

Enough. Sudden enough. Sudden all far. No move and sudden all far. All least. Three pins. One pinhole. In dimmost dim. Vasts apart. At bounds of boundless void. Whence no farther. Best worse no farther. Nohow less. Nohow worse. Nohow naught. Nohow on.

Said nohow on.

Back to once so-said two as one. Preying ever since not long since last failed worse. Ever since vast atween. Say better worse now all gone save trunks from now. Nothing from pelves down.

From napes up. Topless baseless hindtrunks. Legless plodding on. Left right unreceding on.

Stare clamped to stare. Bowed backs blurs in stare clamped to stare. Two black holes. Dim black. In through skull to soft. Out from soft through skull. Agape in unseen face. That the flaw?

The want of flaw? Try better worse set in skull. Two black holes in foreskull. Or one. Try better still worse one. One dim black hole mid-foreskull. Into the hell of all. Out from the hell of all. So better than nothing worse say stare from now.

Stare outstared away to old man hindtrunk unreceding on. Try better worse kneeling. Legs gone say better worse kneeling. No more if ever on. Say never. Say never on. Ever kneeling. Legs gone from stare say better worse ever kneeling. Stare away to child and worsen same. Vast void apart old man and child dim shades on unseen knees. One blur. One clear. Dim clear. Now the one. Now the other.

Nothing to show a child and yet a child. A man and yet a man. Old and yet old. Nothing but ooze how nothing and yet. One bowed back yet an old man’s. The other yet a child’s. A small child’s.

seamus heaney

V

VII

Your levelled breath made once going over The empty bottle. Improvise. Make free Like old hay in its flimsy afterlife

Into Australia. Three stops to play The music of the arbitrary on.

Blow on them now and hear an undersong

Three marble holes thumbed in the concrete road Before the concrete hardened still remained Three decades after the marble-player vanished

Of a ripple that would travel eighty years Outward from there, to be the same ripple Inside him at its last circumference.

For sky to make it sing the perfect pitch Of his dumb being, and that stir he caused In the fleece-hustle was the original

In that sniffed-at, bleated-into, grassy space He experimented with infinity.

His small cool brow was like an anvil waiting

Once, as a child, out in a field of sheep, Thomas Hardy pretended to be dead And lay down flat among their dainty shins.

VI

High on a windblown hedge. Ocarina earth.

Three listening posts up on some hard-baked tier Above the resonating amphorae.

Their witless eyes and liability To panic made him feel less alone, Made proleptic sorrow stand a moment

A crewman shinned and grappled down the rope And struggled to release it. But in vain.

“This man can’t bear our life here and will drown,”

The anchor dragged along behind so deep It hooked itself into the altar rails And then, as the big hull rocked to a standstill,

VIII The annals say: when the monks of Clonmacnoise Were all at prayers inside the oratory A ship appeared above them in the air.

Over him, perfectly known and sure.

And then the flock’s dismay went swimming on Into the blinks and murmurs and deflections

The abbot said, “unless we help him.” So They did, the freed ship sailed, and the man climbed back Out of the marvellous as he had known it.

(I misremembered. He went down on all fours, Florence Emily says, crossing a ewe-leaze.

Hardy sought the creatures face to face,

He’d know at parties in renowned old age When sometimes he imagined himself a ghost And circulated with that new perspective.)

I

III

And after the commanded journey, what?

Nothing magnificent, nothing unknown.

A gazing out from far away, alone.

So the particular judgement might be set: Bare wallstead and a cold hearth rained into – Bright puddle where the soul-free cloud-life roams.

Shifting brilliancies. Then winter light In a doorway, and on the stone doorstep A beggar shivering in silhouette.

Sink every impulse like a bolt. Secure The bastion of sensation. Do not waver Into language. Do not waver in it.

Relocate the bedrock in the threshold.

Take squarings from the recessed gable pane.

Make your study the unregarded floor.

Touch the crossbeam, drive iron in a wall, Hang a line to verify the plumb From lintel, coping-stone and chimney-breast.

Roof it again. Batten down. Dig in.

Drink out of tin. Know the scullery cold, A latch, a door-bar, forged tongs and a grate.

II

And it is not particular at all, Just old truth dawning: there is no next-time-round.

Unroofed scope. Knowledge-freshening wind.

Lightenings

Blind certainties that were going to prevail Beyond the one-off moment of the pitch.

A million million accuracies passed

Hunkerings, tensings, pressures of the thumb, Test-outs and pull-backs, re-envisagings, All the ways your arms kept hoping towards

Squarings? In the game of marbles, squarings Were all those anglings, aimings, feints and squints You were allowed before you’d shoot, all those

How airy and how earthed it felt up there, Bare to the world, light-headed, volatile And carried like the rests in tides or music.

Resonating up through the walls of urns.

The cordoned air rolled back, wave upon wave Of classic mouthfuls amplified and faded.

It was like the steady message in a shell Held to the ear in the earshot of the sea: Words being spoken on the scene arrived

Beneath the ocean of itself, the crowd In Roman theatres could hear another Stronger groundswell coming through.

IV

Between your muscles’ outreach and that space Marked with three round holes and a drawn line.

You squinted out from a skylight of the world.

58

IX

XI

Out on Lough Neagh and in where cattle stood Jostling and skittering near the hedge Grew redolent of the tweed skirt and tweed sleeve

A boat that did not rock or wobble once Sat in long grass one Sunday afternoon In nineteen forty-one or two. The heat

Fathomableness, ultimate Stony up-againstness: could you reconcile What was diaphanous there with what was massive?

Above and beyond and sumptuously across The water in its clear deep dangerous holes On the quarry floor. Ultimate

Overhang of grass and seedling birch On the quarry face. Rock-hob where you watched All that cargoed brightness travelling

X

I nursed on. I remember little treble Timber-notes their smart heels struck from planks, Me cradled in an elbow like a secret

Were you equal to or were you opposite To build-ups so promiscuous and weightless?

Shield your eyes, look up and face the music.

A phenomenal instant when the spirit flares With pure exhilaration before death – The good thief in us harking to the promise!

60

Open now as the eye of heaven was then Above three sisters talking, talking steady In a boat the ground still falls and falls from under.

For the unanswerable dead-root…

He alone, our walking weathercock, Our peeled eye at the easel, had the right

So paint him on Christ’s right hand, on a promontory Scanning empty space, so body-racked he seems Untranslatable into the bliss

XII And lightening? One meaning of that Beyond the usual sense of alleviation, Illumination, and so on, is this:

To make a studio of that free maze, To turn light outside in and curb the space Where accident got tricked to accuracy

Ached for at the moon-rim of his forehead, By nail-craters on the dark side of his brain: This day thou shalt be with Me in Paradise.

To put a glass roof on the handball alley Where a hopped ball cut merciless angles In and out of play, or levelled true

And rain was rainier for being blown Across the grid and texture of the concrete.

He scales the world at arm’s length, gives thumbs up.

XVII

XIX

Redounded in that arm, a waterwheel Turned in the shoulder, mill-races poured And made your elbow giddy.

From glooms and whorls and slatings, Rediscovered once it has been skinned.

When a wrist was bound with eelskin, energy

What were the virtues of an eelskin? What Was the eel itself? A rib of water drawn Out of the water, an ell yielded up

They were going to turn their backs on; and knew too His powerlessness once the fair-hill emptied And he had to break the circle and start loading.

And belly-bands and halters. And of slippage – For even then, knee-high among the farmers, I knew the rope-man menaced them with freedoms

And how you could take it into your own hand And feel it. His perfect, tight-bound wares Made a circle round him: the making of reins

Like a foul-mouthed god of hemp come down to rut, The rope-man stumped about and praised new rope With talk of how thick it was, or how long and strong,

XVIII

Your hand felt unconstrained and spirited As heads and tails that wriggled in the mud Aristotle supposed all eels were sprung from.

With fixed associations and learn to read Its own contents in meaningful order, Ancient textbooks recommended that

Statues in purple cloaks, or painted red, Ones wearing crowns, ones smeared with mud or blood: So that the mind’s eye could haunt itself

Memory as a building or a city, Well lighted, well laid out, appointed with Tableaux vivants and costumed effigies –

Terrible history and protected joys!

Plosive horse-dung on 1940s’ roads.

The newsreel bomb-hits, as harmless dust-puffs.

Above the old cart road, with all the air Fanning off beneath my neck and breastbone.

(The cloud-roamer, was it, Stalin called Pasternak?)

The big cleared space in front was dizzying.

I looked across a heave and sweep of cobbles Like the ones that beamed up in my dreams of flying

On Red Square, the brick wall of the Kremlin Looked unthreatening, in scale, just right for people To behave well under, inside or outside.

XX

Familiar places be linked deliberately With a coding of images. You knew the portent In each setting, you blinked and concentrated.

Whitewashed suntraps. Hedges hot as chimneys.

Chairs on all fours. A plate-rack braced and laden.

The fossil poetry of hob and slate.

Dog daisies stood like vestals, the hot stones Were clover-meshed and streaked with engine oil.

Air spanned, passage waited, the balance rode,

Cutting and modulating and drawing off.

Heat wavered on the immaculate line And shine of the cogged rails. On either side,

XIV One afternoon I was seraph on gold leaf.

I stood on the railway sleepers hearing larks, Grasshoppers, cuckoos, dogbarks, trainer planes

Desire within its moat, dozing at ease – Like a gorged cormorant on the rock at noon, Exiled and in tune with the big glitter.

Nothing prevailed, whatever was in store Witnessed itself already taking place In a time marked by assent and by hiatus.

Settings

Re-enter this as the adult of solitude, The silence-forder and the definte Presence you sensed withdrawing first time round.

XIII Hazel stealth. A trickle in the culvert.

Athletic sealight on the doorstep slab, On the sea itself, on silent roofs and gables.

XV

Brought everything to life – like the news of murder Or the sight of a parked car occupied by lovers On a side road, or stories of bull victims.

62

Where my father bends to a tea-chest packed with salt, The hurricane lamp held up at eye-level In his bunched left fist, his right hand foraging

If a muse had sung the anger of Achilles It would not have heightened the world-danger more.

It was all there in the fresh rat-poison

XVI Rat-poison the colour of blood pudding Went phosphorescent when it was being spread: Its sparky rancid shine under the blade

For the unbelieving, vivid-fleshed bacon, Home-cured hocks pulled up into the light For pondering a while and putting back.

Corposant on mouldy, dried-up crusts.

On winter evenings I loved its reek and risk.

And windfalls freezing on the outhouse roof.

And strike this scene in gold too, in relief; So that a greedy eye cannot exhaust it: Stable straw, Rembrandt-gleam and burnish

That night I owned the piled grain of Egypt.

I watched the sentry’s torchlight on the hoard.

I stood in the door, unseen and blazed upon.

XXI

A whole new quickened sense of what rifle meant.

And then again as it was in the beginning I saw the soul like a white cloth snatched away

It exhilarated me – the bullet’s song So effortlessly at my fingertip, The target’s single shocking little jerk,

Once and only once I fired a gun – A .22. At a square of handkerchief Pinned on a tree about sixty yards away.

What’s the use of a held note or a held line That cannot be assailed for reassurance?

(Set questions for the ghosts of W.B.)

Or a marble bust commanding the parterre?

How habitable is perfected form?

And how inhabited the windy light?

Imagined in the dawn cold when it cried?

Where does it roost at last? On dungy sticks In a jackdaw’s nest up in the old stone tower

Where does spirit live? Inside or outside Things remembered, made things, things unmade?

What came first, the seabird’s cry or the soul

XXII

Across dark galaxies and felt that shot For the sin it was against eternal life – Another phrase dilating in new light.

From an abandoned whaling station.

I remember it as a frisson, but cannot Remember any words. What I wanted then

Perfected vision: cockle minarets Consigned down there with green-slicked bottle glass, Shell-debris and a reddened bud of sandstone.

Fullness. Shimmer. Laden high Atlantic The moorings barely stirred in, very slight Clucking of the swell against boat boards.

XXIV Deserted harbour stillness. Every stone Clarified and dormant under water, The harbour wall a masonry of silence.

Was a poem of utter evening: The thirteenth century, weird midnight sun Setting at eye-level with Snorri Sturluson

Air and ocean known as antecedents Of each other. In apposition with Omnipresence, equilibrium, brim.

XXIII On the bus-trip into saga country Ivan Malinowski wrote a poem About the nuclear submarines offshore

Who has come out to bathe in a hot spring And sit through the stillness after milking time, Laved and ensconced in the throne-room of his mind.

e – ano th al lif ern t e

I saw the soul like ning aw n i eg hit eb h t

g i l w e n

and then again as i t wa si n

s dark galaxies a it wa s oss n in d acr f ay aw

was aga i n s t

sna t c h e d

and then again a

w

d felt tha s an othert pshot h n xie f r a o a r ala –

in it

sin it

life – anoth l a ern t e ht.

new lig h

es th dilating in se

t.

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d felt that s h s an ot xie fo r ala

in ing

ase dila phr t er

l like sou

sh t a h t elt

saw the soul lik I g ea in n n i wh g e b it e th ot for the

ilat

away acro tched ss d sna ark h t o l g c

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e

gI e th

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sa w

Then right arm and right shoulder, head, then left Shoulder, arm and leg. Women drew it down Over the body and stepped out of it.

XXX

Which is a music of binding and of loosing Unheard in this generation, but there to be Called up or called down at a touch renewed.

The open they came into by these moves Stood opener, hoops came off the world, They could feel the February air

On St Brigid’s Day the new life could be entered By going through her girdle of straw rope: The proper way for men was right leg first,

Once the latch pronounces, roof Is original again, threshold fatal, The sanction powerful as the foreboding.

Still soft above their heads and imaging The limp rope fray and flare like wind-borne gleanings Or an unhindered goldfinch over ploughland.

XXIX Scissor-and-slap abruptness of a latch.

Its coldness to the thumb. Its see-saw lift And drop and innocent harshness.

Your footstep is already known, so bow Just a little, raise your right hand, Make impulse one with wilfulness, and enter.

A kesh could mean the track someone called a causey Raised above the wetness of the bog, Or the causey where it bridged old drains and streams.

XXXII

Tall old fir trees line it on both sides.

Scotch firs, that is. Calligraphic shocks Brushed and tufted in prevailing winds.

It steadies me to tell these things. Also I cannot mention keshes or the ford Without my father’s shade appearing to me

Running water never disappointed.

Crossing water always furthered something.

Stepping stones were stations of the soul.

You drive into a meaning made of trees.

Or not exactly trees. It is a sense Of running through and under without let,

On a path towards sunset, eyeing spades and clothes That turf cutters stowed perhaps or souls cast off Before the crossed the log that spans the burn.

XXXI Not an avenue and not a bower.

For a quarter-mile or so, where the country road Is running straight across North Antrim bog,

Of glimpse and dapple. A life all trace and skim The car has vanished our of. A fanned nape Sensitive to the millionth of a flicker.

XXV

Their hands round gun-barrels, their gaze abroad In dreams out of the body-heated metal.

Silent, time-proofed, keeping an even distance

XXVI Only to come up, year after year, behind Those open-ended, canvas-covered trucks Full of soldiers sitting cramped and staunch,

I took a turn and met the fox stock-still, Face-to-face in the middle of the road.

Wildness tore through me as he dipped and wheeled

Beyond the windscreen glass, carried ahead On the phantasmal flow-back of the road, They still mean business in the here and now.

Travelling south at dawn, going full out Through high-up stone-wall country, the rocks still cold, Rainwater gleaming here and there ahead,

In a level-running tawny breakaway.

O neat head, fabled brush and astonished eye My blue Volkswagen flared into with morning!

So draw no attention, steer and concentrate On the space that flees between like speeded-up Meltdown of souls from the straw-flecked ice of hell.

66

Let rebirth come through water, through desire, Through crawling backwards across clinic floors: I have to cross back through that startled iris.

Crossings

Running and readying and letting go Into a sheerness that was its own reward: A farewell to surefootedness, a pitch

XXVIII

Can sprout wings at the ankle and grow fleet As the god of fair days, stone posts, roads and cross-roads, Guardian of travellers and psychopomp.

Beyond our usual hold upon ourselves.

And what went on kept going, from grip to give, The narrow milky way in the black ice,

The ice was like a bottle. We lined up Eager to re-enter the long slide We were bringing to perfection, time after time

“Look for a man with an asphalt on the boat,” My father told his sister setting out For London, “and stay near him all night

The race-up, the free passage and return – It followed on itself like a ring of light We knew we’d come through and kept sailing towards.

XXVII Everything flows. Even a solid man, A pillar to himself and to his trade, All yellow boots and stick and soft felt hat,

And you’ll be safe.” Flow on, flow on The journey of the soul with its soul guide And the mysteries of dealing-men with sticks!

XXXIII

Or so it seemed. The house that he had planned “Plain, big, straight, ordinary, you know,” A paradigm of rigour and correction,

That morning tiles were harder, windows colder, The raindrops on the pane more scourged, the grass Barer to the sky, more wind-harrowed,

Be literal a moment. Recollect Walking out on what had been emptied out After he died, turning your back and leaving.

Unsurprisable but still disappointed, Having to bear his farmboy self again, His shaving cuts, his otherworldly brow.

At the Treasure Island military base Half-way across Bay Bridge. Vietnam-bound, He could have been one of the newly dead come back,

Passes down an aisle: I share the bus From San Francisco Airport into Berkeley With one other passenger, who’s dropped

Yeats said, To those who see spirits, human skin For a long time afterwards appears more coarse.

The face I see that all falls short of since

XXXIV

Rebuke to fanciness and shrine to limit, Stood firmer than ever for its own idea Like a printed X-ray for the X-rayed body.

Scene from Dante, made more memorable By one of his head-clearing smiles – Fireflies, say, since the policemen’s torches

XXXVI

We brought a shaving mirror to our window In the top storey of the boarders’ dorms: Lovers in the happy valley, cars

Clustered and flicked and tempted us to trust Their unpredictable, attractive light.

We were like herded shades who had to cross

And yes, my friend, we too walked through a valley.

Once. In darkness. With all the streetlamps off.

As danger gathered and the march dispersed.

Eager-backed and silent, the absolute river Between us and it all. We tilted the glass up Into the sun and found the range and shone

And did cross, in a panic, to the car Parked as we’d left it, that gave when we got in Like Charon’s boat under the faring poets.

XXXV Shaving cuts. The pallor of bad habits.

Sunday afternoons, when summer idled And couples walked the road along the Foyle,

A flitting light on what we could not have.

Brightness played over them in chancy sweeps Like flashes from a god’s shield or a dance-floor.

XLI

The very currents memory is composed of, Everything accumulated ever As I took the squarings from the tops of bridges

The places I go back to have not failed But will not last. Waist deep in cow-parsley, I re-enter the swim, riding or quelling

Sand-bed, they said. And gravel-bed. Before I knew the river shallows or river pleasures I knew the ore of longing in those words.

How long the lark has stopped outside these fields And only seems unstoppable to them Caught like a far hill in a freak of sunshine.

And territorial, still sure of their ground, Still interested, not knowing how far The country of the shades has been pushed back,

Where gaunt ones in their shirtsleeves stopped and dug Or stood alone at dusk surveying bog-banks – Apparitions now, yet active still

Heather and kesh and turf stacks reappear Summer by summer still, grasshoppers and all, The same yet rarer: fields of the nearly blessed

XLII

Or the banks of self at evening.

Lick of fear. Sweet transience. Flirt and splash.

Crumpled flow the sky-dipped willows trailed in.

They do not. What lucency survives Is blanched as worms on nightlines I would lift, Ungratified if always well prepared

XLIIV

Back on her tracks, of course, then took a spring Yards off to the side; clean break; no scent or sign.

She landed in her form and ate the snow.

For the nothing there – which was only what had been there.

Although in fact it is more like a caught line snapping, That moment of admission of All gone,

All gone into the world of light? Perhaps As we read the line sheer forms do crowd The starry vestibule. Otherwise

Consider too the ancient hieroglyph Or ‘hare and zig-zag’, which meant ‘to exist’, To be on the qui vive, weaving and dodging

When the rod butt loses touch and the tip drools And eddies swirl a dead leaf past in silence Swifter (it seems) than the water’s passage.

XLIII Choose one set of tracks and track a hare Until the prints stop, just like that, in snow.

End of that line. Smooth drifts. Where did she go?

Like our friend who sprang (goodbye) beyond our ken And missed a round at last (but of course he’d stood it): The shake-the-heart, the dew-hammer, the far-eyed.

Then again something in me moved to prophesy Against the beloved stand-offishness of marble And all emulation of stone-cut verses.

XXXVIII We climbed the Capitol by moonlight, felt The transports of temptation on the heights: We were privileged and belated and we knew it.

At different times, for the poems seem One-off, impulsive, the kind of thing that starts I have sat here facing Cold Mountain

“Down with form triumphant, long live,” (said I) “Form mendicant and convalescent. We attend The come-back of pure water and the prayer-wheel.”

XXXVII In famous poems by the sage Han Shan, Cold Mountain is a place that can also mean A state of mind. Or different states of mind

For twenty-nine years, or There is no path That goes all the way – enviable stuff, Unfussy and believable.

To which a voice replied, “Of course we do.

But the others are in the Forum Café waiting, Wondering where we are. What’ll you have?”

70

Talking about it isn’t good enough But quoting from it at least demonstrates The virtue of an art that knows its mind.

Squarings

Anyhow, there it was. Milk poured for cats In a rank puddle-place, splash-darkened mould Around the terracotta water-crock.

XL

Like a papoose at sap-time strapped to a maple tree, You gathered force out of the world-tree’s hardness.

If you stretched your hand forth, things might turn to stone.

Ground of being. Body’s deep obedience To all its shifting tenses. A half-door Opening directly into starlight.

I was four but I turned four hundred maybe Encountering the ancient dampish feel Of a clay floor. Maybe four thousand even.

But you were only goose-fleshed skin and bone, The rocks and wonder of the world were only Lava crystallized, salts of the earth

Out of that earth house I inherited A stack of singular, cold memory-weights To load me, hand and foot, in the scale of things.

XXXIX When you sat, far-eyed and cold, in the basalt throne Of the ‘wishing chair’ at the Giant’s Causeway, The small of your back made very solid sense.

The wishing chair gave a savour to, its kelp And ozone freshening your outlook Beyond the range you thought you’d settled for.

Like a flat stone skimmed at sunset Or the irrevocable slipstream of flat earth Still fleeing behind space.

XLVI

For our ones, no. They will re-enter Dryness that was heaven on earth to them, Happy to eat the scones baked out of clay.

Was music once a proof of God’s existence?

As long as it admits things beyond measure, That supposition stands.

Mountain air from the mountain up behind; Out front, the end-of-summer, stone-walled fields; And in a slated house the fiddle going

For some, perhaps, the delta’s reed beds And cold bright-footed seabirds always wheeling.

For our ones, snuff

So let the ear attend like a farmhouse window In placid light, where the extravagant Passed once under full sail into the longed-for.

XLV For certain ones what was written may come true: They shall live on in the distance At the mouths of rivers.

And hob-soot and the heat off ashes.

And a judge who comes between them and the sun In a pillar of radiant house-dust.

Only in light of what has been gone through.

Seventh heaven may be The whole truth of a sixth-sense come to pass.

XLVIII

The emptier it stood, the more compelled The eye that scanned it.

But once you turned your back on it, your back

At any rate, when light breaks over me The way it did on the road beyond Coleraine Where wind got saltier, the sky more hurried

Strange how things in the offing, once they’re sensed, Convert to things foreknown; And how what’s come upon is manifest

Was suddenly all eyes like Argus’s.

Then, when you’d look again, the offing felt Untrespassed still, and yet somehow vacated

And silver lame shivered on the Bann Out in mid-channel between the painted poles, That day I’ll be in step with what escaped me.

XLVII The visible sea at a distance from the shore Or beyond the anchoring grounds Was called the offing.

As if a lambent troop that exercised On the borders of your vision had withdrawn Behind the skyline to manoeuvre and regroup.

I’ll

be

in

step with what

escaped

me

75

Accursed the life of man. Between passion and Emptiness what he longs for never comes. All his days are a preparation for what never comes

77

But this dismal creed does not discourage those who believe that the impulse that produces evolution is creative.

They have observed the simple fact that the will to do anything can and does, at a certain pitch of intensity set up by conviction of its necessity, create and organize new tissue to do it with.

To them therefore mankind is by no means played out yet.

79

glimpse – seem to glimpse – need to seem to glimpse – afaint afar away over there what – folly for to need to seem to glimpse afaint afar away over there what – what – what is the word – what is the word

81

When a poem rhymes, when a form generates itself, when a metre provokes consciousness into new postures, it is already on the side of life.

When a rhyme surprises and extends the fixed relations between words, that in itself protests against necessity.

When language does more than enough, as it does in all achieved poetry, it opts for the condition of overlife, and rebels at limit.

noli timere