mortality

a bibliography

poetry_of_death

People breathe. Struggle. Write.
Talk. Read. Write. Publish.
Die.

While most will never even
know his name.

And will die as well.

Poetry: main collections
1966: Death of a Naturalist, Faber & Faber
1969: Door into the Dark, Faber & Faber
1972: Wintering Out, Faber & Faber
1975: Stations, Ulsterman
1975: North, Faber & Faber
1979: Field Work, Faber & Faber
1984: Station Island, Faber & Faber
1987: The Haw Lantern, Faber & Faber
1991: Seeing Things, Faber & Faber
1996: The Spirit Level, Faber & Faber
2001: Electric Light, Faber & Faber
2006: District and Circle, Faber & Faber
2010: Human Chain, Faber & Faber

Poetry: collected editions

1980: Selected Poems 1965-1975, Faber & Faber
1990: New Selected Poems 1966-1987, Faber & Faber
1998: Opened Ground: Poems 1966-1996, Faber & Faber

Prose: main collections
1980: Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968–1978, Faber & Faber
1988: The Government of the Tongue, Faber & Faber
1995: The Redress of Poetry: Oxford Lectures, Faber & Faber
2002: Finders Keepers: Selected Prose 1971–2001, Faber & Faber

Plays
1990: The Cure at Troy A version of Sophocles’ Philoctetes, Field Day
2004: The Burial at Thebes A version of Sophocles’ Antigone, Faber & Faber

Translations
1983: Sweeney Astray: A version from the Irish, Field Day
1992: Sweeney’s Flight (with Rachel Giese, photographer), Faber & Faber
1993: The Midnight Verdict: Translations from the Irish of Brian Merriman and from the Metamorphoses of Ovid, Gallery Press
1995: Laments, a cycle of Polish Renaissance elegies by Jan Kochanowski, translated with Stanisław Barańczak, Faber & Faber
1999: Beowulf, Faber & Faber
1999: Diary of One Who Vanished, a song cycle by Leoš Janáček of poems by Ozef Kalda, Faber & Faber
2002: Hallaig, Sorley MacLean Trust
2002: Arion, a poem by Alexander Pushkin, translated from the Russian, with a note by Olga Carlisle, Arion Press
2004: The Testament of Cresseid, Enitharmon Press
2004: Columcille The Scribe, The Royal Irish Academy
2009: The Testament of Cresseid & Seven Fables, Faber & Faber

Limited editions and booklets (poetry and prose)
1965: Eleven Poems, Queen’s University
1968: The Island People, BBC
1968: Room to Rhyme, Arts Council N.I.
1969: A Lough Neagh Sequence, Phoenix
1970: Night Drive, Gilbertson
1970: A Boy Driving His Father to Confession, Sceptre Press
1973: Explorations, BBC
1975: Stations, Ulsterman Publications
1975: Bog Poems, Rainbow Press
1975: The Fire i’ the Flint, Oxford University Press
1976: Four Poems, Crannog Press
1977: Glanmore Sonnets, Editions Monika Beck
1977: In Their Element, Arts Council N.I.
1978: Robert Lowell: A Memorial Address and an Elegy, Faber & Faber
1978: The Makings of a Music, University of Liverpool
1978: After Summer, Gallery Press
1979: Hedge School, Janus Press
1979: Ugolino, Carpenter Press
1979: Gravities, Charlotte Press
1979: A Family Album, Byron Press
1980: Toome, National College of Art and Design
1981: Sweeney Praises the Trees, Henry Pearson
1982: A Personal Selection, Ulster Museum
1982: Poems and a Memoir, Limited Editions Club
1983: An Open Letter, Field Day
1983: Among Schoolchildren, Queen’s University
1984: Verses for a Fordham Commencement, Nadja Press
1984: Hailstones, Gallery Press
1985: From the Republic of Conscience, Amnesty International
1985: Place and Displacement, Dove Cottage
1985: Towards a Collaboration, Arts Council N.I.
1986: Clearances, Cornamona Press
1988: Readings in Contemporary Poetry, DIA Art Foundation
1988: The Sounds of Rain, Emory University
1989: An Upstairs Outlook, Linen Hall Library
1989: The Place of Writing, Emory University
1990: The Tree Clock, Linen Hall Library
1991: Squarings, Hieroglyph Editions
1992: Dylan the Durable, Bennington College
1992: The Gravel Walks, Lenoir Rhyne College
1992: The Golden Bough, Bonnefant Press
1993: Keeping Going, Bow and Arrow Press
1993: Joy or Night, University of Swansea
1994: Extending the Alphabet, Memorial University of Newfoundland
1994: Speranza in Reading, University of Tasmania
1995: Oscar Wilde Dedication, Westminster Abbey
1995: Charles Montgomery Monteith, All Souls College
1995: Crediting Poetry: The Nobel Lecture, Gallery Press
1997: Poet to Blacksmith, Pim Witteveen
1998: Commencement Address, UNC Chapel Hill
1998: Audenesque, Maeght
1999: The Light of the Leaves, Bonnefant Press
2001: Something to Write Home About, Flying Fox
2002: Hope and History, Rhodes University
2002: Ecologues in Extremis, Royal Irish Academy
2002: A Keen for the Coins, Lenoir Rhyne College
2003: Squarings, Arion Press
2003: Singing School / Poems 1966 – 2002, Rudomino, Moscow
2004: Anything can Happen, Town House Publishers
2005: The Door Stands Open, Irish Writers Centre
2005: A Shiver, Clutag Press
2007: The Riverbank Field, Gallery Press
2008: Articulations, Royal Irish Academy
2008: One on a Side, Robert Frost Foundation
2009: Spelling It Out, Gallery Press
2010: “Writer & Righter”, Irish Human Rights Commission

 

 

21st century Poetry

my eyes and shiver

poetry_of_Shadows

There will be no more.
I will close my eyes
and shiver
as a wriggle in timelessness.

No tomorrow.

From the table
we put in our mouths
the last lesson of the bread,
we close the door
and the familiar unknown
disappears together with the
city noise.

There was no explanation
for this history of glimmers.

There will be no more:
injustice – no more form
and ideas will be lost
against the sounds of the bells.

The eyes will become simple silences,
clouded by the color of the music.

Everything will be resting
at last
under the warmth
& patience of the shadows.

 

 

Contemporary Poetry

a poet’s last thoughts (quod nihil scitur)

poet's last thoughts

Then he’ll realize, when the last moment comes, that he never knew what life was, that he held to a truth that was only belief, that he struggled, loved and suffered in a reality that was only illusion. He will realize that he has only known his perceptions and these have been in perpetual flux incapable of leading him to anything everlasting, definable or knowable. He will realize that life is a faint spark vaguely shivering under an approaching darkness; that it was so insubstantial that the exhaustion of sleep could erase it wholly in the deepest hours of the night and that soon an eternity of profound death will shrink it to nothing, as if it never happened.

towards a quiet curve

language_of_clouds

The first day the mechanism
was hard to endure
as kissing one’s objectives goodbye.
Really, you’re lost and sick with ennui.
If years are all that’s left, better die
in a second. Ever after, total laugh,
in a blot of obscurity, forever,
without ever understanding or
being understood or caring whether
life was worth it, because once you die,
your theory of the universe, the entirety
of what was known returns to a pool
of nondescript silence. Rejoice, the only witness
to absurdity is dead. Soon, in a flash and no one
can change that. No god, no medicine, no spirituality,
no delusion. Postponement, yes. But death and its
miracle is near. Don’t grieve, rejoice, like hot flames
atop a mirror looking down at their fleeting brilliance;
rejoice as the sailor – which is everyone –in a fever
crossing the sea of life, singing with a sigh
in the language of the clouds.

Contemporary Poetry

how old

How old
must I become
to return to the selfless
heaviness of the rock

has not the wind
that levels the tiny
sands of time
swept over
the last corner
of my life

must I continue
to stare
at the leaves
that shiver
purposelessly
on the sunlit tree

must I continue
to desist action
below the shadow
of a pigeon
that springs to flight

must the city
become soft
as the pages
of history
that I keep on
forgetting

how old must this
memory become
to fall silent at last
as the man behind
the mirror

how   old

 

 

Existential Poetry

the breadth of a breath

death poetry

it is in that last
place
where life is surrendered
and in one flicker
we must die
absolutely

forgiving
beauty
for having existed
and now
been taken away
in one last
absurd breath

every moment
revolves around
that final moment

and if there is any meaning
it is this

the immeasurably short present
being swallowed by nothingness

all details
consumed and
blurred

it is this
single and
isolated tick
of time

where we live
and
unendingly

shiver.

 

 

Nihilistic Poetry

cup of glance

Digesting
the poison rule of desire
I have to choose my eyes
and shut them hard
to taste the illusion,
aloft in the descent of darkness
the static of essence
emerges, black liquid coal
in these orbs born
to drown in light.

The decrepit couple
man and woman
the last steps of life,
Chisinau their home
and root.

Rooted in the artic
clear hour of pain,
red indelible struggle;
to choose to close the eyes
and dissolve,
to choose shadow
me or them,
in our walk towards
the great structure
of death.

from man to page

Poetry_page_blog

A man
Leaves a voice
On brume
That is of paper

To a solitary
Event or thing
He points
As a despondent relic
That must be remembered
Faintly

His hand
The veins asunder
The terror of leaving beauty
Lost in the madness
That collects
Arrant forgetfulness

A man lifts his voice
Clashing with the impossible
His thoughts already of cinder
Mist and silence

A poem remains
Obscurely reposing in the cupped
Hands of the transitory
One of many inanities of inspiration
At moments gaining strength
But ultimately to rest alongside the expended

There with the elapsing sum of experience

Nihilistic Poetry

more blah

Life Ad Infinitum

add to me ad infinitum
fasten echoes around my laughter
conduct time by its vulgar silhouette
return the black that eroded your eyes
oh my what an endless effect
          the cause of your choices
an observation racing the light,
is that the bloated noise I call meaning
by the leaves that crawl as outsiders
          on the even solitude of the street
add to me more becoming
while I endure mortality as an empty receptacle
that nests these parcels of private history –
these wobbly extensions of the void,
tucked away in those gaps
that condense life into blah.

 

 

 

 

nihilistic poetry

The day the universe was reborn

    
Why keep writing in linear and logical fashion?
Writing is the outgrowth of thinking.
It should reflect the features of the human mind, with its desultory and fluctuating discourse.

When the scope of the possible has been exhausted you may turn left where a gigantic mountain separates the desert from the snow. Haven’t you felt all along that lurking behind every monotonous experience an explosive energy awaits to come forth? It is as if a powerful surge of lightning remains dormant in a recondite quarter of our consciousness; behind every yawn of boredom a rapacious thunder of delight seeks an entrance into our deaf lives.
    
Follow the rain into the heart of the storm. Then you will be ready for the revival of the new, the rediscovery of surprise.  As long as there is room for the unknown, as long as red-headed ants surprise you with wonder and interrupt the tyrannical flow of thoughts — there is hope.
    
I had begun walking in search of meaning and not far down the road I stumbled across an insurmountable obstacle: mortality. All labors are in vain if they seek permanence. This did not stop me, if I should live in a world where impermanence governs every particle of matter then my actions had to resign any sort of structure, my words had to abandon order. I had to accept the chaos of uncertainty and resume the search. No longer looking for a perennial philosophy but merely for temporary wisdom. For the most profound questions I never looked in books; I was lucky to experience them in other more fundamental objects: in direct contact with the phantasmagorical landscapes of nature or the silent dark of outer space.
Sinking in rocky jaws
Patagonian mountains
Lakes as seas
near heaven’s azure
the universe reborn
million lights at night
transform every thing
     Living in constant disbelief I could but interpret life as total dream, the whole of existence appeared equally inconstant as the contents of any bizarre dream. Yet I am sure that defining the cosmos by the anthropocentric analogy of dream doesn’t come close to what is really happening — reality is much wilder and exuberant than our speculations. Here and there I found evidence to believe that the hardest task is change: inner transformation. We are never the Archimedean unmovable point around which all things change and evolve — we are similarly watery being flowing from one state to another. Allowing things to change within you, permitting things to grow and decay inside was surely difficult. Getting used to this internal impermanence requires great courage. The reward is priceless: the art of transformation had become the real art of living.
     At night things settle down. The pure transparency of water is swallowed by the black of night and slowly above a blurry streak of light convinces us of the utter strangeness of our condition. The Milky Way, our home galaxy, becomes the symbol of our astonishment.  In those prolonged moments of silence things are perceived differently, we are free to just be as rocks are silently existing at the bottom of a blue lake.
Is it so necessary to formulate our wonder and our wishes?
Immobile (time)
Serene (space)
a rock for ages
deep below
in abysmal Zen
Sometimes I refuse to endure the recurrent agony of dreaming my death. In times like those:
Deserts become too desolate
Mountains intimidating monsters
Cities caging of beasts
Oceans too restless
Home insipid
My grave a terrifying
       inferno
I can only live and die
within my despair
My daemon: despair. My savior: wonder. My meditation: inking a few random words. My sleep: sweet forgetfulness as the rock that rests unperturbed.
I have to ask, is The Search a consequence of despair, or despair a consequence of The Search?

patagonia_lakes