Paul Durcan poems

Página 1

'The Difficulty That Is Marriage' by Paul Durcan

We disagree to disagree, we divide, we differ;

Yet each night as I lie in bed beside you

And you are faraway curled up in sleep

I array the moonlit ceiling with a mosaic of question-marks;

How was it I was so lucky to have ever met you?

I am no brave pagan proud of my mortality

Yet gladly on this changeling earth I should live for ever

If it were with you, my sleeping friend.

I have my troubles and I shall always have them

But I should rather live with you for ever

Than exchange my troubles for a changeless kingdom.

But I do not put you on a pedestal or a throne;

You must have your faults but I do not see them.

If it were with you, I should live for ever.

Página 2

Wife Who Smashed Television Gets Jail

She came home, my Lord, and smashed-in the television;

Me and the kids were peaceably watching Kojak

When she marched into the living room and declared

That if I didn't turn off the television immediately

She'd put her boot through the screen;

I didn't turn it off, so instead she turned it off -

I remember the moment exactly because Kojak

After shooting a dame with the same name as my wife

Snarled at the corpse - Goodnight, Queen Maeve -

And then she took off her boots and smashed-in the television;

I had to bring the kids round to my mother's place;

We got there just before the finish of Kojak;

(My mother has a fondness for Kojak, my Lord);

When I returned home my wife had deposited

What was left of the television into the dustbin,

Saying - I didn't get married to a television

And I don't see why my kids or anybody else's kids

Should have a television for a father or a mother,

We'd be much better off all down in the pub talking

Or playing bar-billiards -

Whereupon she disappeared off back down again to the pub.'

Justice O'Brádaigh said wives who preferred bar-billiards to family television

Were a threat to the family which was the basic unit of society

As indeed the television itself could said to be a basic unit of the family

And when as in this case wives expressed their preference in forms of violence

Jail was the only place for them. Leave to appeal was refused.

Página 3

'Parents'

A child's face is a drowned face:

Her parents stare down at her asleep

Estranged from her by a sea:

She is under the sea

And they are above the sea:

If she looked up she would see them

As if locked out of their own home,

Their mouths open,

Their foreheads furrowed:

Pursed-up orifices of fearful fish

Their big ears are fins behind glass:

And in her sleep she is calling out to them

Father, Father

Mother, Mother

But they cannot hear her:

She is inside the sea

And they are outside the sea:

And through the night, stranded, they stare

At the drowned, drowned face of their child.

Página 4

'Sport'

There were not many fields

In which you had hopes for me

But sport was one of them.

On my twenty-first birthday

I was selected to play

For Grangegorman Mental Hospital

In an away game

Against Mullingar Mental Hospital.

I was a patient

In B Wing.

You drove all the way down,

Fifty miles,

To Mullingar to stand

On the sidelines and observe me.

I was fearful I would let down

Not only my team but you.

It was Gaelic football.

I was selected as goalkeeper.

There were big country men

On the Mullingar Mental Hospital team,

Men with gapped teeth, red faces,

Oily, frizzy hair, bushy eyebrows.

Their full forward line

Were over six foot tall

Fifteen stone in weight.

All three of them, I was informed,

Cases of schizophrenia.

There was a rumour

That their centre-half forward

Was an alcoholic solicitor

Who, in a lounge bar misunderstanding,

Had castrated his best friend

But that he had no memory of it.

He had meant well - it was said.

His best friend had to emigrate

To Nigeria.

To my surprise,

I did not flinch in the goals.

I made three or four spectacular saves,

Diving full stretch to turn

A certain goal around the corner,

Leaping high to tip another certain goal

Over the bar for a point.

It was my knowing

That you were standing on the sideline

That gave me the necessary motivation -

That will to die

That is as essential to sportsmen as to artists.

More than anybody it was you

I wanted to mesmerise, and after the game -

Grangegorman Mental Hospital

Having defeated Mullingar Mental Hospital

By 14 Goals and 38 points to 3 goals and 10 points -

Sniffing your approval, you shook hands with me.

'Well played, son'.

I may not have been mesmeric

But I had not been mediocre.

In your eyes I had achieved something at last.

On my twenty-first birthday I had played on a winning team

The Grangegorman Mental Hospital team.

Seldom if ever again in your eyes

Was I to rise to these heights.

Página 5