The Poetry of Doug Tanoury

The Poetry of

Nessa O’Mahony

Waiting for Beelzebub

Each night, listening

for his theme tune,

the sinister tinkle of Tubular Bells.

I’d sniff the air for sulphur,

a drop in temperature,

tensing for the first lift

of bedclothes.

A cold draught:

my back arched,

limbs in spasm.

Dizzy from head-spin,

light from levitation,

my tongue worked,

hissing words I’d heard

in the school-yard.

After it, dead weight,

sleep crawling over me

like flies.

The House of Molaga

at the Franciscan Abbey, Timoleague

In search of one grave,

I found another.

Bony wings spanned

where they'd fallen,

pigeon, dove and hawk

in a mess of feathered ivory;

placed there out of view,

or else drawn to this one spot

where the arc window

shafts light

from the estuary.

Visiting Sylvia

Heptonstall Graveyard, February 2003

Your 40th anniversary.

I’m 40 next year, so I listen to hear

if your bones play chords for daughters.

One who knows you better than me

begins to recite fluently. She’s smoother

than the studio-you we listened to last night.

All those ooo sounds, raising the ghost of Daddy,

carmined lips blowing smoke rings.

One vowel too many, I’d said.

It seems a poor joke now as we look

at your small heap of granite stones,

the jagged bed for early spring bulbs.

My eyes keep straying to surrounding hills,

the snow’s retreat at boundary walls

as if heat of any sort were to be found there.

York child

for Sandeep

A window, small, square,

lattice-striped, set high

in a slant stone wall.

A child’s face caught

in the edge of shadow,

staring out each night,

waiting for day

to bring an end to it.

Her night-gown is unchanged;

she’s not sure how long

she’s worn it, nor when

she last heard her mother’s voice.

Sometimes she thinks

she might still be sleeping.

The street is empty,

not even a dog passes, nose down.

The wind blows smoke;

there’s a tinge of brown in it

and when she sniffs the air,

she thinks she can smell

the opposite of hunger.

Not that she eats.

There’s a weight against the door

she cannot hope to move.

She stares out at winter oaks

fretting the Minster.

Sometimes

she thinks she sees spirits;

crowds passing, looking up, curious.

But they dissolve as the rain falls

and there’s nothing

but a crumpled leaf

sweeping the pavement.

A puddle reflects

her face, reflects

the moon:

there’s no difference.

Ceres returns for Cemetery Sunday

for my mother

You’re more comfortable here

among gravestones,

greeting old friends,

moving through grassy aisles

like a hostess at a garden party.

You make the introductions:

there’s Cora Sullivan,

you played with her in Hayden’s Yard

the year before you left for boarding school.

She was one of the orchard-raiders

who never got caught ...

Or Dan Murtagh’s Ma

who put the fear of god in you,

and so was perpetual target.

You’d pound on her door, then escape

across the green to the grain store.

That’s Dan in granite grey;

you flick something

from your eye.

This is the hearth to which we return,

year after year, the last Sunday in July,

cornflowers at the ready.

You point out other displays,

shocked at some new arrival

plump under turned clay.

Above a plain slab, an open book

is transcribed with your parents’ names

and two of your brothers’,

a third brother lies within hailing distance.

The tannoy whines

and the rosary begins.

You murmur glorious mysteries,

secure of your perch

at the edge of the underworld.

Eulogy

In memory of Carmel O'Mahony Campbell

What's left behind ...

you, like a ship of state,

berthed, on view,

our chance to grasp

the last mystery,

to stifle any gasp

at the cold touch of you,

to compose ourselves

as they smooth you

into peacefulness ...

us, like fragments of you:

the same hooked nose,

the bluish tinge under eye,

a sardonic lip curl

when nobody's looking,

the swift cut of hand through air

empress-like as a point's made,

a tone curdling

the innocent remark... .

the words, the scatterings

we'll use in your eulogy,

of a party girl

who knew the recipe

for vodka martinis,

who loved her mother,

who talked dangerously,

who warned us not to go to our graves

without knowing...

who when confined,

charted her whole world

by the phone line,

keeping the rest of us in touch

whether we cared to or not...

Still Life

for my father

You doze, sofa-sprawled,

hands resting

on the gentle rise and fall

of your paunch.

The newspaper open

on the racing page

defies gravity.

Your glasses hang on,

arm tucked in to the neck

of your cardigan.

Your face in repose,

the lines smoothed out,

the Stewart Grainger

hairline intact,

hair still pepper and salt

despite your 77 years.

Shadows beneath your eyes

(the fretwork of blue veins

is a family trait).

Your open mouth

a perfect crescent moon

upturned.

And in that instant

it’s my heart that stops.

Love Tokens

They are rectangular slips, flimsy with a week’s wear.

Your hand-writing clear, that familiar neatness,

the rounded D I’d trace as a child

when trying to imitate your D.O’M.

Names of winners and losers, starting prices

recalling summer afternoons with Brough Scott and form books.

In the ad breaks, I’d draw horses

frozen in grotesque shapes over Beecher’s Brook,

while under breath I’d recite a litany:

Arkle and Pat Taaffe, Midnight Court,

The Minstrel, Mill Reef, Red Rum.

On Saturdays, I’d give you back your chair.

As you watched each race, I’d watch you

rocking on your invisible saddle,

momentum building with every length,

tension coiled, waiting to spring

with joy or a feck me pink of torn slips ?

much like the ones I’m holding now.

But not as keep-sakes.

My father’s daughter,

I’ll retrace your steps to Dove Street

and redeem them,

knowing the girl at the desk

will tot them up and never guess their value.

At Saint Lazarian's Holy Well, Old Leighlin

for Kieran Lyons and Michael Brown

Here, hope is the torso of a Barbie doll,

hair yellow-tressing stone.

It is a ventolin inhaler, cap long lost,

gaping its plastic smile.

It is ribbons, knotted and frayed;

purses, skin-wrinkled in red and blue;

hospital cards, dates rain-blotched.

And batteries – remnants

of pace-makers, hearing aids.

It is your lover pulling your collar back,

a quick tear of cloth as a tag, wool mark

and washing guide, is placed on granite.

Lady of letters

In the day my parents’ bedroom

was the place where things hid.

Wardrobes were off limits,

crammed full in late November.

The dressing table was always locked,

my mother’s riches boxed up,

taken out glittering on nights

when the air was heavy with face powder.

In the chest by her bed, another drawer,

unlocked, easy to creep to

in the half-light of drawn curtains,

dust threatening on its top.

Secreted at the back was my treasure trove,

piles of crinkled cards and letters

next to her supply of writing paper;

I’d feel the blue stock, finger the watermark

then grab a few blank sheets,

listening for sounds downstairs,

take each letter out, learn the shape

of writing, every twist and loop.

Not knowing the sense or sound

but tracing the shape from back to front, page to page,

I matched the curve of ink on my own sheet,

clutching my pen to keep within the lines,

my letters sloping onwards, stalled by ink blotches

where I’d leaned too hard on the nib.

Not faltering at longer words,

I kept the ink flowing.

Tiring, I’d fold the letters up,

return them ill-fitted in their envelopes,

and stash the copies back in my own room,

beneath the mattress where my mother never looked.

Garbally

Wood holds the memory

of this place:

the blackened oak

pulled from a Galway bog

by your brother’s friend,

offered without ceremony

on the day of the funeral;

a coffin-lid, makeshift float

some sixty years before,

rafting the older three

down the River Suck,

free-wheeling towards another hiding.

(The last brother told the tale

in the snug afterwards,

cradling his pint,

flicking ash

on the chipped counter.)

Or the amber frame

found in the kitchen press,

trapping a ghost

within fractured glass,

his features your own.

Venice postcards

1. At the Peggy Guggenheim

Riveted by a boy again,

equestrian this time, bronze,

erection pointing canal-wards

sign-posting the end

of this pilgrimage

through a dilettante’s garden ?

who wouldn’t choose

to be buried with their art

and 14 shih-tzus?

2. School Outing

They’ve come straight from Grafton Street

to the Riva, voices shrill, dodging dames in furs.

They rush, fuelled by something sneaked

between gondola rides and secret tours,

panicking mid the tri-corn hats,

clutching bags, fleeing the Carnivale,

they clatter on, dropping cameras,

a compact bought in Boots.

Till they’re brought up short,

energy corralled by the gate-keeper

who waits for them at the water’s edge

foot tapping, lips pursed.

Santa Salute chimes the lock-up bell.

3. On the gondola

It might have been romantic

if we’d both brought someone else,

so we settled for self-consciousness,

admiring Roberto’s spiel and Roberto’s ass.

No hand-trailing here,

but languidness all the same

being propelled through the calle

hearing the water lap, the plop

of plaster crumbling,

a rat swimming somewhere.

About Nessa

Nessa O’Mahony was born in Dublin in 1964. Her poetry has appeared in Irish, UK and North American periodicals including Poetry Ireland Review, The Shop, Fortnight, The Sunday Tribune, InCognito, The Stinging Fly, Agenda, Books Ireland, In Media Res (Canada), Iota and the Atlanta Review. Her first poetry collection, entitled “Bar Talk”, was published by iTaLiCs Press in Dublin in 1999. Her second, “Trapping a Ghost”, will be published by bluechrome publishing in 2005. She was recently awarded an Irish Arts Council literature bursary and edits the online literary magazine, Electric Acorn (http://acorn.dublinwriters.org/). She is undertaking a PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Wales, Bangor.

Home