IN MEMORIAM, SEAMUS HEANEY

In Memoriam, Seamus Heaney

A day after parliament stopped the British from war
and now the heart-stopping news
you are no longer the bearer
of a passport that let you travel far and wide.

Ready to be lugged and thrown, however gently
into the difficult ground you measured
as it was sown, with seed or wound - to flower
only later, for it is near-autumn, and the harvest

coming in is not for you to see or taste.
Seamus, you had the tongue to take what's best
of sound and give out what had to be said -
in a governed way, that understood the dead.

You were no comedian like Wilde,
no tragedian like Yeats; your vision a middle way.
Your Virgil was Ireland, bringing you upwards
to the light, which sees and says the best things.

There will be massacres and weapons inspectors
Sunday, and the year after, and arguably
until time stops working, and it never does.
Only bodies halt, and that is a bitterness

to drink down.  Sweet hearts fail.  Words go on.


poem by Todd Swift, copyright 2013

Poem by Todd Swift on the occasion of the burial of his grandmother's urn

IN MEMORIAM : MELITA HUME

Melita, where to place you in your life?

Your own, of course, which ends

And starts, as all do, in its course –

Seen the way a river is, at bends,

At curves, the banks disclosed

Or covered by green shade of trees.

This coming close to any life, though

Is not yet yours, quite: the metaphor`s

Too general to do more than send

A mind pond-skittering away, a stone –

We know you more deeply than this –

The onlyness of each one`s store

Of actions, styles, ideas, graces:

In gardens, with books, at races.

The smart teaching girl, good wife –

Mother, grandmother – kind if stern

Afraid of fire as she had learned fire –

Cautious, concerned, intelligent, careful

To preserve – and gestures – how she

Brought breadcrumbs slowly off

The tablecloth with her palm as she talked.

How she walked in the woods!  A beautiful

Woman, finally, whose many turns

Arrived at no other shape than this one.

Poem from 1999 by Todd Swift

Sometimes I think that being a Protestant

is very dull. Rather like working

as a librarian, at Hull. Or not at all

the same, instead something flatter.

I wasn’t born Catholic, simple as that,

no fault of my mater, or my pater,

though they both tried hard, I’m sure

to make me Christian in their bed

(when making babies without underwear),

and did not wish me at my birth to be

the representative of only half Christ’s

community, on Earth, or less even;

I’ve been this way, United Church, then

Anglican, since I could count angels

in the stain, the glass hung up religiously,

could hardly imagine becoming RC,

yet tempted I remain, by the imagery

and exotic ways of doing things (African,

almost, or Chinese); I don’t dislike Mary,

think she’s very lovely, like the Pope -

but here I quickly get out of my depth -

it’s a dizzying world of Saints and beads,

parts of the Bible I have never read,

and a simply other-shaped kind of hope.

My people - if that’s who they are -

have done terrible things and been stupid -

some of theirs, I’ve heard, mistaken too -

all groping for a history in a world terribly

out of step with any basic common good.

In Sunday School I was made to draw whales

and Joshua, and walls falling, and asses

bearing Joseph and his wife on to that famous

manger. Meanwhile, inside the real place,

where adults sat dutiful and bored, anger

mingled with information about Dead scrolls

and long-winded journeys through Palestine

in bussess; the dust whipped up by those tours

seemed to whirl, then settle, in the pews.

Not words, nor deeds, or even well-baked goods

brought me inner satisfaction, although book sales

held some amazing bargains: James Bonds

for less than a comic; the Ladies hoarded the best

for themselves, so when the doors opened at Nine,

already the valuable stuff was gone, the poor

wandering though left-over left-overs in stalls.

And so it went. Sharing and the Samaritan, ditched,

and all the promises meant to be kept, abbreviated

by suburban standards and the Reformation.

The streets the houses of these Christians stood on

were wide, with lawns, and Dutch Elms that spread

until, one year (in ’76) they all got sick, failed

then were cut down by contractors from the city,

until the avenues were stumped and empty overhead.

More science than allegory, this true fact

still signals a radiating mood about my childhood:

it died where it stood, for all the stone buildings standing tall.

POEM FROM BUDAVOX

I am currently going through my many collections and pamphlets to select poems for my American Selected, out next year.  Here is one of the poems I will include, from 1999's Budavox, my debut collection...

A SOLEMN MEDITATION ON THE FANTASTIC FOUR

Gamma Rays pierced them, they returned heroic

though not without difficulties. When all changes,

much remains, but different, even unfortunately

strange, and powerful, so that men point in streets,

their hats tumbling off, and women drop groceries,

to see Galactus, or his herald, in bubbles of concrete,

atoms in galaxies in Manhattan, thrown for a challenge,

and earth-shattering conclusions left monthly, balanced

by the sheer crazy threats of barely thwarted annihilation

and what being super frames. It’s clobbering time, yet

not all matters can be solved with orange-granite fists,

limbs that stretch like gum, a molten body of a boy,

or a girl whose fields are clear as glass but cannot yield

their molecular force. Because human, we love as well

as when, to war, we put our armor on, and fend for Troy

or Helen; each wall that’s a breakthrough for one army

is another’s black hole, defeat whorling in like vacuum

and nothing left save rubble, weakness and air half-fire,

and the rumor of more ruin on the way, the next landing:

the world a place to be conquered by a Silver Surfer, or

a Submariner, blowing what belongs to Triton, Hudson

roiling at the emergence of an aquamarine attack, noble

in its grand indifference to the mere lunged New Yorkers,

abashed but inured to wanton villains and their grandiosity

now that the Baxter Building is the Ur-magnet for wild evil.

Yet, how can Mr. Fantastic knowingly enter the fragile

space of his own beloved, without a shameful thought,

that what simple anatomy has wrought, his husbandry

may undo, with his newfound abilities, pure expansion?

Obscenity is no part of the vows that bind a man to spouse

but in the broken house that is radiation’s special curse,

who can argue for his long-legged will to stay, just so?

And who may know the proper measure of Ben Grimm’s

agony: mightier than a slaughterhouse of oxen, still stone

on stone, and tangerine, his hands a clear sign of clumsy

cold, no subtle fingers here, a demolition of thumbs, a face

like a wrecking ball, and all the passion of a normal man?

Might he not want to break down, be regular now, and take

the blind girl in his athlete’s arms, again, no pressure to tackle

Victor Von Doom? Consider the Invisible Girl, later Woman,

whose grace is to go unnoticed, who can keep the rain off

with a shrug of atoms, does she want her genius long or short;

maybe after a homely battle, she may turn her back and leave

her powers on, so no marriage can reach, no matter the arms

that struggle to strain and pound at her inviolable places?

For Johnny Storm, no tonnage of car wax or peroxide obscures

his film idol’s grin eats only oxygen and spits lewd fire, his trim

physique a mitochondrion’s macrocosm gone supernova. Sure,

he’s beauty jetting from a flame-thrower, a solar rose, flight

hotly incarnate, a stream of fuel lit and flown across the sky,

lean muscle in a tight blue uniform that accepts the burn.;

but this, and less. He cannot lift his playmates to the sun

as he may go, but must return too soon with lovers to the ground.

They’ve found, all four, and each as fantastic as a bestiary’s apocrypha,

a sullen access to the null and void of life, where Midas fondled yellow.

POEM BY TODD SWIFT, COPYRIGHT 1999/2013.

New poem by Todd Swift

ON THE JOYS AND SORROWS

They say that blessings pour down on your head

when they do. Blessings, I’ve had a few.  I feel

thrilled with being less than dead, which is here-I-am

collaborating with the physical agents on the wild

run of things, slip-sliding away.  Days go, sunrise.

This is the document in which I will nailgun your heart

to my heart and together we’ll slide like yippies

all the way into toy town, rioting in joyousness.

This is the loudest testament I can afford to jolt

you with using script.  Now twist and shout too –

you’re embroiled in my love, as the poem relies

on your recognition.  Canonise me, love, glorify

the shiver of decoration overcoming my soul qua soul,

and all the raw feels that decipher themselves as codes.

Break, dash, dot and squall – fling off your nakedness

and dress like a dashing guard in a prison of Godliness,

perhaps a naval officer with a handlebar, a hat.

The university where I work does not value me, boo-hoo,

as much as the rain, the dew, the petals, the lapwings do.

Ecology is a madhouse of intentions exploring itself

forever for no reason but decaying exploits, the planet

is a nut’s cage we celebrate at our own peril, best to fled.

Fleeing is what I seek, who came to live among yobs

and loons, and the flesh of adorable girls named Eunice,

Theodora and Miss Coq au Vin.  I was Jesus back then,

rise as Barabbas, hairy and pledged to guilt as a badge

of stapled disgrace.  I grow sex like a prank on my face.

This is a big splash on the poetry scene, it makes a call

for you to confront your imago and go berserk for art,

which is all we have of Arvo Part, and of season Seven.

So go Coastal, boast and strum your mandolins, rejoice!

The corner with the hapless poet is clear, take your place.

Angels and dreamers ignore all that you have done, why

should they appreciate a jotting of their own monologues?

No, you are lustrous ephemera, a hacking cough, phlegm

on the sleeve of a commandant who holds bitter reigns;

judges, critics, deans, inquisitors, and those who run archives

have better lives than do those who bolt past bounds;

merely immortal, you wait, love-delayed, for old fate

to overtake you; the direct train to Waterloo blasting its drive.

Only then, once dead, will you be read – if even then.

Mostly, rise and sing, strip down to your tremulous knees

and knock on the door marked Forget About It.

The sheer delight is to know your detractors also rot

and when they do, they do so without Beauty’s tit

suckling them in the tomb.  Grass grows across my lips

which makes me spit.  I stick my fist out of the loam and shout

to the guy with the shovel to come running like Hercules.

Together, we shall dance upon the opening that was my loss,

the berth that was my death.  Stood up again I am not lonely

now.  I have in tow an ill-bred witness to how nothing ends

that begins in verse and hurtles out on its own ceaseless lust.

May 24, Maida Vale, 2013

copyright Todd Swift