Gangs of Shadow

Michael O'Neill

• Publisher: Arc Publications
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781906570927
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

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There is a reaching for the unsayable throughout this collection, whether it is thinking about the future, people's inner lives or the shadows of place, O'Neill is wholeheartedly engaged with the unfathomable nature of living. To read these poems is to be part of his exuberance for the physical and visual experience of living, be that lying in a field, being with loved ones or watching the movement of light through a day. Each moment is brimming with imagery of its past and future, so these poems bring out the mutability and movement that both blurs and pinpoints events. Michael O'Neill has lectured at Durham University since 1979, where he is a Professor of English. He co-founded and co-edited Poetry Durham from 1982 to 1994. His critical studies include The All-Sustaining Air (OUP, 2007), an exploration of Romantic poetry's influence on poets since 1900. His first collection The Stripped Bed, was published by Collins Harvill in 1990, Arc published his second collection, Wheel, to critical acclaim.

THE VOYAGE

after Baudelaire

I

It begins with a child, engrossed by maps,

the globe answering his wish for adventure.

How huge the world seems under the lamp’s clear light.

How small a thing memory makes of it.

One morning we set out, our brains on fire,

hearts a blur of hurt and desire,

and off we go, borne by the waves,

infinite questers stuck on finite seas:

some glad to escape a disgraced nation,

others a dire upbringing, and a few,

star-gazers drowned in the eyes of a woman,

despotic Circe with her lustful scents.

Not to be changed into brutes, they get drunk

on space and light, and blood-red skies;

suns that toughen and ice that bites

slowly erase the trace of kisses.

But the true voyagers are those who leave

for the sake of leaving; hearts buoyed like balloons,

they never diverge from their path,

helplessly yelping like some kid ‘Come on!’

With clouds for heads they dream, much as

a rookie pictures a fired missile,

of pleasures that are unknowable,

for which the mind has no words.

II

We mimic – it’s comic – the top and the ball

as they spin and bounce; even in our sleep

‘I wonder why’ fools with us, twitching us

up and down like some yo-yoing angel.

Strange condition: our purpose shifts around

and, being nowhere, might be anywhere…

hope pulls the same face as despair;

we run like crazy in pursuit of calm.

Our soul’s three-master searches for its goal.

A voice sounds from the bridge: ‘Open your eyes!’

Wild with ardour, a voice from the crow’s nest cries:

‘Love… glory… happiness.’ Hell’s teeth! It’s a rock.

Each small island detected by the watch

is, we think, a goldmine owed us by fate;

imagination, orgiastic fantasist,

discerns the submerged Needles come first light.

Lover of chimeras!

Ought he to be thrown in the sea,

that tanked-up finder of Americas,

mirages that make the void worse?

So an old tramp, traipsing through mud,

might dream of a five-star hotel;

he drivels on about the honeymoon suite

as a weak bulb lights up the latest hovel.

III

Stupendous travellers! What fine stories

we read in your eyes, eyes deep as the sea.

Show us the caskets of your memories,

jewels faceted with stars.

We’d like to voyage without budging.

To liven up our prisons

paint on our minds’ taut canvas

your recollections and their framed horizons.

Tell us, what did you see?

IV

‘We saw stars

and waves; we also saw Saharan wastes;

and, despite traumas and unforeseen disasters,

we were often bored, just as we are here.

The sun’s glory on the...

Table of contents

• Contents
• The Garden
• Louis Macneice
• Shadows
• Even If
• Intimates
• Cluny
• For Whom
• You
• Happy Birthday
• Lift
• Detained
• Chapter and Verse
• Memory
• Twice
• The Baths of Caracalla
• Editing
• Let it Happen
• Never
• Companions
• Near Flatford Mill
• Tryst
• Until
• Money
• Pilgrims
• The Voyage
• Loose Change
• Scalinata della Trinità dei Monti
• Secret Agent
• Meeting
• Human
• The Call
• Trilogy
• Departure
• Belief
• Towards Sixty
• Diagnosis
• Convergence
• Beatrice Cenci
• The Rival
• And These Too
• Two for Millie
• Lesson
• So it Goes
• Three for the NHS
• Snowbound
• Memorial
• Georg Trakl
• Covenant
• Elsewhere
• Sirmione
• Biographical Note