Christmas Chronicles

Selected poems by PAUL DURCAN

The Recession

The bank robbers in the Celtic Tiger era –

I do not mean the gentlemen with the sawn-off shot-guns –

I mean the double-vent bonus boys –

Brought a reign of terror into the lives

Of the innocent, the elegant, the confused, the polite

Such as the woman passer-by who this morning stopped me on Duke Street:

“You wouldn’t know me but I knew your father!

I’m 82!

You’re so like him! You’re just so like him!

Isn’t it a simply glorious morning?

And it’s not yet even eleven o’clock!

(Imperious glance at bony wrist) It’s only ten-to-eleven

On a Saturday morning in the middle of December

And the sun beaming like a toddler on a potty!

The Recession! Don’t even say the word.

Don’t utter it.

I lost my pension, the whole jing bang lot

To that gang of tight-bottomed, piotious, creeping Jesuses in Allied Irish Banks.

What does it matter?

I am 82 and I am as new as a snowdrop.

No, not a snowdrop, a sunflower.

I’ve just been looking in the window of CLEO’S in Kildare Street.

Do you know it? She sells Celtic Clothes. A gem of a shop.

She’s got a vase of sunflowers in the middle of the window

And, all around it, garments

Of every hue of gold you have ever seen,

Every lunula, every monstrance.

It could be an altar in St Petersburg, CLEO’S window,

An iconic boutique, all hand-knitted vestments,

The holiness of the soul’s body, no less!

I said to myself: This is ME, this window!

This window is ME!

CLEO’S is ME!

And I have four sons who think the world of me

While over on the north side

Mary Brierly who is only half my age

Is at death’s door.

Cancer. Inoperable. Now that’s a thing . . .

So nice meeting you, so nice. Bye-ee!”

Mother and child Merrion Square West

That woman squatting on the footpath under the parking meter

With her infant son in her lap, who does she think she is?

I suppose she thinks she is the Mother of God!

There should be a law, a bye-law, prohibiting women

From squatting under parking meters in postures importuning

Male motorists going about their lawful business.

Is it not bad enough having to fret about clampers

Without having these shawled hags under parking meters,

Having to dodge their blackmailing beggary?

As I dodge away I see a white-haired middle-aged chap

In a blue tweed jacket and mustard corduroy trousers –

One of them, you know the sort by the rig-out –

Bending down low over her asking her:

“Where are you from?” When she does not answer him

He asks her again “Where are you from?”

“Bosnia” she replies, pronouncing it “Boze-nee-iah”;

She looking sideways at me, her eyes half-closed,

Frightening the daylights out of me like an apparition.

The white-haired chap in blue tweed and mustard cords

Looks round at me and roars at me:

“Why don’t you give her something, chump?”

I drop one euro into her beaker

Afraid that he might thump me in the kisser.

Against my will I drop one euro into her beaker.

Looking away from both of us,

Her eyes almost totally closed, she speaks

As if to a deity in the tree-tops:

“I am dreaming of my God-child when he was born

On the road-side and nobody – nobody – noticed

Except , through a railing, a donkey

Whose eyes were so lit-up I could see

My child’s baby fingers by the light of those eyes,

My child who one day will go to school and college and –

and – save the world!

“Did you hear that?” said the other chap.

“Did you hear that?” said the other chap again

And a third time, roaring it “Did you hear that?”

I wanted to beg the woman squatting on the footpath

Under the parking meter to beg him to stop it.

Please Missus, whoever you are, beg him to stop it.

Our Lady of the Parking Meters, have mercy on us!

Christmas in Paris

That old man in the window of the burger joint – Q –

On the corner of the Boulevard St Michel and the Rue Soufflot,

Who is he? With the white hair, the red face?

Night after night between 6 pm and 8 pm

High in the window?

In his high chair at the counter window of Q

With his ‘Giant Burger Frites’

And his big beaker of Sprite with a straw

He has a front row seat

At the Spectacle of Paris.

His days are days of slapstick loneliness

But for these two hours he knows almost bliss:

The thrill of the traffic, the pedestrians;

The streams of headlights of autos;

The feet of thousands of people, the faces.

Except for ocean storms on the west coast of Ireland

He has never seen a spectacle the like of it

At the intersection of Soufflot, Saint-Michel, Gay Lussac,

Medicis, Monsieur le Prince,

All centred on the roundabout of Place Edmond Rostand

Whose own centre also is a fountain without end.

Such mouths! Such legs! Such spines! Such hips!

The insouciance of the young, the humiliation of the aged;

The fashions, the styles, the rags, the riches;

Street lamps, sirens, traffic lights, umbrellas, kiosks;

The ice-cold Sprite stinging his throat after the hot burger.

Vive la France! Je me révolte, donc je suis!

Christmas Cards

At the Wailing Wall of our universal loneliness

We stand inserting cards in its interstices

Of ashlar blocks of golden stone –

Christmas cards with messages inscribed in codes

Appropriate to the recipient . . . should it be

“Dear Mary” or “Dearest Mary” or simply “Mary”

From “With Best Wishes, Joe” or “With Love, Joe” or just “Joe”.

We wail as best we may and post our cards.

Inside the Wailing Wall Joe sits with his mug of cocoa

On an upright chair as the Christmas cards swirl and float

Down into his lap – sifting them for the one true message

That might save him – not from death

But from a loneliness which is worse than death.

When he reads “Happy Christmas, Joe. Regards, Mary”

Joe lets out a wail that can be heard in Jericho.

On and on we all of us go to the Wailing Wall

Filling its interstices with Christmas Cards

Still in hopes of regaining the Temple Mount -

That first meeting-place, that school of first love.

Morning Ireland, be warned

I was cast as the Angel Gabriel

In the school Christmas play.

Next day when my mother

Asked me to take off my wings

(The Kellehers were coming to lunch –

My wings would only get in the way of things)

I demurred and when she asked me again

I cried out to her “No, no, Mummy, no, no, no,

I am going to stay being the Angel Gabriel

For all of my life.”

That was fifty-eight years ago

And this morning as I kneel alone in the chapel

Before the empty cradle in the Christmas crib

I can feel myself again rustling my wings,

Getting ready to announce the news again.

Morning Ireland, be warned!