Three Poems


RICHEY

My great-grandfather Richey Brooks
began in mud, at Moneymore:
'A place of mud and nothing else'
he called it (not the way it looks,
but what lies under those green hills?)
Emigrated in '74;
ended in Drury; mud again -
slipped in the duckrun at ninety-three
(wouldn't give up keeping poultry,
always had to farm something.)
Caught pneumonia; died saying
'Do you remember Martha Hamilton
of the Oritor Road ?' - still courting
the same girl in his mind. And she
lived after him, fierce widow,
in their daughter's house; watched the plumtree -
the gnarled, sappy branches, the yellow
fruit. Ways of living and dying.


THE VOYAGE OUT

The weekly dietary scale
per adult: pork and Indian beef,
three pounds together; one of sugar,
two of potatoes, three and a half
of flour; a gill of vinegar;
salt, pepper, a pint of oatmeal;
coffee, two ounces, likewise tea;
six of butter, suet, treacle,
and, in the tropics, of lime-juice;
grudging grants of mustard and pickle;
split peas, raisins, currants, rice,
and half a pound of biscuit a day.
A diet for the young and fit:
monotonous, but not starvation -
as fair, perhaps, as they were bred to -
and Martha traded half her ration
for extra lime-juice from the crew.
Their quarters, also, adequate.
So not the middle passage; no.
But not a pleasure-cruise, either.
A hundred days of travelling steerage
under capricious canvas; Martha
newly pregnant, struggling to manage
the first four (Tom, Eliza, Joe,
Annie); to keep them cool and clean
from a two-gallon can of water;
to calm their sleeping; to stay awake,
so heavy, herself; to protect the daughter
she rocked unborn in the swaying hammock
below her ribs (who would be Jane).
True, the family was together.
But who could envy Martha? Sick
with salt meat; thirsty; and gazing on
a sky huge as the whole Atlantic,
storm-waves like Slieve Gallion,
and no more Ireland than went with her.


HOLIDAY DIARIES, 1945 AND 1971

That one sat in a soft prickly hayfield
writing her diary: 'We visited a castle.
I have a stone from Lough Neagh, possibly marble
(see sketch on following page.)
Today is very hot again.
At lunch-time we went into a pub
and had milk mixed with soda-water.
Question: traditional Irish drink?'

This one sits in a white olive orchard
writing his diary. Dry silver trees,
bleached grass, cornflowers,
white road, silver stars
on the blue ceiling of a wayside shrine.
'Today we went to San Damiano,
the church where Saint Francis hid from his father.'

And what would you say to that, Martha Brooks-
bringing the boy to a town full of Papists?
We must be the first among your children
to climb the worn shallow steps,
struggle back up the dusty road,
rest here. A cock crows at the farm.
Siesta-time is over, we say,
and move on up towards Assisi.

Martha, the boy is a good boy -
look at the blue eyes, the broad forehead -
and no more easily corrupted
by a taste of sanctity than I
all those years ago by holy Ireland -
not your phrase, I know, but your country:
which may all the saints protect now.