Full Description
Frank Ormsby's seventh collection of poems reflects not only the beauty of the Irish landscape and the sensuous and aesthetic impact of the small farms among which he grew up, but also the continuing violence of the 'Troubles'. Close to the surface of mountain and bogland lie the hidden graves of the 'Disappeared'. Ormsby continues to make vivid use of the short, resonant poems which were a striking feature of Goat's Milk and The Darkness of Snow. Here too the content is often delivered and reinforced through rich, contrasting images within or between poems: the scarlet flowers growing in a black kettle, the fuchsia that is both 'redolent of old battles' or a 'peaceful tapestry in the annals of stone'. Among the personae of the collection is the obliging father who volunteers to be buried by his children up to the neck in sand within sight of but some distance from the 'cold shadow of the mountain'. The elegiac note that echoes through the poems rarely darkens the mood. Ormsby's wit and humour, his sly sense of the absurd and what might be called his affection for the living and the dead draw the reader into considering the conviction that it is sometimes 'possible to believe / that joy grows irresistibly at the roots of everything'.
Contents
13 Untroubled
14 The Black Kettle
15 The Bee-keeper
16 Fuchsia
17 The Wild Dog Rose
18 Foxgloves
19 The Butterfly House
20 Roman Laurel
21 Cows:
21 1 'Their eyes are innocence...'
21 2 'The utter ignominy...'
22 3 'We never got used...'
23 At the Elvis Convention
24 The Sound of Trains
25 Seaside
26 The Disappeared
27 Today There Has Been Information
28 Dawn Chorus, with Painting by Joan Miró
30 Towards an Elegy
32 Small Things
33 Small World (4):
33 'I set my cap...'
33 'In your hair, scents of autumn...'
33 'Belfast Lough...'
33 'Summer surrenders...'
33 'Old friends at the tavern...'
33 'Fooled into flower...'
34 'A hermit bird, the corncrake...'
34 'The heron fluffs...'
34 'Wind across bogland...'
34 'Ochone! Ochone!...'
35 From A Belfast Journal
37 Saying Goodbye to the Family
38 White-throated sparrows
39 Love Poem
40 Convalescence
41 The Book-mark
42 Second-hand
42 1 The Second-hand Bookshop
42 2 The Second-hand Book
43 Nits
44 Preliminaries
45 Evening on the Farm: Early Winter
46 Poem Beginning and Ending with a Drunken Poet
47 The Poets
48 The Launch
49 With Seamus Heaney in Mind:
49 1 The Poet's Death
49 2 At the Graveside
49 3 Visiting the Grave
50 Starlings:
50 1 A Big Hand
50 2 Every Curve
50 3 Élite
51 4 Starlings at play
52 The Kingfisher
53 Autumnal
54 The Last Leaf in the Garden
55 Fums and Porringers
56 The Urban Fox
57 Scarecrow
58 The Suitcase
59 At a Railway Station, Calcutta
60 Winter Landscape with Searchers
61 He Was the Eighth to Go Missing
62 Billy Robinson's Kawasaki
63 Abandoned Gardens
64 Some Farmyard Buckets
65 The Hatchet
66 Custodians
67 There Will Be a Knock
68 Wake in Progress
69 Sleeping and Forgetting
70 The Bomb
71 The Security Man
72 Chagall's Goats
73 Aristotle Reaches Fermanagh
74 Rosary
75 Rains
76 Pulse
77 The Rain Barrel:
77 1 Prologue
77 2 We Acquire the Rain Barrel
78 3 Notes Towards a Portrait of the Rain Barrel
78 4 A Busy Life
79 5 The Rain Barrel in the Snow
79 6 In the Family
79 7 Two Old Warriors
80 8 Still Life
80 9 Lost Lives
81 10 Romance
81 11 Interlude, with Girls
82 12 The Rain Barrel and the Full Moon
82 13 Photograph, with Rain Barrel
83 14 The Rain Barrel and the Sparrows
83 15 Another Use for a Rain Barrel
84 16 Lightning and the Rain Barrel
84 17 Some Other Duties for a Rain Barrel
85 18 The Butt
86 When She Died, Thinking of Him
87 No Closure
88 Rain Flowers
89 Grace Before Meals
90 The Dogs
91 Beyond the Walls:
91 1 By the River
91 2 Miss Brightly
91 3 The Peacock
91 4 Souvenir
92 The Grey Squirrel
92 Sharing Beds
93 The Parents Wait
93 Parents
94 Lessons
95 Visitors, 4 a.m.
96 The Roundabout
97 All He Remembered
98 Our Woods Were Friendly
99 The Two Trees
100 Thaw
101 Running Water
102 After Fernando Pessoa
103 Notes
