McGinn

Last evening at Newry Film Club we enjoyed an unusual offering “Departures” which focused on death, its meaning and how the ‘crossing’ causes us to reflect on the meaning of life.

The following poem by James Patterson has ‘McGinn’ observing, and reflecting upon his own lifeless corpse.  
 

Thespian legion of repute and rogue

Wherefore to season my home with your lease?

Cast without shadow and latent in vogue

Celestial yearnings burn without cease.

For Human endeavour seems that of beast

When repertoire years are draping the squelch;

No requiem breast nor angel nor priest

In scant distillation can prove what I felt.

And though there were evenings in spite of myself,

Where lingered my spoils ‘pon high in the din,

I sired the void, alive and in health,

To slump down, a coward, and die with my sins.

‘What friends, indeed, can be said of McGinn?’

Seized up from the swell then through shuffling slits.

’twas one from my past, though not of my kin,

Who’d shamble my bygones in idler twist.

‘Well, let my retort reveal to you this’

Responded my sibling, eye on my corpse,

‘He was my brother and though he be missed,

They’ll ravage his ghost with sulphur and scorch;

They’ll send for his passions, singed like a torch,

Drink them to blackness and pluck him from thought.

Heathen of helix and harlequin sport,

Hath thou no inkling, the havoc you wrought?

A bold moment-muse of what we all sought?

Wanting our brother, or what for the word

Could heal you of stealing the years we had brought.

For all that was owed us: a man of the world.’

Only ’twas then that time, stuck, unfurled

And eve’ning careered t’ward morning, t’ward fate.

When bones hold to dust by death, that old churl,

My years be reduced to scripture and slate.

For I have been poisoned by seasons in wait –

Weights worth the farthings they stuck to my eyes;

Sliding through epochs that harboured the great

And mock the mere mortals of meaning deprived.

’tis that, as I laboured ‘mong mirrors they hide,

Residing in pine with beads in their coil,

That creased up and burned my thoughts ‘fore the guide

Of sinner McGinn to a patch in the soil.

 My screed reads no softer after such toil,

No smoother a tale to be taught at your teat.

That my soul had not descended to boil,

Nor had I with saints or skivvies to speak.

’twas in my cortege ‘midst eyes without weep

And great sweeping haloes of droves in their drear

Where I’d come to shamble in rambling grief;

My infinite seal – a death without peer.

The chapel then, ceding in vaulted veneer,

Seemed placid, indiff’rent; a tomb without taste,

And I, of the asinine angular weird,

Sat nursing my years in debt and disgrace;

Though steadfast my legion not to make haste –

Not for the glibness nor gallons nor grime;

Nor e’en for wallowing Whitsuns of waste

Which, woven, made whimsical dust of my time.

No, friends! My kin were not even inclined

To whisper a shudder in lieu of myself;

Their benches, distended in line upon line

Had last term to conjuring sobs where they knelt.

And I, a poor reckoner, dumbfound and welt,

Who picked at his scars with bottle and beak,

Have culled from my friv’lous happ’nings health

And smile that my bygones weren’t utterly bleak.

The service, now ended, spilled out to the street;

The heat of the noon scald shapes and disrobe.

Of courage without, I slunk in the speak

And pictured my corpse garrulous and in globe.

With words said and skies pulled the hollow was lowed,

And dignified drops of a soil were dispensed,

And after the shapes had shuffled their shoad,

I stood for awhile to invite forth the hence.

I stood for a decade in sin recompense,

And pleaded with weathering debris and silt;

I stood for my penance, for death to commence,

Though condemned am I to be held by the hilt.

I cornered my prayers then, my flowers in wilt;

I threatened the heavens with nothing to stake –

But, reader, my anguish is always my guilt.

Is this script appendage enough for my sake?

 

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.