Solar Bones by Mike McCormack

Well now, here’s the thing, my edition of Solar Bones by Mike McCormack has a serious spoiler on the back blurb of the Tramp published book. Like the tag line of Psycho 2 Norm’s back and guess what so’s his Mom. That’s fun. The curious thing however is that McCormack sanctioned the revelation feeling that, he says or is purported to say, that events may come on too sudden casting a backwards bewilderment on the book. I am, as you know a careful and immersive reader, so I was worried that I had missed a plot point. That would be easy to do given the rushing stream of consciousness babbling on. I don’t mind that, I was reared on it. Alienation from within the novel is bad enough, Trollope stop addressing me please, tell your story. From outside alienation in a pointless blurb is an artistic error which may have had a production reason for it. It’s a good book though. I will relate.

Stately plump Marcus Conway is rattling around in his empty house, his family being out. He recalls the events of the last few years as a husband, father and engineer and latterly nurse during his wife’s ‘crypto’ bout. Brown trout in the water, boil it hard and the thing we never thought would happen in Ireland buying water in flagons and tankers with water dispensing it. The voice of Marcus has a greater range than you might expect from standard issue civil engineer because he spent two years studying for the priesthood in Maynooth. There’s philosophy mixed in with stories of dealing with bosthoon politicians that vary from the smooth spin speak to shouting down the phone about construction that was faulty had to be certified because my re-election would be in trouble. Very true, photo ops with large scissors count and make a memory that nudges your numbers.

This is Marcus Conway’s song about Ireland in the 21st.Century. Excellent.Because I read it ‘in a printed book’ (Synge) I cannot give you an excerpt and in any case the typography would likely be altered. Beautifully produced book by Tramp press.

To alter a line of James Clarence Mangan’s A Vision of Connaught in the Thirteenth Century:

‘It was the time,
It was the clime,
Of John Francis Moylette of the Crubeen Cawm’
(crooked trotter i.e. bribe)

Mangan’s A Vision

I walked entranced
Through a land of Morn;
The sun, with wondrous excess of light,
Shone down and glanced
Over seas of corn
And lustrous gardens a-left and right
Even in the clime
Of resplendent Spain,
Beams no such sun upon such a land;
But it was the time,
’Twas in the reign,
Of Cahal Mór of the Wine-red Hand.

Anon stood nigh
By my side a man
Of princely aspect and port sublime.
Him queried I -
‘O, my Lord and Khan,
What clime is this, and what golden time?’
When he - ‘The clime
Is a clime to praise,
The clime is Erin’s, the green and bland;
And it is the time,
These be the days,
Of Cahal Mór of the Wine-red Hand!’

Then saw I thrones,
And circling fires,
And a Dome rose near me, as by a spell,
Whence flowed the tones
Of silver lyres,
And many voices in wreathed swell; 
And their thrilling chime
Fell on mine ears
As the heavenly hymn of an angel-band -
‘It is now the time,
These be the years,
Of Cahal Mór of the Wine-red Hand!’

I sought the hall,
And, behold! - a change
From light to darkness, from joy to woe!
King, nobles, all,
Looked aghast and strange;
The minstrel-group sate in dumbest show!
Had some great crime
Wrought this dread amaze,
This terror? None seemed to understand
’Twas then the time
We were in the days,
Of Cahal Mór of the Wine-red Hand.

I again walked forth,
But lo! the sky
Showed fleckt with blood, and an alien sun
Glared from the north,
And there stood on high,
Amid his shorn beams, a skeleton!
It was by the stream
Of the castled Maine,
One Autumn eve, in the Teuton’s land,
That I dreamed this dream
Of the time and reign
Of Cahal Mór of the Wine-red Hand!

O’Hussey’s Ode To The Maguire by James Clarence Mangan

For fakery there was none to excel Mangan and much of his ‘after’ poetry was no more than the febrile fumes of the alembic of his mind and the swirling aftershocks of his doping. Shane MacGowan regards him as his pattern saint. He stumbles into poetry.

Notice the Gaelic alliteration and opposing epithets, 'pale bright’ and the interjections, I think, meseems, I scarce know. James Joyce arch mocker and giber apes him in The Citizen episode of Ulysses.

Find more of his work at Mangan



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O’Hussey’s Ode To The Maguire

James Clarence Mangan


Where is my chief, my master, this bleak night, mavrone?
O cold, cold, miserably cold is this bleak night for Hugh!
Its showery, arrowy, speary sleet pierceth one thro’ and thro’,
Pierceth one to the very bone.

Rolls real thunder? Or was that red vivid light
Only a meteor? I scarce know; but through the midnight dim
The pitiless ice-wind streams. Except the hate that persecutes him,
Nothing hath crueler venomy might.

An awful, a tremendous night is this, meseems!
The flood-gates of the rivers of heaven, I think, have been burst wide;
Down from the overcharged clouds, like to headlong ocean’s tide,
Descends grey rain in roaring streams.

Tho’ he were even a wolf ranging the round green woods,
Tho’ he were even a pleasant salmon in the unchainable sea,
Tho’ he were a wild mountain eagle, he could scarce bear, he,
This sharp sore sleet, these howling floods.

O mournful is my soul this night for Hugh Maguire!
Darkly as in a dream he strays. Before him and behind
Triumphs the tyrannous anger of the wounding wind,
The wounding wind that burns as fire.

It is my bitter grief, it cuts me to the heart
That in the country of Clan Darry this should be his fate!
O woe is me, where is he? Wandering, houseless, desolate,
Alone, without or guide or chart!

Medreams I see just now his face, the strawberry-bright,
Uplifted to the blackened heavens, while the tempestuous winds
Blow fiercely over and round him, and the smiting sleetshower blinds
The hero of Galang to-night!

Large, large affliction unto me and mine it is
That one of his majestic bearing, his fair stately form,
Should thus be tortured and o’erborne; that this unsparing storm
Should wreak its wrath on head like his!

That his great hand, so oft the avenger of the oppressed,
Should this chill churlish night, perchance, be paralysed by frost;
While through some icicle-hung thicket, as one lorn and lost,
He walks and wanders without rest.

The tempest-driven torrent deluges the mead,
It overflows the low banks of the rivulets and ponds;
The lawns and pasture-grounds lie locked in icy bonds,
So that the cattle cannot feed.

The pale-bright margins of the streams are seen by none;
Rushes and sweeps along the untamable flood on every side;
It penetrates and fills the cottagers’ dwellings far and wide;
Water and land are blent in one.

Through some dark woods, ’mid bones of monsters, Hugh now strays,
As he confronts the storm with anguished heart, but manly brow,
O what a sword-wound to that tender heart of his, were now
A backward glance at peaceful days!

But other thoughts are his, thoughts that can still inspire
With joy and onward-bounding hope the bosom of MacNee;
Thoughts of his warriors charging like bright billows of the sea,
Borne on the wind’s wings, flashing fire!

And tho’ frost glaze to-night the clear dew of his eyes,
And white ice-gauntlets glove his noble fine fair fingers o’er,
A warm dress is to him that lightning-garb he ever wore,
The lightning of his soul, not skies.

Avran.

Hugh marched forth to fight: I grieved to see him so depart.
And lo ! to-night he wanders frozen, rain-drenched, sad betrayed;
But the memory of the lime-white mansions his right hand hath laid
In ashes, warms the hero’s heart!