THINGS OUT OF PLACE ____________________________________________
OLIVER MORT
Belfast Lapwing
Things Out Of Place ____________________________________________
Oliver Mort
Belfast LAPWING
First Published by Lapwing Publications c/o 1, Ballysillan Drive Belfast BT14 8HQ lapwing.poetry@ntlworld.com www.lapwingpoetry.com Copyright © Oliver Mort 2012 Cover art ‘Building a Quarter, 2012’ © Kimberley O’Hara All rights reserved The author has asserted her/his right under Section 77 of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Since before 1632 The Greig sept of the MacGregor Clan Has been printing and binding books
Lapwing Publications are printed at Kestrel Print 028 90 319211 E:kestrelprint@btconnect.com Hand-bound in Belfast at the Winepress Set in Aldine 721 BT
ISBN 978-1-909252-06-6
ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Dennis and Lapwing for all their work getting this collection of poems printed. THE IDEA OF PLACE, BELFAST 2009 was first published in issue number 68 of The Rialto. Of course, love and thanks to my parents.
Cover art Building a Quarter, 2012 by Kimberley O’Hara
iii
CONTENTS
THE IDEA OF PLACE, BELFAST 2009 CHASING BUTTERFLIES ON VISITING THE ULSTER MUSEUM LIGHTHOUSE TITANIC QUARTER OF BELFAST THE SADNESS OF COMMUNAL HALLS SNOW IN THE NORTH THE BURNING OF BOOKS THE ACHILLES HEEL TOURIST IN BELFAST SCARECROW MOMENTS CAMERA WORK MONA LISA CARRYING THE DEAD THE RIVER AT TUNLAVERT FARM EQUILIBRIUM SPEAKING ACROSS A DIVIDE THE OLD COMPASS FACT OR FICTION OLD CROW IN WINTER YOU ARE A SENSE OF PLACE POSTCARDS HOME SHOPPING AT IKEA UNTITLED
iv
7 9 10 12 13 14 15 16 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 30 31 32 33 34 35 36
THINGS OUT OF PLACE
Oliver Mort
v
vi
Oliver Mort
THE IDEA OF PLACE, BELFAST 2009
I used to
imagine this place as an
oversized jigsaw puzzle or an ongoing game of Tetris but all these I see all around
fit together to form a
bits and pieces
will by no means
picture like those painted
7
Things Out of Place
on local street walls or construct a pattern like those blocks of colour on various pavem ent kerbs
8
Oliver Mort
CHASING BUTTERFLIES
The movement of the butterflies transfixes the air. Everyone stops and stares. Bright coloured wings of yellow, indigo and green flutter and weave through the tropical enclosure at Seaforde, until, perhaps, landing on a leaf. Though no one butterfly’s flight is alike, everyone wants to take part in this wonderful indefinite dance. The children are enthralled. They run in circles, chasing, cheering, snatching with greedy grasps the life floating within. Frustrated at life’s indifference they turn back to their parents. Young couples think they know better. They are butterfly hunters. They study each exotic movement and try to anticipate three moves ahead, but the butterfly’s mystery evades all cupped hands. It is only time’s weary who hear the music of the butterfly’s song. They sit simply staring at life’s ungraspable colour and are rewarded on their shoulder with a butterfly’s wing.
9
Things Out of Place
ON VISITING THE ULSTER MUSEUM
We make our way through the winding corridors and rooms of the recently refurbished Ulster Museum and look at the relics of time’s detritus all arranged and displayed in strict chronological order from the Mesozoic era through to Ancient Egypt and the Armada and we read the snippets of information which help explain these grand narratives of past cultures intended and complete and we follow the arrows around the museum
10
Oliver Mort
from beginning, middle and end until we reach near the exit our own recent past of broken glass and shattered lives collected and preserved in neat little rows and boxes
11
Things Out of Place
LIGHTHOUSE
Sailor beware That sly wink Of the lighthouse Promising safe Voyage home For it marks No shallow Or edge of shadow Only empty winds Whispering ‘it’ Indefinite as God
12
Oliver Mort
TITANIC QUARTER OF BELFAST
We drag the dark waters of history For some sunken relic of yesterday Used as tourism to say this was us For we want to celebrate our wreckage In a museum where it will never age Though the sea still battles it into ruin We commemorate this wreck that we made Yet also remember that we still make And are building it back into quarters
13
Things Out of Place
THE SADNESS OF COMMUNAL HALLS
One passes through this vacant space each day without taking much notice of its bare white walls and grimy floor, The murky foot prints of passing occupants, the surplus of letters, flyers, postcards all left unclaimed by the door, The awkward moment when you meet face to face neighbours in the dingy half light of the hall never seen before, And the quick ‘hello’ or blank stare as each fumbles for their key to retreat into their own space and never closer to knowing more, Letters with your address, 52 Wells Road, but with names of tenants no longer living there and no address to forward, Letters that will soon bare your name, posted through, walked over and over and added to the pile of lives forgotten on the floor.
14
Oliver Mort
SNOW IN THE NORTH
The snow falls making a blank page of this place; whitening the surface of things. We are not accustomed to such vacuity: our streets have been ascribed with the hieroglyphics of violent insecurity. A child reaches for the snow and throws the ball like a kiss but digging too deep scoops the grit that lies beneath the stone cracks the skull of the other.
15
Things Out of Place
THE BURNING OF BOOKS “There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.” Joseph Brodsky
A flick of a wrist as of one turning pages Sets off the spark of the burning of pages This simple act ignites all knowledge Into flickering flames that soon blazes brilliant Through the dark hour of night’s dominion As each flame feeds chaos and archaic night Though this hunger is an echoing chasm For now history knows not who to kindle with blame
16
Oliver Mort
As heaped, upon heaped upon heaped, books are burning Except one single sheaf torn, half scorched in the wind blowing A dim light out of the blackest void Telling a story worth knowing that no one ever read
17
Things Out of Place
THE ACHILLES HEEL
is the loose slanting leg of a table about to end a postponed game of chess not the white king delicately poised between the black bishop and queen
18
Oliver Mort
TOURIST IN BELFAST
I felt just as much a tourist as you Travelling through my hometown streets of Belfast In our black taxi tour of ‘the troubles’ ‘You better take photos of those murals’ Our guide says through the Shankill and the Falls ‘The present is painting over the past’ I nodded along pretending I knew The taxi man’s view of our history When really I hadn’t the slightest clue Of things that were happening on both sides While I was trying to live out my life - Who was Jackie Coulter or Bobby Sands? It was not till we came to the peace wall That I realised it was my first time here My parents built a wall around us all While I was growing up through this so near But I’ve found open ground now out and in A blank space to fill with awkward rhyming
19
Things Out of Place
SCARECROW
As a boy, I was haunted by an old scarecrow Its dark figure looked like a man though crooked and bent You swore some skeleton had been dragged from the grave and hung up on a stick When the wind was wild its ragged clothes would flap and fly as if he was dancing some strange, sinister step I didn’t know how the crows could dare get so close picking at seeds just sown Older now, I can see it as plain as the crows - an old coat and hat around a bag of straw held up by pole and rake Growing up, I see the wasted years I wish we were all like crows ignoring scarecrow words of fear and hate
20
Oliver Mort
MOMENTS
The drip from the crack in the white china pot hidden below the roots of the withering plant makes the gathering pool —into time
21
Things Out of Place
CAMERA WORK
I remember watching in helpless horror a young antelope cry in longing, desperate pain, As four lionesses dragged her down and tore her flesh till blood spilled on the dry African plain, And angered at how the man behind the camera could film this passive and indifferent to her strain. Realising only years later that to merge into the background of a story without influencing, Is to see the world as it is and to leave it exactly how it was for a second finding, As I flick through the 6 o’clock news as silent a witness as God to these twentieth-first century scenes.
22
Oliver Mort
MONA LISA
We make our way blindly towards The Mona Lisa Like everyone in the Louvre And we push and shove our way through To try and get some kind of view Of her famous, beautiful smile And take pictures of this painting At just the right camera angle To avoid any blur or glare Because we want to preserve her Just as she was meant to be seen By da Vinci as he painted Had he experienced our pain Of how to record her beauty Using a different medium Of somehow missing the whole truth Making her face into a lie On that day just how did she smile
23
Things Out of Place
CARRYING THE DEAD
Why do we welcome these carriers of the dead into our home With their uniform of black, seemingly from the night torn Their rigid faces giving away no secret of eternal places Why do we instead so easily let them carry our dead Weighted down with our pain and misery with no sound or fury. We’d bear the burden with outwardly more care For each day inside us we carry the dead like Atlas.
24
Oliver Mort
THE RIVER AT TUNLAVERT FARM
This river is a torrent of the mind when I dream of it in my sleep flowing through my grandfather’s farm my memory incipiently deep When I dream of it in my sleep I am a boy fishing on its banks my memory incipiently deep of the river rushing passed And the current pulls the line when I dream of it in my sleep tight in the swirling waters my memory incipiently deep When I dream of it in my sleep this river is different to how it was my memory incipiently deep of the sleepy shallow stream This river is a torrent of the mind when I dream of it in my sleep the imagination swells on unfathomable bounds my memory incipiently deep
25
Things Out of Place
EQUILIBRIUM
Once I remember falling we once were falling the world once falling until perhaps once once our fingers caught air, once we could pretend, we once were stalling, stalling stalling once in air
26
Oliver Mort
SPEAKING ACROSS A DIVIDE
Tin cans with string — from me to you A string pulled tight over bridges and boundaries and a city cut in two You talk I listen — I talk You listen And between where our metallic seashells meet what has not been said is starting to resonate through
27
Things Out of Place
THE OLD COMPASS
The old rusted compass sits on top of a table pointing true north though its bearing is false It is kept as if a relic of the old world it once navigated, the new world it knows which way not Some you can tell lost by the way the needle spins as if
28
Oliver Mort
in obscurity of old night This one points sure no doubt of the right path as if on an Aquinas map Yet maps are now mazes and its needle has not adjusted to time’s deep fractures and drawn a new line And though we know this line not to be true we cannot find our way out of all that which now is false
29
Things Out of Place
FACT OR FICTION
You are a book not yet opened Are you fact or are you fiction? Perhaps a cold hard truth taken from a cold hard world? Or a new world where truth is only imagined? I imagine you to be a story not yet written; lines in the act of finding - turning ‘what is’, ‘what was’ ‘what could be’, ‘what should be’, into a script.
30
Oliver Mort
OLD CROW IN WINTER
These woods are empty this winter morning No soul but one seems to be a stirring Heavy snow lies from the night before And early mist makes distance unknowing One wishes to find some bird in the sky A white dove, hummingbird or lovely lark To follow with mind’s eye south for winter Out of winter’s sleep, these woods deep and dark But all such birds have long flown far away All except a stubborn crow, black as night Stealing across the frozen forest floor Scavenging what little life comes his way It’s a strange confidence he seems to instil Follow his footprints and capture his will
31
Things Out of Place
YOU ARE
You are a star a star that broke like fish
32
Oliver Mort
A SENSE OF PLACE
Of my grandfather’s farm the map shows the legal boundary but somehow misses the localness of its topography. The map is drawn in straight lines and square boxes yet I never remember Grandfather’s own record being quite so horizontal or perpendicular. The map maker’s pencil and ruler encompass all without rural reason for Grandfather’s sense of place was different from office legality and his land has changed and altered through country custom and manners of handshakes and barter though he knew well every inch and quarter and always recalled in country fashion through the borders and shadings of my grandfather’s and neighbour’s mind. Still, this map shows the legal boundaries and as the borders and shadings fade in Grandfather’s mind his recollection of place is getting harder to find.
33
Things Out of Place
POSTCARDS
Send me postcards from around the world of the different places you have been So I can stick them on my wall to fill this void and build an empire
34
Oliver Mort
HOME SHOPPING AT IKEA
We follow the arrows on the ground around IKEA. There is a sign saying this is ‘the long natural way.’ We’re here, like other young sophisticates, looking for our ready-to-assemble flatpack future all temporarily constructed in neat homely spaces within this 40, 000-ish square metre warehouse of Swedish promised paradisal orderliness. Nervously, I’m failing to find the shortcuts through colour co-ordinated living rooms and chic kitchens to the nearest exit. Along the only path of departmental self-fulfilment we pick up the basics: a Klingsbo table here, a brown Klackbo easychair there, three Oddvar stools… ‘But – do we need 3 ?’ I ask. ‘Yes,’ you say. ‘They’ll go anywhere. And they’re only £3.50!’ And when we‘re back to our rented terraced accommodation in East Belfast, living between dossers and asylumseekers, our new mismatch life of oddities is assembled in minutes with a one-size-fitsall Allen key and simple screwdriver.
35
Things Out of Place
UNTITLED
Empty is the wide silent sea She passed by leaving ‌ a perfume wake
d 36
L A P W I N G PUB L I C A T I O N S
OLIVER MORT
Oliver Mort was born and raised in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He has completed a Ph.D. on American Literature. His first poem in print was published in The Rialto. This is his first collection.
The Lapwing is a bird, in Irish lore - so it has been written indicative of hope. Www.lapwingpoetry.com Printed by Kestrel Print Hand-bound at the Winepress, Ireland
ISBN 978-1-909252-06-6
ÂŁ10.00