Frank Ormsby

Altar Boy Economics

A wedding paid better than a funeral.

We were tipped for smiling

and looking cute in photos.

Though sometimes a funeral paid better,

the mourners at a loss

and wanting to be thought generous.

Wedding tips could be displayed

with a discreet jingle, but funeral tips

were almost secrets, hoarded for rainy days.

A christening did not require an altar boy.

Christenings were, economically speaking,

a dead loss.

*

Unapproved Roads

There must have been dozens

cutting through border fields,

of which no one kept track,

or appearing on maps, if at all,

like a fine craquelure

that might have been part of the fabric.

So for miles, there was no border,

just smugglers’ routes and stony C roads,

potholed and dangerous.

I imagined a petrol tanker dipping its lights

at the mouth of some nameless turn-off,

and trailers tilting with cigarettes and guns,

and cash changing hands in the country dark beyond

the tarred roads we lived beside, the once-a-day patrols

that kept our lives in order.

*

My Father Again

I might have been born to write your elegy.

The moment I lift my pen your soft knock

will be heard at the door. For fifty years or more

you have been my work-in-progress.

I know what brings you here:

the hope that this time

I’ll produce a real poem –

The Ballad of Paddy Ormsby.

A singer will learn it by heart

and after the to-and-fro

of gruff persuasion and ritual demur,

will hang his cap on his knee, close his eyes,

and sing it to a crowded bar.

It will, you imagine, portray you

as hero of sideline brawls,

the man to have on your side when the fists fly.

Your self-esteem will surely rattle the roof

as the last note of homage fills the room

with whoops and whistles.

But it’s my elegy too, half-darkened with loss.

You’ll get no ballad this time either.

So again you plunge into the unshaping night.

I slip the latch. Already you are out of sight.

*

Agitans

My left arm is jealous of my right,

the one without a tremor. When Right

pours a glass of wine or throws a ball,

Left stifles a mild shiver of reproach.

I call him Agitans and let him take charge

of the big jug of water, so that the ice

tumbles into the glasses like a subsiding cliff.

He peaks in the football season when Arsenal play.

If they get any better, I’ll have to snuggle him

tightly to my chest, strait-jacket style.

Meanwhile, his brother Right is undeterred

by his burgeoning duties. And once, once only,

has released his own answering tremor.

*

The Willow Forest

What with the pogroms, the genocide,

the ethnic cleansing, the secret massacres,

the mass graves, the death camps, the public executions,

at last there was nobody left,

the country was empty.

Survivors who reached the borders

became refugees.

Rebuked by that silence beyond the mountains,

the victors planted willows and in due course

the country grew into a willow forest.

The trees hung their heads

over a history that, now memorialised,

could be forgotten.

Except that the few who visited

spoke of a weight

that was more than gravity,

a wind in the trees

that stilled to a kind of weeping.

I

13 Altar Boy

14 Altar Boy Economics

15 1959–1960

16 The Cash Railway

17 The National Anthem

18 The Fields

19 Neddy

20 Snow on the Way

21 The Fox

22 Owls

23 Do You Renounce?

24 Inoculation

25 The Gang

26 Diversion

27 Omagh

28 Rhododendrons

29 Ruts

30 Unapproved Roads

31 Storms

33 Loss of Sound

34 The Woodpile

35 Snowdrop

36 Landscape with Endangered Species

37 Unfinished Music

38 Towards a Sketch of My Mother

39 After a Storm

40 A Zen Dream of Fermanagh

41 My Father Again

42 The Farmyard Haiku

  II

44 The Fisherman

45 The Black Duckling

46 The Waterworks Park

47 Crows Again

48 At the Graveside

49 My Last Words

50 Purgatory

51 Gunslingers

52 For Ciaran Carson

53 Lunch in The Crown with Michael Longley

54 An Evening in The John Hewitt with Conor Macauley

55 Visiting the Grave

56 Grandfather’s Week

57 Small World (3)

58 The Snail

59 The Soul

60 The Cult

61 Outside The Walls

62 After Edward Hopper: Sun in an Empty Room

63 No Telling

64 Belfast Needs Fountains

III  Twenty-six Irish Paintings

66 1. Aloysius O’Kelly: The Christening Party

67 2. John Lavery: Under the Cherry Tree

69 3. Walter Osborne: Apple Gathering, Quimperlé

70 4. Stanley Royle: The Goose Girl

71 5. Norman Garstin: Among the Pots

72 6. Norman Garstin: Madonna Lilies

73 7. Joseph Malachy Kavanagh: Pursuing His Gentle Calling

74 8. Richard Thomas Moynan: Girls Reading a Newspaper

75 9. Walter Osborne: Breton Girl by a River

76 10. Roderic O’Conor: Portrait of a Young Woman Smiling

77 11. May Guinness: Pump at Pont-l’Abbé

78 12. Nathaniel Hone: Feeding Pigeons, Barbizon

79 13. Stanhope Forbes: Miss Ormsby, Later Mrs Homan

80 14. Frank O’Meara: Towards Night and Winter

81 15. William John Leech: Convent Garden, Brittany

82 16. Mary Swanzy: The Clown by Candlelight

83 17. Frank O’Meara: On the Quays, Étaples

84 18. Henry Jones Thaddeus: The Wounded Poacher

85 19. Frank O’Meara: The Widow

86 20. Augustus Nicholas Burke: Farmyard in Brittany

87 21. William John Leech: Interior of a Barber’s Shop

88 22. Stanhope Forbes: Street in Brittany

89 23. Norman Garstin: Estaminet in Belgium

90 24. Richard Thomas Moynan: The Laundress

91 25. Nathaniel Hone: Old Woman Gathering Sticks

92 26. Nathaniel Hone: Leafy Lane

IV  The Parkinson’s Poems

95 Agitans

96 Tremors

97 Side Effects (1)

98 Notes in Small Handwriting

99 The Insulin Pen

100 Hallucinations (1)

101 Hallucinations (2)

102 Hallucinations (3)

103 Friends

104 Side Effects (2)

105 Side Effects (3)

106 Once a Day

107 The Later Stages (1)

108 The Later Stages (2)

V  The Willow Forest

111 The Accused (1)

112 The Interpreter (1)

113 Witness A

115 Witness B

116 The Accused (2)

117 The Interpreter (2)

118 Witness G

119 The Interpreter (3)

120 Witness J

121 The Interpreter (4)

122 The Undertaker’s Wife

124 The Accused (3)

125 The Interpreter (5)

126 The Willow Forest

‘Reading these new poems and returning to those read decades ago has been a delight because Ormsby is a poet of enviable gifts. He has a fine ear and a sharp eye and, above all, his poems are memorable.’ – David Cooke, The Manchester Review [on Goat’s Milk: New and Selected Poems]

‘Goat’s Milk: New and Selected Poems, by Frank Ormsby, reminds us why we missed this poet’s wry and concise voice during the 14-year gap in his writing life; and the new poems extend and ratify his unique angle of vision.’ – Patricia Craig, The Irish Times (Books of the Year)