When the balance of power changed, and the attitudes.
Meanwhile, strangers were kind. The terrible places,
Unexpectedly, were generous with food,
Indifferent for the most part, sometimes even gracious.
And to this day, our books on the shelf,
Our suitcases unpacked, I ask myself
If ever it might happen again –
Protection of innocence, Herod’s dispensations,
Transit lounges, midnight railway stations –
No, not even whether, only when.
*
Autumn in Chengdu
(from Red Earth Sequence)
At the slightest rain, a flowering of umbrellas
Fourteen storeys down. The human sea,
The ‘ocean of suffering’, or so they tell me –
Deaths, rebirths… How many days now, all alone
At the heart of reality, in the white noise
Of a jammed radio, the fuzz on the internet,
Do I cut myself off, the better to atone
For ever living? It is not time yet
For the leaves that never fall, on the trees of Chengdu –
But the cripples and the hydrocephalic boys
At the Buddhist gates, the lama’s cry
On the loudspeaker, powerfully coming through
The smog of appetite, are reaching me
Even now, and teaching me to die.
*
Across the River
I crossed them again, the Liffey
And the Lethe, and there it all was,
The seventies, north of the river,
Nothing changed. The smells of food,
The same lit pubs, with a failed generation
Drinking inside them, in a blue fug
Clinging to the loose-stitch and the breast-swell
Of a girl’s pullover, who would go on
To age, make children,
Break with the crises, the excitements
Of Saturday night, for the grey of Sunday afternoon.
There were no more Sundays now
But I smelt the docks, on the farther side of Lethe,
The ghosts of the transit sheds
For cattle and emigrants, shipped to Liverpool –
Abbatoir of souls…
Local colour, raised to the power of infinity
Once, long ago. Back then,
Staring much, I saw too little.
Now, a gull might cut right through me
For all I knew, and everything be remembered
Out of nowhere, the city reassemble itself
From the ruins of the seventies,
I its soul-survivor,
And the bad poetry, the only real poetry,
Still being sold, from an upstairs loft
On Middle Abbey Street, by a dropout
From the future, loose-stitched, heavy-breasted,
Careless of second comers. Mnemosyne,
Daughter of memory.
Contents List
9 To the Next Generation
10 Redesdale Estate, 1956
12 Endgame
14 The Accursed Questions
15 After Mao
16 Across the River
17 Ruins
19 Daytime Sleeper
21 The Egg-wife
22 Therese and the Jug
24 Before Christ
25 A Flight into Egypt
26 Pity and Terror
28 Art, Children and Death
29 Disfavour
31 The Stage-door
32 The Achill Years
34 Horace
35 The Bible as Literature
37 At Racquets
38 The Pit
40 Wreckfish
42 The Dry-souled Man
44 Trance
46 Auden in Shanghai
47 Anabasis
49 from Red Earth Sequence
54 Zhoukoudian
56 Come and See Us Sometime
57 To the Philippians
58 Toronto Suite
59 Ballinafull, 3 July 2014
60 Death’s Door
61 Goodbye to China
Related Reviews
‘In Harry Clifton’s magisterial Portobello Sonnets (Bloodaxe Books), the everyday life of Portobello is seen in the light of his unflagging poetic quest. It is heartening to see the poet striking out, undaunted, into new imaginative territory.’ - Michael O’Loughlin, The Irish Times (Books of the Year)
‘Some will be surprised by the passion and intensity with which Harry Clifton embraces the local in this often astonishing, accomplished and sometimes virtuoso sequence of 35 sonnets... Portobello Sonnets chronicles Clifton’s return to Dublin, a journey from experience into innocence.’ – Michael O’Loughlin, The Irish Times
‘These thirty-five sonnets from 2004-05, running in their narrow grooves, remain a remarkable achievement, and they also show him firmly claiming the poet’s privilege of remaining on the edge… his voice in Portobello Sonnets claims a poetic authority as willed, as unambiguous, as James Clarence Mangan’s.’ - Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Dublin Review of Books
'Portobello Sonnets is a thoughtful collection, a potent reminder in its understated way that poetry often thinks biggest and best when it seems to think small.' - Andrew Hadfield, PN Review
'There is so much history in Harry Clifton's poems, so much geography, landscape, cityscape, repeopled precincts of the imagination, so much human drama and comedy; so many people, mythic, unlikely and hauntingly real. And all of it is limned with a masterful formal dexterity and an apparently limitless cultural curiosity' – C.K. Williams.
