happy bloomsday! instead of posting something by joyce, i thought i'd post this poem by derek mahon. it is, i think, one of the most intelligent poems in the english language, partly, of course, because of its initial instances of unintelligibility. he speaks joycean better than james... enjoy.The Joycentenary Ode
Aged twenty-odd, I spent
A night stretched
Between blankets on
The cold floor
Of your squat tower,
Gymsoul, my ho head heavy
As yonder stone among
Half-empty rosbif
And electricity glasses.
There I dreamed
The wholething from
Once upon a time
To riverrun, from
Creak of dawn
To crack of doom,
And woke to find
The snotgreen glittering
Like razor-blades.
What can I tale you,
Jerms, where you stretch
In the Flutherin Symatery?
Who pome of mine might
Healp aliviate
Youretournal night?
What news of the warld
You loft bihand
Widdamuse you now?
The goodguise bate
The badgoys in
Diturrible fright
That drove you from
Parease to die
In switzoccluion.
Women no longer run
Panting into cake-shops,
Though we have still
To instal emergency
Phones in coffins
As you proposed.
Everbaddy reads
Your wooks now in
Unlimited eruditions;
And if you never won
The Noble Praise,
Well, that reflects upon
Our precontraceptions
About lutherature, and erges
Your origeniosity.
Gemsbounder has replaced
Hopalongcarcity
At the Pavlodeography;
The pap democrisy
You realished has become
Thanew art forrum.
Spundrawers in every
Kirtschen! Airwickers
In ivery bahrfrheum!
A noddindog in the rear
Winda of avery carr!
A bonne in overy hoven!
The bairdboard
Bombardment screen
And gineral californucation
Have revolationized
Ourland beyond raggednition.
Nialson came down
A tunderish clap,
Aye-eye in the dust;
And soon there will be
Anew ring-roarrrd built
On reclaimed land
Offa Sandymount Strand.
But some things change
So slowly they
Are still there when
Time comes round again,
Like the dark rain
Muttering on the grave
Of the consumptive
Boy from the gas-works
Who died for love.
Gazing wrist, folden
Gavriels, childers of leidt,
We cmome to a place
Beyond cumminity
Where only the wind synges.
Words faoil there
Bifar infinity,
One evenreal stare
Twintinkling on the si.
This is the dark adge
Where the souil swails
With hurtfealt soang,
Hearing the sonerous
Volapuke of the waives,
That ainchant tongue,
Dialect of what thribe,
Throb of what broken heart –
A language beyond art
That not even you,
If you lived
To a hundred and wan,
Could begin to danscribe.
Derek Mahon, The Hunt by Night (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982): 45-8.
