A Swim in Co. Wicklow by Derek Mahon (1999)

The only reality is the perpetual flow of vital energy.
— Montale

Spindrift, crustacean patience
and a gust of ozone,
you come back once more
to this dazzling shore,
its warm uterine rinse,
heart-racing heave and groan.

A quick gasp as you slip
into the hissing wash,
star cluster, dulse and kelp,
slick algae, spittle, froth,
the intimate slash and dash,
hard-packed in the seething broth.

Soft water-lip, soft hand,
close tug of origin,
the sensual writhe and snore
of maidenhair and frond,
you swim here once more
smart as a rogue gene.

Spirits of lake, river
and woodland pond preside
mildly in water never
troubled by wind or tide;
and the quiet suburban pool
is only for the fearful —

no wind-wave energies
where no sea briar grips
and no freak breaker with
the violence of the ages
comes foaming at the mouth
to drown you in its depths.

Among pebbles a white conch
worn by the suck and crunch,
a sandy chamber old
as the centuries, in cold
and solitude reclines
where the moon-magnet shines;

but today you swirl and spin
in sea water as if,
creatures of salt and slime
and naked under the sun,
life were a waking dream
and this the only life.

from Twenty-One Love Poems by Adrienne Rich, poem VII

What kind of beast would turn its life into words?
What atonement is this all about?
---and yet, writing words like these, I’m also living.
Is all this close to the wolverines’ howled signals,
that modulated cantata of the wild?
or, when away from you I try to create you in words,
am I simply using you, like a river or a war?
And how I have used rivers, how I have used wars
to escape writing of the worst thing of all ---
not the crimes of others, not even our own death,
but the failure to want our freedom passionately enough
so that blighted elms, sick rivers, massacres would seem
mere emblems of that desecration of ourselves?

from A Valediction Forbidding Mourning by Adrienne Rich (1970-71)

A last attempt: the language is a dialect called metaphor.
These images go unglossed: hair, glacier, flashlight.
When I think of a landscape I am thinking of a time.
When I talk of taking a trip I mean forever.
I could say: those mountains have a meaning
but further than that I could not say.

To do something very common, in my own way.

Photographer

Capture
The frame of his body
Down on one knee
Smile leaning to one side
Canon up to right eye
Shining black in the sun
His count begins at one
and two and three, Click.
And still on one knee
One two three,
Click.

goodbye

tell myself I’ll find you
tell myself its okay
try and reconcile myself
with leaving you this way
may not see you again
but still I pretend
making you promises
I won’t keep in the end

redirecting emotions

I try to redirect
the logic of my emotions
but they cut through space and time
they ache in my mind

I use mental blocks: ice, glass, stone

I twirl with pretend freedom
among crabs, sand and sea
they mix inside me

the Woman

Ah,
In the left and right of her nose
Turning from one to another
In the rolling of her shoulders
As she bent over low for him
In the lift of her bare feet
In her curves, in her style
I lost my words, in her singing
In her smile, in the swish of her hair
I forgot what I was going to say
In the mark on her creamy skin
In the bend of her legs as she shifted her weight
I lost the meaning of language, of everything.