The ghost of life: an unmusical ploughboy

Well, well—here we are in April, so you know what’s coming. That’s right—30 days of poems for National Poetry Month.

This year, we’re in a strange place. Well, most of us are probably in familiar places, but we’re here under strange circumstances as we attempt to flatten the COVID19 curve by social distancing and staying the fuck home. Bandwidth is straining under multiple streaming applications, home ovens are turning out loaf after loaf of artisan bread, people are breaking out the silly hats for video conferences.

And that’s just my company.

To start us off this month, I’m giving you “April Dusk”, by Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh. It kind of sets the tone, I think. I don’t know whether the impending calamity he’s anticipating in Europe is World War I or World War II; I suspect the latter. Either way—as with our current situation—everything is uprooted and nothing will be the same again.

“April Dusk”

April dusk

It is tragic to be a poet now

And not a lover

Paradised under the mutest bough.

I look through my window and see

The ghost of life flitting bat-winged.

O I am as old as a sage can even be,

O I am as lonely as the first fool kinged.

The horse in his stall turns away

From the hay-filled manger, dreaming of grass

Soft and cool in hollows. Does he neigh

Jealousy-words for John MacGuigan's ass

That never was civilised in stall or trace.

An unmusical ploughboy whistles down the lane

Not worried at all about the fate of Europe.

While I sit here feeling the subtle pain

Of one whose Tree of God has been uprooted.