BAGPIPE MUSIC
A large cast of characters populate the sprawling cityscape of Scotland in this surprisingly short, but dense examination of working-class vexation. The status quo seems intent on keeping these characters down and placing hindrances to upward mobility.
CARRICKFERGUS
The titular town of Carrickfergus is situated between Belfast and Dorset less a geographical spot on the map of space than on the map of time. The poem places the village in between the past and the future more as a metaphorical idea of the home that is not really home.
CARRICK REVISITED
While the village mentioned above was told from the perspective of a young man reliving childhood memories, the later visit to the same place now takes on a more mature theme. The speaker is now older and more experienced, and views home as a place that seems curiously resistant to movement and where the only energy in the town seems related to violence.
AN ECOLOGUE FOR CHRISTMAS
The poet’s concerted premise to write a long poem resulted what is structured as a dialogue between a sophisticated city dweller who comes to the country because the city cannot answer certain questions and a shepherd who has become wistfully aware of the impact of the decline and fall of the landed gentry.
SUNDAY MORNING
What starts out as a festive paean to the opportunity that Sunday morning offers for wasting time transforms by the end into a reminder that those careful wastes of time come with a price in the world of the incessant march toward mortality.
NEW JERUSALEM
The resurrection of Lazarus becomes a metaphor of connecting the past to the present rather than separating planning for the future from archiving the past as disconnected history.
STAR-GAZER
A memory of gazing through the small window of a moving train as the stars passed by 42 years earlier sets the framework for a metaphysical examination of the cosmic implication of the passage of time and those who move in and out of one’s space during that passage.
DEATH OF AN OLD LADY
The titular old lady is linked metaphorically to the death of a great ship that the poet actually watched head out toward its maiden voyage when he was just a young boy in Belfast. The poem centers descriptions of that ship within the narrative: a somewhat famous cruise ship that went by the name of Titanic.
EPILOGUE FOR ICELAND: FOR W.H. AUDEN
An expression of alienation from the way the world used to be and should be that is partly an elegy for what seems to be an unstoppable movement away from liberty and communication among humans.
THE SUNLIGHT ON THE GARDEN
The elegiac tone of the previous verse continues here with imagery that suggest the gloomy arrival of a coming doom.
DEATH OF AN ACTRESS
The title refers to music hall performer Florrie Forde who was not very talented. The aim of the poem is to lend Forde a dignity commensurate with her role in the world of popular entertainment: a distraction for the masses from the desultory reality of their daily lives.
NIGHT CLUB
The exuberance and excitement of the title setting ultimately comes to feel empty and shallow and the entertainment leaves the audience wanting more…but not in the usual meaning of that concept.
PRAYER BEFORE BIRTH
An impassioned plea by being not yet born against the 20th century imperative toward dehumanization and impersonalization in the form of a declaration against the mindless acquiescence toward becoming a cog in the machine, or an automaton drained of humanity for the purpose of lethal use against others.
