Durcan - Christmas day ; with, A goose in the frost

PAUL DURCAN was born in Dublin in 1944, of County Mayo parents, and studied archaeology and medieval history at University College Cork. His first book, Endsville (with Brian Lynch), appeared in 1967, and has been followed by fourteen others, including The Berlin Wall Caf (Poetry Book Society Choice, Winter 1985), Daddy, Daddy (Winner of the Whitbread Award for Poetry, 1990), Crazy about Women (1991) and A Snail in My Prime: New and Selected Poems (1993). Apart from Britain and Ireland, where he has read widely, he has also given readings in the former Yugoslavia, the former Soviet Union, the USA, Canada, Holland, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Belgium, New Zealand, Israel, Germany, Brazil and the Czech Republic. His most recent book is Give Me Your Hand (1994), a sequence of poems inspired by paintings in the National Gallery, London.

He is a member of Aosdna and lives in Dublin.

No longer are you to be named Forsaken, nor your land Abandoned, but you shall be called My Delightand your land The Wedded. The day after St Stephens Day Frank telephoned me at 10.30 a.m.: I am sorry about the Christmas crackers, Paul, I clean forgot all about the Christmas crackers. I got up this morning at 6 a.m., Paul, When I remembered about the Christmas crackers. I had breakfast in the airport cafeteria. I appeared to be the only man on the escalator.

Women arriving, women departing. When you saw that I had no Christmas crackers Why didnt you say something? You are too polite for your own good. I had coffee and crispies Sitting opposite a civil servant from Dolphins Barn. She is going away to the Andes With the Friends of Kew Gardens. But Frank, you had balloons. I adored your balloons.

To hell with crackers. Balloons are what matter.

Christmas Day I spend alone In my cave Rotating my globe Musing what it would be like To spend Christmas Day With another human being Or what it would be like To spend Christmas Day In New Zealand Biting the light In Timaru Or listening to my solitary Schubert cassette, Radu Lupu Playing Moments Musicaux, Replaying the cassette Again and again To drown out neighbour-noise But also for its own noise, Its oblivion-honey That I want never To stop guzzling at Or rereading My favourite novel A Farewell to Arms Or my favourite biography John XXXIII Or browsing In rhyme In Gunn Or Housman But this year My pal Frank Invited me in the afternoon Up to his top-storey flat In a new apartment block In Terenure, On the Rathfarnham Road, Behind the Sunday World, In the southern suburbs Of Dublin city, On the outskirts of the foothills Of the Dublin mountains. This was a simple arrangement. No complications. Not like having to decide Not whether to go to Mass But which Mass to attend: Vigil Mass? Night Mass? Early Morning Mass? Day Mass? Which would it be? Which should it be? Which could it be? Horizontal in bed I ran rings round my toes Trying to make the right choice.

In the event, I solved the problem By deciding not to go to any Mass. What would Frank say? Who on an August night On Dollymount strand, Watching the sea Typing up its tidings A hare in the headlights Delved with such perky innocence, Such blue-eyed curiosity, Are you a practising Catholic? That I did not squirm. I had no qualm In disclosing with gusto Yes. A practising Catholic! I practise and practise and practise And, when I get the chance, I play. I keep beads On my bedside table That I got in Jerusalem In the Arab quarter. Worry beads.

In my bedside drawer I keep my fathers rosary beads Which along with PalgravesGolden Treasury Were all that he had When he died demented, Alone and palely raving. I like the feel of beads. If you havent got earrings And I havent because Ive no one To tell me how to put them on or in Beads are the thing to have. I like bowing; Ive nothing against genuflection But I prefer bowing. I like blessing myself; Dipping my fingers in water; Fonts, But ideally Rainwater butts. I cannot pass a church Without blessing myself.

On aircraft at takeoff and landing I make the sign of the cross And gabble the Our Father. At all times of the day I gabble the Our Father Stumbling as always on Forgive us our trespasses As we forgive those who trespass against us. But, as Frank says, Because you forgive them Does not mean you have to like them. I say the Our Father when I drive Past the cemetery where my father Crawled into the oven His emaciated ankles sprouting smoke. In cities across the world I like sitting in churches doing nothing. I like going to communion: Standing in line and catching Glimpses in night skies Through x-rays of clouds Of the thin white moon of the host.

The moment I took the decision Not to go to Mass I could feel life returning into my body, My empty cistern filling up, The Holy Spirit gurgling inside me. I should do this more often Not go to Mass. It is difficult not to go to Mass. Mass is the only chance One has to be in company, To be in society. To emit. I do not mean to meet People, I mean simply to be With and among people; To be in the real presence Of people other than oneself.