In einer eMail vom 24.09.2006 08:03:28 Westeuropãische Normalzeit schreibt FBCorcoran:
This scanning of all my Caseys’ 1927
National School Calendar
endears Alto Lazio of the Popes to
which of their cooler shades ? They
hadn’t a chance, Lord and Lady of All
Aeons, not a penny in his pocket
for little dote Uncle John’s future
tracheotomy ( -yet it’s pre-shadowed
in the hunkered smile; perhaps;
mother is back near the aunties, went
for the second-last row, perhaps her
chance of a worry-free year. )
Contrast this sunny bright Mystical
Garden of Roman medlars, peaches,
wild strawberries, thyme, mint and
onion, cress, capers, vipers’ ivy and
plum and oregano , my green-gold
Mystical Body , with what Protestant
Principle?
Lugging a green chair from tree to
knell-shadow to olive-hollow in this
very hot July, I mulled over the young
shades of 1927 ; why were ye?
August roasting after the early
morning -hours; in the evening you’d
sob the georgic tears of things, wield
the implacable clippers –
ivy always conceals a serpent’s tooth.
The lake, of course. – Gadaffy’s
North African light and Leitrim
melancholy, take your pick, cleanest
volcanic lake in Italy , it’s deep out
beyond Bisanzio . Did those brown
Casey children ever whinge ? I dare
carpe this diem, a lounging body
under is it an elm, now it’s become a
lovely September morning ? Onions
and garlic were out for those lads.
What the farmer don’t ken, the 1927
childer surely won’t.
Suppose I focus on mother and poor
Uncle John ( ” his trachea all ended ” ),
brown-shaded photographic sisters,
my living dead; suppose they’d
harvest this beautiful crop – my vines
bested, stragglers towards a Spïtlese?
How would beautiful God’s
mud-daughters enjoy?
Lug down from the formal garden to
Garden Number Two where it’s
cooler and wilder. Fuse
their photograph with Virgil’s in his
“Georgics”, his own shining Roman
gurney. How snorts our spinosa
( it’s three in the morning for him!), as
he dares gouge out Lazio spuds ? It is
here if anywhere that I’ll meet
these child-shadows. Their September
1927.
” I HATE the sun” is hardly his
jist, St. Patrick’s breast-plate.
Apparently you let your normal snake
go.There IS , mind you, water in
plenty. How those photographed
mites prayed the rain-psalms and ate
their salad salty. Uncle John’s cut
throat fell across the swell of
mother’s door , we’re talking of his
future, mind, far distant
still from that brown- lit 1927 pic.
Hands up, muddy childer. Thyme
and oregano heal. You’ll slap a
half-onion on the twin red pricks.
Keep it in, in under the cool dappled
Georgics: They had their kids’ joys,
their hunkered sorrow not noticed.
Clip, clip merciless with ivy. The
depressed thirties, you could argue,
mud-potatoes , not sun-dappled
apples . Or what if the Lower Garden
has landscaped railway-sleepers and
terr -cotta tiles. Hornets kill wasps
killing flies eating a lovely
garden’s yesterdays. Scan that
school-children’s group-photo
again, my grave family, their muddy
melody, his torn throat , mother’s
worried eyes. Share a pear
across seventy four
years. Stroke our garden cat, all
his oneness with 2006?
Do you remember? ‘Twas
auld September ? By the light of our
teacher’s camera? Plant us, bury us in
Upper Paradiso? ( – Apparently God
is light in the locals’ theology. )
Hauld all Lazio horses! The
November olive-harvest is as
brown as mother’s and Uncle
John’s potatoe-harvest. No cat will
ever bite ye, neither now nor never,
where dead children huddle and
quiver in ecstasy, whistling “We dare
to enjoy, Lazio” .
Between mother up at the back
and little Uncle John’s future
tracheatomy, where’s the viper gone?
Marry mud and medlar.