George Moore

Antarctic Explorer

At the heart of the ridiculous, the sublime.

—Derek Mahon, “Antarctic”

 

Never stare into the whiteness
they had said or your blood will slow

 

and your mind curl round some memory
of fire that cannot be fed and may become

 

the memory of a child’s future
but with gray features whiskers a nose thin hair

 

Inside our tent the heavy wet wool freezes
thaws and freezes to take on human form

 

a man’s sweat becomes his personal weather
time’s clock pack ice and century-old snow

 

What brings us here to this edgeless edge
furthermost wastes of a wrecked planet

 

one step beyond where another has been
serving ourselves up on this great white plate

 

This is not a land of flesh and blood
but a plain of ghosts and dull-noon shadows

 

a placeless place where the wind
lives in the bones and days stretch like taffy

 

Whatever mad closeness of society
drove us to extremes here you are simple

 

walk out into the void to be eaten
by the whiteness and never feel again

 

simply to be praised by men
mad with the loose ends of all their disasters

 

smiling for the camera
as if they’d won

 

The Others

Great grandfather fled the potato famine
eating its way through the cliffs of Binevenagh

 

Or was it love he fled or love he ran to
something eating away inside him at seventeen

 

when shipping out of the Glasgow link

I can see his hand on the rail but not his face or his eyes

 

raised as he bends his back at the foot of Slieve Gallion
a Protestant with a strong love of God no doubt

 

in the plowed fields that were his saints
his cross a mouldboard on backbone and the rich peat

 

cuttings off Ballynahoe Bog
And then all of us others he would lend to the world

 

without promises or guarantees
who carry those borders in our blood

 

and share them at arm’s length on a weary sea
where we gather ourselves to greet us coming

 

A Late Poem for James Liddy

This is where we lay out the flowers
on the page with dumb letters silent marks

 

measuring the length of your days
like a string from an old shoe or a pencil

 

you have chewed through to the bone
and is that enough is that kosher

 

for an old Irish hound down in the mouth
at a Portland bar in 1970

 

singing the slosh songs of being away
and loving the irreverent

 

for its untold blessings and
the freedom to love who you will

 

The flowers wilt in the beer jar
the boy’s sister throws up again

 

and everyone comes round to sing
as the nights grow weary with adventures

 

Vodka and gin and screwdrivers
you loved the sound of and all the college funds

 

running a queer poet’s parties
a block from the occultist college president

 

But you were not old and we were
so terribly young and Baudelaire

 

played his dangerous games on our chemistry
his irreverent tongue in our innocent ears

 

And so welcome back into the world James
the dangers are still the same

 

when I stumble on your grave
it seems the party has just begun