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Paul Durcan Thomas Moore In His Study
At Sloperton Cottage
A writer is a worm;
Upon itself turns the screw
In clay cells of its own bastilles;
Voluntary incarceration.
'A prima donna of the carceral life'
Is how our leading novelist puts it.
A creature whom you will find
On the sunniest, snowiest day of the year
Not gambolling about the laden meadows
With the other creatures of the wood
The soft pink girls in their long black overcoats,
The squirrel, the fox, the hare, the hedgehog
But down in the nightshade of his donjon
Scribbling by the light of the basement area;
Down in the dungeon of his own ribcage
Scribbling by the light of his own throat;
Down the tubes of his own larynx
Scribbling by the light of his own fear.
Il
To be a writer
Is to be buried
Alive, first thing
Every morning.
I emerge from my bunker
At noon holding my head
Having written
Or as likely
Having not written
'Lalla Rookh'.
Carrying in my hand a poker
Thinking that it is not a harp
I stand blinking in daylight
Trying to remember
Who the blazes I am,
Where the blazes I am going.
What the blazes I am doing with a poker in my hand
Which I know very well is not a harp.
I am a very doughty, very glowing, very colic little Irishman
Held-up in rush-hour traffic in East Ham.
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