“The Latin Text Book.”

The ambient sound of Latin declined,
a shell falls, silent,
a head is blown off,
"Sir?" "Can I be excused from the First World
War?"
in the winter dark, in the dreariness of a dull lesson,
Roper, five alpha, blonde, athletic, played cricket,
a Brooke, Rupert, look a like, a natural poet,
over the parapet, over the dead rat, he's gone
now, teacher looks out of the window across
to the field, soon will be xmas hols,
"Sir?" "Can I be excused from the First World
War?"
mud splattered, maggot-eaten, horse shit,
"Carruther's wants to swop his Sopwith
for a Fokker", "matron says we'll have fish
for dinner."
blonde, puberty pushing through the pants,
ephebic down, rompsing in each others beds
and the quick hand press, the long lingering
looks of homo
sociality
let's say conditional
homo
sexuality
and let's be pals
then over the top, over the page,
the sunlight catches the golden heads of those at
prayer, and then
the roll call,
not here sir, absent, not here, don't know where sir.
In a neat hand, the Italics of those who did apple pies
and stole the tuck, who mocked the prefects, put on
doors buckets of water, and passed on
the Latin school text book.
"Sir?" "Can I be excused from the First World War."

Stephen Pain
.........................................................


Aran Islands.


a green tumble of sea, a ponderous melancholy, it is, that slops against the bow,
a long grey scarf , hiding from view, the beautiful north island of Aranmor,
and the white sailed hooker, carrying the dun coloured ponies from Connemara
          edging closer to the unseen black limestone of the hardy shore
        and I can swear I see the light of those faeries in among the rocks,
     dancing a jig, and I hear the voices of the now dead Pats and Mikes,
     they are shouting ahoy there in Gaelic, and the gulls and the gannets
    wailing and keening like the young women used to, all behind the mists,
       and in the air I can smell the Atlantic scent of the iodine of kelp,
then it is the fiddle I hear, the music, and the girls, the Maeves and the Janets,
now dead, from grief and typhus, from famine, and from sheer old age,
a green tumble of sea, a ponderous melancholy, it is, that slops against the bow,
as we are leaving yesterday, the salt fish, the cold through bones, tomorrow
a South Easterly blows away history like it unravels wool on backs of sheep,
you will now be seeing the pots and turf fire give way to the very latest microwave
and the authenticity of electricity brings you the Aran islands as a jpg image,
and I say to you all switch it off, turn off the lights, let a darkness go and weave
its magic, have the rabbits talking, have the Peggies and Noras tell stories
as John Millington Synge came and sat his cosmopolitan self next to chimneys.


and listened like a boy to mother, and can you hear this sound like the sea in a shell,
the hooded crows caw, the dogs barking, and after hard work the joking, the laughs,
and on the shores, the tragedies, the loved ones naked in among the rocks and kelp,
then it is the comedies, the priests, and the blind tinkers, and from heaven to hell,
as the wind changes, so it is with life, and are you listening to the rumble of thunder,
that sounds like a Celtic God’s bellyache, and now to modernity we are a slave,
It is a Colonial construct, a little England dream of Ireland, away with the tourist!
Whether he walks yesterday or tomorrow, comes from America or Connemara!
Whether he be the Playboy of the Western World or the wanderer of the mist
we will hang them from a tree, hang them by their language and culture, swing
by the rope of English, as they did to those who did nothing but speak Irish!
And swing the poet, hang him too, and may you hang me on a lonely tree
somewhere above the black limestone, so I can forever hear the melancholy sea
breaking as it did for the Pats and Mikes, the Maeves and Janets among the rocks,
and have the gannets and gulls wail and keen, and have the cold rain that licks
the ferns and bracken, have that inflict the pain, and may you hang me on a lonely tree,
for my ancestors, probably had a part in your demise, in your sad history.
                                        now silence, only the Aran islands.




Stephen Pain


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