Derek Mahon Quotes

Everything Is Going to Be All Right How should I not be glad to contemplate the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window and a high tide reflected on the ceiling? There will be dying, there will be dying, but there is no need to go into that. The poems flow from the hand unbidden and the hidden source is the watchful heart. The sun rises in spite of everything and the far cities are beautiful and bright. I lie here in a riot of sunlight watching the day break and the clouds flying. Everything is going to be all right.

You with your light meter and relaxed itinerary, Let not our naive labours have been in vain!

Now the ivory towers will be 'visitor centres' visited mostly during the long winters by sea-birds — cormorant, puffin, kittiwake — and their quartz lenses' own impersonal stroke while automatically their hard gem-like flames circulating at night unseen in empty rooms preside over global warming and polar melt-down, over Bill Long's Marie-Celeste effect and 'sonar-singing dark'.

Sunrise in the Irish Sea, dawn over Dublin Bay after a stormy night, one shivering star; and I picture the harsh waking everywhere, the devastations of a world at war, airfields, radio silence, a darkened convoy strung out in moonlight on a glittering sea.

They are begging us, you see, in their wordless way, To do something, to speak on their behalf Or at least not to close the door again. Lost people of Treblinka and Pompeii! “Save us, save us”, they seem to say, “Let the god not abandon us Who have come so far in darkness and in pain. We too had our lives to live. You with your light meter and relaxed itinerary, Let not our naive labours have been in vain!

Jardin du Luxembourg A merry-go-round of freshly painted horses sprung from a childish world vividly bright before dispersing in adult oblivion and losing its quaint legendary light spins in the shadows of a burbling circus. Some draw toy coaches but remain upright; a roebuck flashes past, a fierce red lion and every time an elephant ivory-white. As if down in the forest of Fontainebleau a little girl wrapped up in royal blue rides round on a unicorn; a valiant son hangs on to the lion with a frantic laugh, hot fists gripping the handles for dear life; then that white elephant with ivory tusks - an intense scrum of scarves and rumpled socks though the great whirligig is just for fun. The ring revolves until the time runs out, squealing excitedly to the final shout as pop-eyed children gasp there in their grey jackets and skirts, wild bobble and beret. Now you can study faces, different types, the tiny features starting to take shape with proud, heroic grins for the grown-ups, shining and blind as if from a mad scrape.

I am just going outside and may be some time.’ The others nod, pretending not to know. At the heart of the ridiculous, the sublime. He leaves them reading and begins to climb, Goading his ghost into the howling snow; He is just going outside and may be some time. The tent recedes beneath its crust of rime And frostbite is replaced by vertigo: At the heart of the ridiculous, the sublime. Need we consider it some sort of crime, This numb self-sacrifice of the weakest? No, He is just going outside and may be some time In fact, for ever. Solitary enzyme, Though the night yield no glimmer there will glow, At the heart of the ridiculous, the sublime. He takes leave of the earthly pantomime Quietly, knowing it is time to go. ‘I am just going outside and may be some time.’ At the heart of the ridiculous, the sublime." A poem by – Derek Mahon