To remember
is to undo dis-membering
Dear friends,
This week was an anniversary of a dear friend, Glenn, who died suddenly in the early days of Covid. June of 2020. The 4th. I got a phone call from his magnificent daughter, and — because I usually get texts, not calls, from her — I wondered if something was wrong. Something was wrong. She had to tell her dad’s friends that he’d died. My god.
I’d known him since I was 11 when he was a leader on a youth camp. I’d remembered his name — a name like a valley, a name like a river through that valley — and called it to mind during many strange and lonely nights as a child. It was, in its own way, a kind of prayer.
Years later, at 27, when I moved to Belfast, I heard of a Wicklowman named Glenn Jordan who worked in the east side of the city. It had to be him. It was him. I went to meet him, nervous. Because it is the way I do things, I brought a poem that I’d written for him. I wondered if he’d find it ridiculous.
Twenty years later, when his daughter was tidying his stuff, she came across the poem. He died on the day we were due to submit the manuscript for a book we’d written together exploring Britishness, Irishness, Brexit, and borders through the lens of the Book of Ruth from the Hebrew Bible. I phoned Christine, the publisher. “It’s going to be delayed,” I said. She couldn’t have been kinder.
There are many things to say about Glenn: he was a man of deep spirituality, a man who loved Bruce Springsteen more than he loved Jesus, a man who loved his friends, his dogs, his family, his life. He was in his mid-50s — so young to die. He’d had health complications, but nothing that would have seemed like it would lead to his early death. He was funny. He was a great listener. He was skilled and — in the way of skilled people — sometimes attracted the envy of others who wished to destroy that in him which was the origin of his art. He loved walks along the shore, and he loved talking about what he’d seen. A few weeks before he’d died, he’d told me what particular seeds to put in my garden to attract goldfinches (nyjer seeds). “Leave them there, and within a few weeks, they’ll flock.” A few weeks after he’d died, sure enough, one bright and beautiful and awful morning, filled still with the shock of his death, I looked out and there were four goldfinches scrapping over the seeds.
I thought it was the end of writing poetry for me. So I looked at birds for hours instead.
There’s a poem I wrote for him below, a poem praising birds, a poem that plays on some of the Irish language ways of naming animals: druí donn meaning “wren” but translating as “brown druid”; an ghiorria for “hare” but translating as “the low deer”; one of the ways of saying “goldfinch” is lasair choile which can be translated as “forest flame”; and I made my own version of a word for “greenfinch” — “young light on the old oak”.
The question for this week is an old one: Who do you remember? What places — what animals, what birds, what scents — bring them to mind now? What happens to you when they come to you through these senses?
To ask this about an individual is to recognise how the dead are always with us. To ask it during a time of such catastrophic killings is to recognise that those numbers will need to be remembered, reckoned with, lived with, recalled. To remember is, in its own way, a form of prayer. To mourn is a form of protest, a form of protection. May it also be a form of prevention — that fewer die by weapons made by human hands.
I’ll look forward to reading the names and small stories of the ones who you remember. And here’s the poem.
Now I Watch through an Open Door
and there is a chaffinch fighting with another chaffinch, he’s punked up the feathers on his head so as to appear a little less tiny, and there is that blackbird hopping, and a song thrush singing at the gate and here, the hare and the hare’s three babies – I saw them playing the other day, chasing each other like puppies – and the lambs, less manic now that a few months have passed, and their mothers, steady in the rain. This morning, I saw four Canada geese land in the field, like sophisticated aliens and I raised my hands in thanksgiving at the sight. I saw a robin standing on the fencepost, and the bullfinch’s song was a scarlet sound from the long narrow wood, and you’re gone. No more stories about the soft smell of gorse in the morning air along your lovely crooked shore. No more the furious heather, purple and pink in the summer. No more letters. No more that chest of yours, puffed out with laughter or a story told again, all filled with air and light, a bird swollen with song. Oh forest flame, oh young light on the old oak, oh small brown druid I hear but never see. Oh red king of the morning, oh dainty feet among the dungheaps, and fierce goose with fierce goslings, oh muscled hare, russeted by the long evening. Oh my low deer, powerful and insignificant, oh glen, oh magnificent.
(c) Pádraig Ó Tuama. First (and kindly) published in Spiritus, 2022.
Poetry in the World
A list of events: Online; in the US (Keene Valley and Rhinebeck, NY); Greece; England; and the Scottish island of Iona
June 27–July 7, Patmos, Greece
I’m one of the speakers at the 10-night “Journeying into Common Good” salon, together with Krista Tippett, Allison Russell, JT Nero, and Joe Henry. More details here.
August 7 at 6-7:30pm (Eastern Time, US), online
I’ll be exploring conflict and change through poetry at an online event in partnership with the International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution at Columbia University. You can register for free here.
August 10–11, Keene Valley, New York, US
I’ll be speaking and sharing at a weekend of events titled “Exploring Spirit and Reconciliation,” held at Keene Valley Congregational Church UCC. Go here to learn about the weekend’s activities and to register.
August 23–25, Northamptonshire, England
I’ll be at the Greenbelt Festival, and, among other events, I will be interviewing the brilliant Jenny Mitchell (whose poem “A Man in Love with Plants” we featured on a Season 7 episode of Poetry Unbound). You can go here to learn about the festival.
October 6–11, Rhinebeck, New York, US
I’m back for a week at Omega (just two hours north of NYC) for a week of reflection on poetry, poetry prompts, and group discussions. Expect lovely people, gorgeous surroundings and food, and conversations about how poetry opens your world. Learn more here.
March 10–15 and March 18–23 2025, Isle of Iona, Scotland
I’m holding two Poetry Unbound retreats on the gorgeous Scottish island of Iona. Each retreat is the same. Both retreats are booked up, but you can get on the waiting list by contacting the folks at the St. Columba here.
Beautiful, beautiful poetry, Pádraig. Thank you for sharing it and the tribute to your dear friend.
My mother speaks to me as a mourning dove. Like the dove, my mother was sweet and gentle. I have been so pleased to hear doves in this new place to where I relocated. This year marked 40 years (!) that I have been without her physical presence.
The sound of the mourning dove is also wistful, and even sometimes sad, but the bird still sings. Her life with my father was not easy. She is buried next to two tiny grave stones of my brothers, who were described to me as “stillborn.” I was too young to understand how heart-wrenching this had to be for her, happening at a time when such tragedies were not discussed, but hushed.
Thanks to the mourning dove, my mom can be brought to my mind and my heart, where I can recall her love and tenderness.
Thank you, Pádraig, for your lovely poem of remembrance by association. A word. A life. Very touching, indeed. I lost my brother to the pandemic and it was one word that wormed its way into a poem:
CAPSIZE for my brother
Brother, you and I were in the kitchen
making pineapple sandwiches for lunch.
You were seven.
I was four.
The lid to the jar of mayonnaise slipped
from my fingers
and fell to the floor spinning
in a lopsided dance till it quit, having landed
upside down. ‘Capsize,’ you said.
That’s what you call it
when something falls
and flips over onto the ground,
or when a boat is about to sink
into the sea.
The word burrowed into my brain,
where it waits, always, for the spiraling
sound of a fallen jar-lid spinning
onto the floor, that polished memory
breaking loose and rising still
with the winnowing song of your laughter,
a warm wind above my head.
You gave us something
in our trajectory of brotherhood, something dear
and enduring, two lost children surviving
an empty house, searching
for love, hope, and words,
the singing of the ocean
our only lullaby.