The Pale Descendant (Poetry)
04th November 2012
That first moment, falling awake, I fancy that it’s gone —
heart thudding dully on, dogged as a clock, and breath
almost easy, hardly stirs my chest until I move
and a great wheezing cough erupts, near-splits me on its rack.
A summer cold — some flu-bug-virus-germ the body wrestles with,
subdues with pills and potions packaged as sure miracles,
in truth they merely stun the senses, disengage the brain
while infection runs its predetermined course.
Swallow two to take away the nasty nagging aches and pains,
why battle on alone when drugs — legitimately sold — can fool
you into feeling halfway fine? Or at least capable of coping with
the day ahead and facing — with the aid of bottled strength —
a largely unrelenting world, critical, competitive, and
labelling all losers with its scorn.
So, off-license or chemist — what’s the difference in the end?
Either is a way of getting through — a medicinal application
of the properties of booze blocks out hurt, just the same
and relaxes to the point of forgetting — pain recedes, like a tide,
and the empty beach feels a safe place to be.
Can genetics explain it? I know that I’m only the pale descendant
of an alcoholic — his habit well-dramatised in a family history
unsympathetic to his memory — a drunk, a no-good Irishman,
fearsome in reputation and a great grandfather no one, surely,
would find interesting or be proud of.
Not one shred of love evident in a formal photograph — a slim,
serious young man in uniform, mustachioed, eyes looking directly
at the camera — did no one love him then? Could no one find a
Christian word? Late nineteenth century sepia, stiffly mounted on
beige card, taken in a Dublin studio before the Boer War.
A later portrait, stern, showing his rise in rank, his figure thicker in
riding breeches, shiny boots and crop, his moustache clipped short
and grey, but eyes still looking square into the lens. No outward
signs of domesticity —marriage or fatherhood — just discipline and
duty under the regiment’s tight belt. A man defiant of his world, his
khaki rigidness speaking for itself.
But he had four sons and a wife whose strangeness in her later
years was blamed on him — his whoring and his whiskey-sodden
nights while she played hermit, holed-up in her room, pretending,
deluded, fearing what she couldn’t explain. Did she ever consider
that he might be in pain?
There was no counselling then, no well-trained ear to listen to his
nightmares — the war he still carried with him, scene by scene
exploding in his head, the firsthand newsreel, the witness that
can’t speak for fear, ashamed of what he feels, will not recognise
his own distress.
He just found a way of dealing with it.
heart thudding dully on, dogged as a clock, and breath
almost easy, hardly stirs my chest until I move
and a great wheezing cough erupts, near-splits me on its rack.
A summer cold — some flu-bug-virus-germ the body wrestles with,
subdues with pills and potions packaged as sure miracles,
in truth they merely stun the senses, disengage the brain
while infection runs its predetermined course.
Swallow two to take away the nasty nagging aches and pains,
why battle on alone when drugs — legitimately sold — can fool
you into feeling halfway fine? Or at least capable of coping with
the day ahead and facing — with the aid of bottled strength —
a largely unrelenting world, critical, competitive, and
labelling all losers with its scorn.
So, off-license or chemist — what’s the difference in the end?
Either is a way of getting through — a medicinal application
of the properties of booze blocks out hurt, just the same
and relaxes to the point of forgetting — pain recedes, like a tide,
and the empty beach feels a safe place to be.
Can genetics explain it? I know that I’m only the pale descendant
of an alcoholic — his habit well-dramatised in a family history
unsympathetic to his memory — a drunk, a no-good Irishman,
fearsome in reputation and a great grandfather no one, surely,
would find interesting or be proud of.
Not one shred of love evident in a formal photograph — a slim,
serious young man in uniform, mustachioed, eyes looking directly
at the camera — did no one love him then? Could no one find a
Christian word? Late nineteenth century sepia, stiffly mounted on
beige card, taken in a Dublin studio before the Boer War.
A later portrait, stern, showing his rise in rank, his figure thicker in
riding breeches, shiny boots and crop, his moustache clipped short
and grey, but eyes still looking square into the lens. No outward
signs of domesticity —marriage or fatherhood — just discipline and
duty under the regiment’s tight belt. A man defiant of his world, his
khaki rigidness speaking for itself.
But he had four sons and a wife whose strangeness in her later
years was blamed on him — his whoring and his whiskey-sodden
nights while she played hermit, holed-up in her room, pretending,
deluded, fearing what she couldn’t explain. Did she ever consider
that he might be in pain?
There was no counselling then, no well-trained ear to listen to his
nightmares — the war he still carried with him, scene by scene
exploding in his head, the firsthand newsreel, the witness that
can’t speak for fear, ashamed of what he feels, will not recognise
his own distress.
He just found a way of dealing with it.