Ciaran O'Driscoll
click on the icon for his reading of 'Uncreative pages'
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click to hear Rita Castigli's Italian translation
click for the Italian text
Uncreative Pages
In the fog I see a figure
that may not be a figure,
certainly not a figure
bringing me release.
Could it be the sprightly postman
in his reflective harness
that causes me to raise
my head from my melodeon
as I practise by the window,
or is it the ghostly reader
of the electricity meter?
Thinking how far and nonetheless
not very far my playing has
progressed till now, I hear
a voice inside my head:
You may keep at it was
what Paddy McDermott said
in a Cavan pub one night
when I complained about
having to work for days
on a simple hornpipe and yet
failing to get it right.
Art’s a determined wretchedness
by no means strictly for the birds
but sends us halfway heavenwards,
a discipline costing not less
than keeping at it to express
something that flows through everything,
to rescue sorrow from itself
and teach it how to sing.
These days, I bring that Cavan sage’s
slant to my uncreative pages;
meanwhile, the box upon my knee
brings me some liberty
from the failures and the griefs
that attend those barren leaves
in search of a shimmering sentence
to pierce the dark’s endurance.
Slow train and one-way ticket;
the judgement is – stay with it.
click to hear Ciaran O'Driscoll reading
'The Copper Mines of Peru'
click for the Italian text
Uncreative Pages
In the fog I see a figure
that may not be a figure,
certainly not a figure
bringing me release.
Could it be the sprightly postman
in his reflective harness
that causes me to raise
my head from my melodeon
as I practise by the window,
or is it the ghostly reader
of the electricity meter?
Thinking how far and nonetheless
not very far my playing has
progressed till now, I hear
a voice inside my head:
You may keep at it was
what Paddy McDermott said
in a Cavan pub one night
when I complained about
having to work for days
on a simple hornpipe and yet
failing to get it right.
Art’s a determined wretchedness
by no means strictly for the birds
but sends us halfway heavenwards,
a discipline costing not less
than keeping at it to express
something that flows through everything,
to rescue sorrow from itself
and teach it how to sing.
These days, I bring that Cavan sage’s
slant to my uncreative pages;
meanwhile, the box upon my knee
brings me some liberty
from the failures and the griefs
that attend those barren leaves
in search of a shimmering sentence
to pierce the dark’s endurance.
Slow train and one-way ticket;
the judgement is – stay with it.
click to hear Ciaran O'Driscoll reading
'The Copper Mines of Peru'