Three Poems by David Wheatley
PN Review 108, March - April 1996
Nothing to Declare
My ears popped as the 737 cleared the tarmac,
unpopped again to the captain's Céad Mile Fáilte two miles up.
My chin had an as-yet-unshaved teenage stubble
to show for itself, and my bags were filled with bad poems.
'Nothing to Declare' then: exchanging one Departure Lounge
for another as simply as I set my watch back an hour…
and when I reached into my pockets for busfare home in Dublin
I found handfuls of marvellous, suddenly worthless coins.
On an Unwritten Poem
Unwritten poems, the only sort I've owned.
Whatever happens to the rest, I've got
Whole volumes of them, dumb of any sound.
Coming out in speech they'd run to ground,
Need ears to drone in, pages they could blot;
The finished poem is one more poem disowned.
Think how the advantages abound:
What room for doubt, misgiving, second thought
In poems complete before they make a sound?
There's no embarrassment I can't get round,
Nothing that I can't keep quiet about,
In poems I never wrote, although I've owned:
The other lives and loves I could have found,
Or howled my right out loud to, failing that…
All mine to live and love without a sound
In silence like a poultice on the wound
That words are, sticking, lying in the throat
Until turned free, unspoken or disowned
In poems that come and go without a sound.
Degas and the Absinthe-Drinker
Days when the world looks best
Through the yellow-green, wormwood
Filter of an absinthe glass
That smells of hyssop, fennel, aniseed,
Afternoons that shade
Into evenings unprotestingly,
Evenings sleepily dragging on
Till closing time,
Days when the only smile
you want to see is on your
Own slow-parting lips reflected
In the glass you drink from -
I am there too and breathe
The same exhausted atmosphere,
Sharing your drip-fed, sullen vacancy
And trying not to catch your eye.
My back to the wall in a corner
I sketch and make plans to fill
Your glass with drink
Enough for both of us one day,
On the canvas where -
The scene expressly posed
This time – I know our paths
Will finally recross.
I picture it now, the serenity
Of a drunken night
Preserved in oils, made
Proof against its dissolutions:
The empty bottle beside you
Like a sanctuary lamp
Glowing in permanently
Mirrored barroom light,
The expression on your face
As dry as its make-up
Or the paint in which
I smudge it on a second time:
And I am shocked in advance
To think what little
Effort such polychrome
Despair need cost;
The thought of your glass,
your empty glass, overflowing
Before your eyes forever
Almost sobering somehow.
David Wheatley was born in Dublin in 1970. He is the author of five previous collections of poetry, including Child Ballad (2023), The President of Planet Earth (Carcanet, 2017) and various other books including a novel, Stretto (CB Editions, 2022). He lives in rural Aberdeenshire with his family.
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