the air
fills oyster shells with snow; you’re borne
by weeks of earth and ice; and deep
under the Amsteldijk carp sleep.

    from ‘Murdering the Sea’

Polder begins with extinction. The dust that existed from the first instant of creation is the dust to which in the end all creation will return, ‘sinking under its weight’. The prose-poem ‘Dust’ was written when the poet was being treated for alcoholism and began the process of recovery. The collection ends with poems addressed to Torquatus, friend of the Roman poet Horace, a dialogue across centuries that defies the dust and looks back with mixed feelings to the drinking days of ambition, pride, and failure – and celebrates the poet’s fiftieth birthday.

In between are other conversations. In 2000 McCully moved to Amsterdam and began to explore the Dutch landscapes, dialects and culture that animate the second section of Polder with faces and voices past and present. In the third, ‘Masterpieces’, works by Vermeer, Rembrandt and other artists displayed in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, are engaged in dialogues that range from the quizzical to the confrontational. The poet tries to find firm ground in a fragile landscape reclaimed from the hungry sea, a home in a place that is not yet home.

Contents

I    Dust   

II    Polder
Over and Out   
Polder   
Mindful of Holland   
Islands   
Remembering Indo-European   
The Thorn Carol   
A Curtal at Old Year’s Eve   
Murdering the Sea   
A Walk to Kleine Loopveld   
Camellia   
When for Anyone   
On Greenfield Station   
An Auction for Amsterdam   
Minoan   
Pronouns   
Caribbean Shorts
The Bough
Eating the Spring   
Looking at Orion   
Curlew   
Bananas   
Black Tulips   
Ithaka   
A Tourist on Waterlooplein   
The Night Visitor   
The February Fences   
Summer Sundays   
Counting the Lightning
Geese at Vinkeveen   
An Epitaph   
The Fat Girl   
The Wooden Bird   
Smoke from the Vatican   
Birdsong   
Fado   
The Gravy People   
After Beowulf   
From West of Eden   
for clive   /s/   cott   
William of Normandy   
Perplexity   
Witness   

III    Masterpieces
The Mill   
The Drinker   
Woman Reading a Letter in Blue   
The Problem with Virtually any Self-Portrait   
The Bleaching Fields   
Old Woman Reading   
The Storm   
Fishing in the River of Souls   
Skaters   
Happy Families   

IV    Torquatus
Horace in the Sabine Hills   
A Letter to Torquatus   
The Boy   
Poppies   
Verbena   
Bed   
March in June   
Trade   
Days   
Ochre   
Sherbet   
The Senator   
A Reply to Virtue   
Raking   
Roads   
On a Request for New Material   
The Peon Rose   
Sand   
The Visitor   
The Vinegar Days