The Rocks

The rocks are determined
to spend each second well.
They calculate on a geologic
scale the time they can still

reckon on, and have no
expectation of escaping
the sun’s blowout, predicted
in a mere five billion years.

Stoically, they hold their nerve,
adapt calmly to their limited prospects,
expand or contract as each
season’s heat or cold demands.

Intent on making the best
of things, they treat each day
as though it were the last, use
their time enjoyably while they may.

They will be dust long enough.

Then

Hard though I know
you find this to believe,
I was actually alive once.
Alive. And well enough,
at least, to play my part.

I too faced heartaches, disappointments,
embarrassments and vanities
not all that unlike yours, kept up
with the pressing issues of the day,
registered weather’s moodiness

on my skin, brooded on the big
life-and-death questions when
I indulged my more reflective traits.
And if it’s any consolation,
it feels no less strange to me now

to conceive that I was truly
such a creature once,
and had some small say in how
the world – as it stood at that
time – conducted its affairs.

That my birth would not make
a blind bit of difference,
in the final analysis, does not
negate my life, and counts
for precious little against

the surges of unbounded joy
I felt, on better days, imagining
my highest hopes were still fulfillable.
There was everything to live for then.
It was all before me.
 

After the completion of Dear Life, his highly praised ninth collection of poems, Dennis O’Driscoll kept his finished poems in a computer file called ‘Newest Poems’, subtitled ‘Since completion of Dear Life’ and ‘April 2011–’. This book reproduces its complete contents. The title we have given it, from an outstanding poem, signifies one important aspect of the collection: that it forms a substantial update to the body of his published work.

Despite the collection’s provisional and unfinished nature (since the poet surely hoped to add to it and prepare it for publication), the 33 poems are ones which his many readers will want to have. Darker even than much of Dear Life, they are full of his inimitable humour, his searching eye, his characteristic wit and wisdom.