Theories of the Mind

 

Three poems, for Lacan

 

St Kevin and the blackbird

And then there was St Kevin and the blackbird.
The saint is kneeling, arms stretched out, inside
His cell, but the cell is narrow, so

One turned-up palm is out the window, stiff
As a crossbeam, whena blackbird lands
And lays in it and settles down to nest.

Kevin feels the warm eggs, the small breast, the tucked
Neat head and claws and, finding himself linked
Into the network of eternal life,

Is moved to pity: now he must hold his hand
Like a branch out in the sun and rain for weeks
Until the young are hatched and fledged and flown.

And since the whole thing's imagined anywhow,
Imagine being Kevin. Which is he?
Self-forgetful or in agony all the time

From the neck on out down through his hurting forearms?
Are his fingers sleeping? Does he still feel his knees?
Or has the shut-eyed blank of underearth

Crept up through him? Is there distance in his head?
Alone and mirrored clear in love's deep river,
'To labour and not to seek reward', he prays,

A prayer his body makes entirely
For he has forgotten self, forgotten bird
And on the riverbank forgotten the river's name.

Seamus Heaney

Identi-Kit

Love is the oldest camera.
Snap me with your eyes.
Wearied with myself I want
a picture that simplifies.

Likeness is not important
provided the traits cohere.
Dissolve doubts and contradictions
to leave the exposure clear.

Erase shadows and negative
that confuse the tired sight.
Develop as conclusive definition
a pattern of black and white.

For I wish to see me reassembled
in that dark-room of your mind.

Veronica Forrest-Thomson

 

Homesick

When we love, when we tell ourselves we do,
We are pining for first love, somewhen,
Before we thought of wanting it. When we rearrange
The rooms we end up living in, we are looking
For first light, the arrangement of light,
That time, before we knew to call it light.

Or talk of music, when we say
We cannot talk of it, but play again
C major, A flat minor, we are straining
For first sound, what we heard once,
Then, in lost chords, wordless languages.

What country do we come from? This one?
The one where the sun burns
When we have night? The one
The moon chills; elsewhere, possible?

Why is our love imperfect,
Music only echo of itself
The light wrong?

We scratch in dust with sticks,
Dying of homesickness
For when, where, what.

Carol Ann Duffy (thanks to Rebecca Cantilow)

 

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