I'm going to read nine short poems. Eight of them are from the collection ‘Pomes
Penyeach’
And finally an occasional poem, ‘Ecce Puer’,
which Joyce wrote on the occasion of the death of his father and the birth
of his grandson, Stephen.
So from ‘Poems Penny Each’, or ‘Pomes Penyeach’
as Joyce spelled it, the old English way.
Tilly
He travels after a winter sun, Urging the cattle along a cold red road,
Calling to them, a voice they know, He drives his beasts above Cabra.
The voice tells them home is warm. They moo and make brute music with their hoofs.
He drives them with a flowering branch before him,
Smoke pluming their foreheads.
Boor, bond of the herd, Tonight stretch full by the fire!
I bleed by the black stream For my torn bough!
On
the
beach at Fontana
Wind whines and whines the shingle, The crazy pierstakes groan;
A senile sea numbers each single Slimesilvered stone.
From whining wind and colder Grey sea I wrap him warm
And touch his trembling fineboned shoulder And boyish arm.
Around us fear, descending Darkness of fear above
And in my heart how deep unending Ache of love.
Simples
O bella bionda, Sei come l'onda!
Of cool sweet dew and radiance mild The moon a web of silence weaves
In the still garden where a child Gathers the simple salad leaves.
A moondew stars her hanging hair
And moonlight kisses her young brow And, gathering, she sings an air:
Fair as the wave is, fair, art thou!
Be mine, I pray, a waxen ear To shield me from her childish croon
And mine a shielded heart for her Who gathers simples of the moon.
Flood
Gold-brown upon the sated flood The rock-vine clusters lift and sway:
Vast wings above the lambent waters brood Of sullen day.
A waste of waters ruthlessly Sways and uplifts its weedy mane,
Where brooding day stares down upon the sea In dull disdain.
Uplift and sway, O golden vine, Thy clustered fruits to love's full flood,
Lambent and vast and ruthless as is thine Incertitude.
Bahnhofstrasse
The eyes that mock me sign the way Whereto I pass at eve of day.
Grey way whose violet signals are The trysting and the twining star.
Ah star of evil! star of pain! Highhearted youth comes not again
Nor old heart's wisdom yet to know The signs that mock me as I go.
and finally, Ecce Puer
Of the dark past A child is born;
With joy and grief My heart is torn.
Calm in his cradle The living lies.
May love and mercy Unclose his eyes!
Young life is breathed On the glass;
The world that was not Comes to pass.
A child is sleeping: An old man gone.
O, father forsaken, Forgive your son!