Tongues

Peggy O'Brien

• Publisher: New Island
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781848407176
• eBook ISBN: 9781848407183
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Tongues is a radical retelling of the twelfth-century legend of Heloise and Abelard, she the rapt acolyte, he the brilliant logician. Abelard agrees, at the request of Heloise's uncle, to tutor the precocious young woman. Soon she is with child. She passes her confinement with Abelard's family in Brittany, while in Paris her uncle's henchmen castrate the fornicator. After the birth of the couple's child and a secret marriage, they both take monastic vows and live the rest of their lives cloistered from each other and the world. The first half, in keeping with the original letters, is entirely in Abelard's voice; but Tongues reveals even more of the profound suffering Abelard endures as a monk. The second half of the book abruptly announces the present day. Heloise finally speaks; a tongue of fire has ignited her, and the truth she utters exposes Abelard's absolutism as a desperate means to avoid more nuanced facts. Suddenly we are in Dublin, not Paris, the west of Ireland, Kerry and Clare, not Brittany. In this second half, Heloise reveals a hard-won sense of autonomy.

Part One

I

Ezekiel

All we know is a younger monk wrote to the redoubtable Abelard asking for advice. We have no copy of that letter. Nor do we know the monk’s identity. What we do have is the woe-is-me tome he received in return. The great man relates in fine, often lurid, detail the story of his life, replete with all its wild vicissitudes, revered one minute, reviled the next, quick as the in and out of breath, over and over again. As a youth, he came up from the country to the city, made his mark, gained instant fame, lost his nerve, went back down, then came back up again. He got his mojo back, his stature, even greater renown. Throughout Europe, he was the man who could enumerate the infinite, then lost it all, won and lost, again and again, his manhood, his way, his wits, the plot, all pleasure, nary a drop, and something else but way back when and memory fails him, ending up on the run, again and again and again, a prisoner of iron terror.

Bruised

I hear you, brother, Hell, but hear me out.

If you are not in Heaven by comparison,

I’ll raise a chalice of my blood to you,

A red so dry it makes the deserts weep,

But smoulders purple undertones of damsons,

Stygian and sweet, a delicious black and blue.

Fosterling

I was born on an estuary, part river, part ocean,

A tongue speaking what’s been to what will be.

Water sprints over stone, cuts through layers of bog

Like yesterday, meanders through meadow, field and pasture.

The hours as slow as love (or so I’m told),

The decades fast as lust. Then there you are,

Home, the sweet smell of salt air, oblivion.

But first the tidal dither of the present,

The ebb and flow of yes and no and maybe.

Capillaries, veins and arteries, sounds, syllables

And words arrive at the mouth, the very lip

Of silence, then hesitate, wait for the final word.

I was fostered early, sent far away like a letter.

Another child grew in her exhausted womb,

Bright afternoon sunshine evicting morning cloud.

When I returned, I didn’t speak to anyone,

Except the angel only I could see.

I listened from my monk’s cell high above

The village crossroads, leaning my head like Jesus.

Sounds under a magnifying glass can burn.

Dawn flings off the bed clothes. A bird flaps in the hedge,

Erratic splash of piss, clang of iron on iron,

A poker stirring the dying coals to life,

Clatter of crockery, hiss and spit of a kettle,

Slow bleeding of a pig’s serrated squeals,

The creek like a cat creeping tidal in and out,

The tinkling of a cruet and a little bell,

Unbroken voices bending to a baritone,

Clip, clop and clink of carts on the way to the creamery,

A distinctly different pitch coming back empty,

Drone of farmers on the corner smoking,

Replaying Sunday’s match, dribbling opinions,

The shutter-banging-eye-opening of shops.

Everything has its price. Our sealed secrets

Steamed whisper by whisper slowly known to all,

Insinuating lilt of gossip, work horse mares,

Their suckling foals, the daily blinkered round,

Breakfast, dinner, tea and supper, the angelus

At noon and six, tolling our hollow hunger,

A swish of soutane, Father pacing the yard,

Caressing the psalms in his well-thumbed breviary.

Dusk. Cacophonous cawing of mocking rooks,

Below the bang of fists, guffaws and curses,

Ring of coins on copper, bottle on bottle,

Low, sullen growl of the feral drink sinking in.

Eleven strikes a squad of clocks, time gentleman

To shunt the bolt and click the till locked.

Uneven whistling thins into the distance.

Deaf footsteps up the stairs, the fewest words,

Their nocturne, usual duet, rat squeak

Of bedsprings, Minerva and Mars at it again.

If only they’d obey a steady rhythm.

Even breathing, in and out of nothing,

Same thing every morning, cock crow, grope

Of sunlight up and up, staining me awake.

Dialectics

Tucked into an inlet on a shallow creek,

A nest in the treetop of the estuary, the abbey.

Monks like brown wrens chirp their lauds and nones,

Their strict discipline chipping away at evil,

Chiselling their bare speech skeletal, the hoot

Of a night hag in the chancel. Their blind dead, hugging

The limestone nave, can feel the touch of morning,

A mother kissing each bowed and tonsured head,

Light streaming through the arched east window, the host

Of the sun mullioned into human portions.

In the opposite direction, brute assertion

Rising from an island in a marsh,

Meek reeds of self-doubt conquered by determined

Rock, the blockish castle. I smuggle myself

Up a clockwise spiral in a winkle shell,

Step by echoing step, me in pursuit of me,

My fear of heights, of drowning in the coffin

Of a shipwreck axed at intervals by light,

Ecstatic at the top, I lean out over

The parapets, let go, soar at the drop, open

My mouth and speak. Or was it he, my angel?

Catapulted like Satan by my zeal up

And ov...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Part One
• Part Two