Apathy Is Out: Selected Poems

Ní Ceadmhach Neamhshuim

Seán Ó Ríordáin, Greg Delanty

• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781780375366
• eBook ISBN: 9781780375373
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

Seán Ó Ríordáin (1916-77) was the most important and most influential Irish-language poet of modern times. He revitalised poetry in Irish, combining the world of Irish literature with that of modern English and European literature, thus adding to the Irish tradition from the other side. His poems 'seek to answer fundamental questions about the nature of human existence and the place of the individual in a universe without meaning' (Gearóid Denvir). Many of Ó Ríordáin's poems came out of his struggle with the isolation, guilt and loneliness of life in mid-century Catholic Ireland experienced in Cork, the native locale also of the poet Greg Delanty, translator of Apathy Is Out. Ó Ríordáin's poems have been translated by many poets, but until now no single writer has translated the majority of the poems. This collection gives a much more unified sense of Ó Ríordáin's work, catching the poetry's verve, playfulness and range and also 'the music you still hear in Munster, /even in places where it has gone under'. It includes the dark, sorrowful poems Ó Ríordáin has usually represented with in anthologies but also poems of exuberance and celebration, notably 'Tulyar', one of the funniest satirical critiques of the Irish Church's attitude to sex which matches any similar attack by Patrick Kavanagh or Austin Clarke. Seán Ó Ríordáin renewed poetry in Irish by writing out of the modernist sense of alienation, fragmentation and identity, but he also saw beyond Modernism's confines to the connective matrix of our world.

19AN | FROM

Eireaball Spideoige
A Robin’s Tail

(1952)

20

Apologia

Do chuir an saol thar maoil,

Bhí an uile ní ina chúr,

Den lacht do dheineas im

Chun ná raghadh aon bhainne amú.

Gidh olc an chuigeann ním

Is annamh saol á chrú,

Is bíonn éileamh ar gach im

Le linn an drochshéasúir.

21

Apologia

Life brimmed over,

every living thing turned to froth,

I churned the cream into butter,

anxious not to waste a drop.

Though I’m no great shakes as a churner

it’s seldom life gets milked –

there’s demand for every grade of butter

throughout the off season.

22

An Dall sa Studio

‘Suigh síos agus déanfaidh mé pictiúir díot,’

Adúrtsa leis an dall,

‘Tá cathaoir id aice ansin sa chúinne.’

D’iompaigh sé a cheann,

Is do shín amach an lámh sin oilte ar chuardach,

Gach méar ag snámh go mall

Mar mhéaranna ceoltóra ar a uirlis,

Is bhí an uirlis ann:

Do sheinn sé ar an aer táin nótaí ciúnais,

Goltraí bog na ndall,

Na snámhaithe critheaglacha gur thuirling

Ar bhruach na habhann –

An suíochán sin a luas-sa leis, sa chúinne,

Is do shuigh sé ann.

Siúd láithreach é ag cíoradh a chuid gruaige,

Mo réice dall!

23

The Blind Man in the Studio

‘Sit down and I’ll sketch you,’

I said to the blind man,

‘There’s a chair near you there in the corner.’

He turned his head,

stretched out a hand well-versed in searching,

every finger swimming at ease

like a musician fingering his instrument.

He played the famous air,

a score of silent notes,

the soft lament of the blind.

He grasped the back of the chair

and eased himself down

on to its bank.

He’s off now combing his hair;

Ah, my blind rake!

24

An Leigheas

Do chaitheas tráthnóna le caidreamh,

Is scamaill go fuilteach sa spéir,

Gur súdh an fhuil as na scamaill,

Is fágadh ann salachar mar chr...

Table of contents

• Description
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• Clár | Contents
• Preface
• Introduction (2005-2021)
• as Eireaball Spideoige (1952) | from A Robin’s Tail
• as Brosna (1964) | from Kindling
• as Línte Liombó (1971) | from Limbo Lines
• as Tar Éis mo Bháis (1978) | from After My Death
• About the Author
• About the Translator
• Copyright