THINGSOUT

OF PLACE____________________________________________

OLIVER MORT

�

Belfast

Lapwing

Things Out

Of Place____________________________________________

Oliver Mort

�

BelfastLAPWING

First Published by Lapwing Publicationsc/o 1, Ballysillan DriveBelfast BT14 8HQ

lapwing.poetry@ntlworld.comwww.lapwingpoetry.com

Copyright © Oliver Mort 2012Cover art ‘Building a Quarter, 2012’ © Kimberley O’Hara

All rights reservedThe author has asserted her/his right under Section 77

of the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988to be identified as the author of this work.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.A catalogue record for this book is available from

the British Library.

Since before 1632The Greig sept of the MacGregor ClanHas been printing and binding books

Lapwing Publications are printed at Kestrel Print 028 90 319211

E:kestrelprint@btconnect.comHand-bound in Belfast at the Winepress

Set in Aldine 721 BT

ISBN 978-1-909252-06-6

ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Dennis and Lapwing for all their workgetting this collection of poems printed. THE IDEA OF

PLACE, BELFAST 2009 was first published in issue number 68of The Rialto. Of course, love and thanks to my parents.

Cover art

Building a Quarter, 2012

by Kimberley O’Hara

iii

CONTENTS

36UNTITLED35HOME SHOPPING AT IKEA34POSTCARDS33A SENSE OF PLACE32YOU ARE31OLD CROW IN WINTER30FACT OR FICTION28THE OLD COMPASS27SPEAKING ACROSS A DIVIDE26EQUILIBRIUM 25THE RIVER AT TUNLAVERT FARM24CARRYING THE DEAD23MONA LISA22CAMERA WORK21MOMENTS20SCARECROW19TOURIST IN BELFAST18THE ACHILLES HEEL16THE BURNING OF BOOKS15SNOW IN THE NORTH 14THE SADNESS OF COMMUNAL HALLS 13TITANIC QUARTER OF BELFAST12LIGHTHOUSE10ON VISITING THE ULSTER MUSEUM 9CHASING BUTTERFLIES 7THE IDEA OF PLACE, BELFAST 2009

iv

THINGSOUT

OF PLACE

Oliver Mort

v

vi

THE IDEA OF PLACE, BELFAST 2009

I used to imagine this place as an oversized jigsaw puzzle or an ongoing game of Tetris but all these bits and pieces I see all around will by no meansfit togetherto forma picture like those painted

Oliver Mort

7

on local street walls or

constructa patternlike those blocks of colour on various pavement kerbs

Things Out of Place

8

CHASING BUTTERFLIES

The movement of the butterfliestransfixes the air. Everyone stopsand stares. Bright coloured wingsof yellow, indigo and green flutter and weave through the tropical enclosure at Seaforde, until, perhaps,landing on a leaf. Though no one butterfly’s flight is alike, everyone wants to take part in this wonderful indefinite dance. The children are enthralled. They run in circles, chasing, cheering, snatching with greedy grasps the life floating within. Frustrated at life’s indifference they turn back to their parents. Young couples think they know better. They are butterfly hunters. They studyeach exotic movement and try to anticipatethree moves ahead, but the butterfly’s mystery evades all cupped hands. It is only time’s weary who hear the music of the butterfly’s song. They sit simply staring at life’s ungraspable colour and are rewarded on their shoulder with a butterfly’s wing.

Oliver Mort

9

ON VISITING THE ULSTER MUSEUM

We make our way through

the winding corridorsand rooms

of the recently refurbished Ulster Museum

and look at the relics of time’s detritus

all arranged and displayed in strict

chronological order from the Mesozoic era

through to Ancient Egypt and the Armada

and we read the snippets of information

which help explain these grand narratives

of past cultures intended and complete

and we follow the arrows around the museum

Things Out of Place

10

from beginning, middle and end

until we reach near the exit

our own recent past of broken glass

and shattered lives collected and

preserved in neat little rows and boxes

Oliver Mort

11

LIGHTHOUSE

Sailor bewareThat sly wink

Of the lighthouse Promising safe Voyage home For it marks No shallow

Or edge of shadowOnly empty winds Whispering ‘it’ Indefinite as God

Things Out of Place

12

TITANIC QUARTER OF BELFAST

We drag the dark waters of history For some sunken relic of yesterdayUsed as tourism to say this was us

For we want to celebrate our wreckageIn a museum where it will never ageThough the sea still battles it into ruin

We commemorate this wreck that we madeYet also remember that we still makeAnd are building it back into quarters

Oliver Mort

13

THE SADNESS OF COMMUNAL HALLS

One passes through this vacant space each day without taking much notice of its bare white walls and grimy floor,

The murky foot prints of passing occupants, the surplus of letters, flyers, postcards all left unclaimed by the door,

The awkward moment when you meet face to face neighbours in the dingy half light of the hall never seen before,

And the quick ‘hello’ or blank stare as each fumbles for their key to retreat into their own space and never closer to knowing more,

Letters with your address, 52 Wells Road, but with names of tenants no longer living there and no address to forward,

Letters that will soon bare your name, posted through, walked over and over and added to the pile of lives forgotten on the floor.

Things Out of Place

14

SNOW IN THE NORTH

The snow falls making a blank page of this place; whitening the surface of things.

We are not accustomed to such vacuity: our streets have been ascribed with the hieroglyphics of violent insecurity.

A child reaches for the snowand throws the ball like a kiss but digging too deep scoops the grit that lies beneath the stone cracks the skull of the other.

Oliver Mort

15

THE BURNING OF BOOKS“There are worse crimes than burning books.

One of them is not reading them.”

Joseph Brodsky

A flick of a wrist as of one turning pages

Sets off the spark of the burning of pages

This simple actignites all knowledge

Into flickering flames that soon blazes brilliant

Through the dark hour of night’s dominion

As each flame feeds chaosand archaic night

Though this hunger is an echoing chasm

For now history knowsnot who to kindle with blame

Things Out of Place

16

As heaped, upon heaped upon heaped, books are burning

Except one single sheaftorn, half scorched in the wind blowing

A dim light out of the blackest void

Telling a story worth knowingthat no one ever read

Oliver Mort

17

THE ACHILLES HEEL

is the loose slanting leg of a table about to end a postponed game of chess

not the white king delicately poised between the black bishop and queen

Things Out of Place

18

TOURIST IN BELFAST

I felt just as much a tourist as you Travelling through my hometown streets of BelfastIn our black taxi tour of ‘the troubles’

‘You better take photos of those murals’Our guide says through the Shankill and the Falls‘The present is painting over the past’

I nodded along pretending I knew The taxi man’s view of our historyWhen really I hadn’t the slightest clue

Of things that were happening on both sidesWhile I was trying to live out my life- Who was Jackie Coulter or Bobby Sands?

It was not till we came to the peace wallThat I realised it was my first time hereMy parents built a wall around us all

While I was growing up through this so nearBut I’ve found open ground now out and inA blank space to fill with awkward rhyming

Oliver Mort

19

SCARECROW

As a boy, I was haunted by an old scarecrow

Its dark figure looked like a manthough crooked and bent

You swore some skeletonhad been dragged from the graveand hung up on a stick

When the wind was wildits ragged clothes would flap and flyas if he was dancing some strange, sinister step

I didn’t know how the crowscould dare get so closepicking at seeds just sown

Older now, I can see it as plainas the crows- an old coat and hataround a bag of straw held up by pole and rake

Growing up, I see the wasted yearsI wish we were all like crowsignoring scarecrow words of fear and hate

Things Out of Place

20

MOMENTS

The drip from the crackin the white china pothidden below the rootsof the withering plantmakes the gathering pool

—into time

Oliver Mort

21

CAMERA WORK

I remember watching in helpless horror a young antelope cry in longing, desperate pain,

As four lionesses dragged her down and tore her flesh till bloodspilled on the dry African plain,

And angered at how the man behind the camera could film thispassive and indifferent to her strain.

Realising only years later that to merge into the background of a story without influencing,

Is to see the world as it is and to leave it exactly how it was for a second finding,

As I flick through the 6 o’clock news as silent a witness as Godto these twentieth-first century scenes.

Things Out of Place

22

MONA LISA

We make our way blindly towardsThe Mona Lisa Like everyone in the Louvre

And we push and shove our way throughTo try and get some kind of viewOf her famous, beautiful smile

And take pictures of this painting At just the right camera angle To avoid any blur or glare

Because we want to preserve her Just as she was meant to be seenBy da Vinci as he painted

Had he experienced our painOf how to record her beautyUsing a different medium

Of somehow missing the whole truth Making her face into a lieOn that day just how did she smile

Oliver Mort

23

CARRYING THE DEAD

Why do we welcomethese carriers of the deadinto our home With their uniformof black, seemingly fromthe night torn Their rigid facesgiving away no secretof eternal places Why do we insteadso easily let them carryour dead Weighted downwith our pain and miserywith no sound or fury. We’d bearthe burden with outwardlymore care For each day inside uswe carry the deadlike Atlas.

Things Out of Place

24

THE RIVER AT TUNLAVERT FARM

This river is a torrent of the mindwhen I dream of it in my sleepflowing through my grandfather’s farmmy memory incipiently deep

When I dream of it in my sleepI am a boy fishing on its banksmy memory incipiently deepof the river rushing passed

And the current pulls the line when I dream of it in my sleeptight in the swirling watersmy memory incipiently deep

When I dream of it in my sleepthis river is different to how it wasmy memory incipiently deepof the sleepy shallow stream

This river is a torrent of the mindwhen I dream of it in my sleepthe imagination swells on unfathomable boundsmy memory incipiently deep

Oliver Mort

25

EQUILIBRIUM

Once I remember falling

we once werefalling

the world oncefalling

until perhapsonce

once our fingers caught

air, once we could

pretend, we once were

stalling, stallingstalling

once

in air

Things Out of Place

26

SPEAKING ACROSS A DIVIDE

Tin cans with string — from me to you

A string pulled tight over bridges and boundaries and a city cut in two

You talk I listen — I talk You listen

And between where our metallic seashells meet what has not been saidis starting to resonate through

Oliver Mort

27

THE OLD COMPASS

The old rusted compass

sits on top of a table

pointing truenorth

though its bearingis false

It is kept as if a relic

of the old worldit once

navigated, the new world

it knows which way not

Some you can tell

lost by the way

the needle spinsas if

Things Out of Place

28

in obscurity of old night

This one pointssure

no doubt of theright path

as if on an Aquinas map

Yet maps are now mazes

and its needle has not adjusted

to time’s deepfractures

and drawn a new line

And though we know

this line not to be true

we cannot find our way out

of all that which now is false

Oliver Mort

29

FACT OR FICTION

You are a book not yet openedAre you fact or are you fiction?Perhaps a cold hard truth takenfrom a cold hard world? Or a new world where truth is only imagined?I imagine you to be a storynot yet written; lines in the act of finding - turning ‘what is’, ‘what was’ ‘what could be’, ‘what should be’,into a script.

Things Out of Place

30

OLD CROW IN WINTER

These woods are empty this winter morningNo soul but one seems to be a stirringHeavy snow lies from the night beforeAnd early mist makes distance unknowingOne wishes to find some bird in the skyA white dove, hummingbird or lovely larkTo follow with mind’s eye south for winterOut of winter’s sleep, these woods deep and darkBut all such birds have long flown far awayAll except a stubborn crow, black as nightStealing across the frozen forest floorScavenging what little life comes his wayIt’s a strange confidence he seems to instilFollow his footprints and capture his will

Oliver Mort

31

YOU ARE

You are a stara star

that brokelike fish

Things Out of Place

32

A SENSE OF PLACE

Of my grandfather’s farm the map shows the legal boundary but somehow misses the localness of its topography.

The map is drawn in straight lines and square boxesyet I never remember Grandfather’s own recordbeing quite so horizontal or perpendicular.

The map maker’s pencil and rulerencompass all without rural reasonfor Grandfather’s sense of placewas different from office legalityand his land has changed and alteredthrough country custom and mannersof handshakes and barterthough he knew well every inch and quarterand always recalled in country fashionthrough the borders and shadings of my grandfather’s and neighbour’s mind.

Still, this map shows the legal boundariesand as the borders and shadings fade in Grandfather’s mindhis recollection of place is getting harder to find.

Oliver Mort

33

POSTCARDS

Send me postcards from around the world of the different places you have been

So I can stick them on my wallto fill this void and build an empire

Things Out of Place

34

HOME SHOPPING AT IKEA

We follow the arrows on the ground a-round IKEA. There is a sign say-ing this is ‘the long natural way.’ We-’re here, like other young sophisticates, look-ing for our ready-to-assemble flat-pack future all temporarily con-structed in neat homely spaces with-in this 40, 000-ish square metre ware-house of Swedish promised paradisal order-liness. Nervously, I’m failing to find the short-cuts through colour co-ordinated liv-ing rooms and chic kitchens to the near-est exit. Along the only path of depart-mental self-fulfilment we pick up the basics: a Klings-bo table here, a brown Klackbo easy-chair there, three Oddvar stools… ‘But – do we need 3 ?’ I ask. ‘Yes,’ you say. ‘They’ll go any-where. And they’re only £3.50!’ And when we-‘re back to our rented terraced accommod-ation in East Belfast, living between dossers and asylum-seekers, our new mismatch life of oddities is ass-embled in minutes with a one-size-fits-all Allen key and simple screwdriver.

Oliver Mort

35

UNTITLED

Empty is the wide silent seaShe passed by leaving …

a perfume wake

d

Things Out of Place

36

OLIVER MORT

Oliver Mort was born and raised in Belfast, Northern

Ireland. He has completed a Ph.D. on American Litera-

ture. His first poem in print was published in The Rialto.

This is his first collection.

The Lapwing is a bird, in Irish lore

- so it has been written -

indicative of hope.

Www.lapwingpoetry.com

Printed by Kestrel Print

Hand-bound at the Winepress, Ireland

ISBN 978-1-909252-06-6

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