Lives

by Derek Mahon (1941-2020)

For Seamus Heaney

First time out
I was a torc of gold
And wept tears of the sun.

That was fun
But they buried me
In the earth two thousand years

Till a labourer
Turned me up with a pick
In eighteen fifty-four.

Once I was an oar
But stuck in the shore
To mark the place of a grave

When the lost ship
Sailed away. I thought
Of Ithaca, but soon decayed.

The time that I liked
Best was when
I was a lump of clay

In a Navaho rug
Put to mitigate
The too god-like

Perfection of that
Merely human artifact
I served my maker well -

He lived long
To be struck down in
Denver by an electric shock

The night the lights
Went out in Europe
Never to shine again.

So many lives,
So many things to remember!
I was a stone in Tibet,

A tongue of bark
At the heart of Africa
Growing darker and darker . . .

It all seems
A little unreal now,
Now that I am

An anthropogist
With my own
Credit card, dictaphone,

Army-surplus boots
And a whole boatload
of photographic equipment.

I know too much
To be anything more;
And if in the distant

Future someone
Thinks he has been me
As I am today,

Let him revise
His insolent ontology
Or teach himself to pray.