{"id":7989,"date":"2020-05-01T13:41:28","date_gmt":"2020-05-01T12:41:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=7989"},"modified":"2020-05-01T13:41:28","modified_gmt":"2020-05-01T12:41:28","slug":"poetry-fintan-ohiggins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2020\/05\/01\/poetry-fintan-ohiggins\/","title":{"rendered":"Poetry – Fintan O’Higgins"},"content":{"rendered":"

Natural History Museum, Dublin\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Necrophorus investigator<\/em> bears
\nThe dead and follows in their footsteps. Moths,
\nBeetles \u2013 anaspis maculata<\/em>: stained,
\nUnshielded \u2013 big names, small lives; thoughts
\nMade real, embodied in machines. The spare
\nCrater of earth, when all earth\u2019s blood has drained,
\nWill hold its arc and torque, all else being lost.<\/p>\n

The hinges in fleas\u2019 legs, then, or the fascia
\nOf armoured woodlice, or the spastic spring
\nThat spins itself in helical countertwists
\nOf muscle in shark or frog: the coil of nature,
\nBarely substantial, sustains and persists
\nIn solid flesh, in every blooming thing;
\nIn neural galaxies, in our behaviour,<\/p>\n

In helter-skelter shells, and seeds and petals;
\nIn honeycombs, in choufleur romanescu,
\nIn hips and waists and golden ratios,
\nIn ratios contrived of other metals;
\nIn pentads, heptads, hexagonal sections;
\nIn blurts of pulsing, liquid shapes or gaseous,
\nIn every shape in every fruit in Tesco.<\/p>\n

The Victorian whorl of iron, wrought or cast
\nTendrils, poised above a chessboard plot
\nStaked out in dominion\u2019s rectilinear pitches
\nLike America in barbed wire; or the glass
\nHolding still and fast those deep-sea creatures
\nPart\u00a0 water and part number, and those insects
\nObedient in angles, lines, and dots,
\nCurlicue in generation\u2019s syntax.<\/p>\n

If necessary shapes, not beautiful
\n(Beauty being willed, exalting submission),
\nAtomic and autistic, are fragmented
\nBlasted, involved, in fraction not in fission;
\nThen names are feathery fascinators, spells
\nWhose quivering thrum resounds upon the lips
\nCross-hatches nooks in pathways where demented
\nBuzzings may refer to but do not tell
\nThe true ring of the neurocalypse:<\/p>\n

The veil of nerve, the net with which the moon
\nDrags heaving tides in black full swag of night,
\nThe filter distilling thought from spinal twitch
\nThe measured tension climbing to attune
\nItself to the Fall, constructing absence which
\nStrobes from stencil to template, stasis and flight
\nTaut as a tent, and black and high as pitch:<\/p>\n

The stillness in the flutter of fern fronds,
\nThe still of distant waters\u2019 frothing crust,
\nThe clench and follow of a striking lance
\n(Not real ones, though; these days there\u2019s no such thing)
\nThe uninflected bow, the arc, the string
\nInvisible but present in stone or bronze
\nThe heel of Philoctetes poised in dust
\nThe tension in the stone of David\u2019s sling.<\/p>\n

That heroes are absences, in corridors
\nLeading to chambers where no gods are housed,
\nMakes words of footfalls echoing on the floors
\nCreaking on wood or clacking on stone tiles
\nPronouncing sentences and syllables
\nAlong a winding torchlit pagan course
\nWhere leisurely visitors curiously browse
\nAnd wryly nod with educated smiles;<\/p>\n

And turn and ask if there\u2019s a coffee place,
\nDeclining middleclass children working class sugar
\nAnd glance but do not meet the dusty eye
\nOf long dead bird, or butterfly, or cougar.
\nBut with the trail of syllables and scents
\nDrop iterations of the shapes that figure,
\nAs whirligigs and maelstroms live and die,
\nA small eternity of absolute stasis<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Natural History Museum, Dublin\u00a0 Necrophorus investigator bears The dead and follows in their footsteps. Moths, Beetles \u2013 anaspis maculata: stained, Unshielded \u2013 big names, small lives; thoughts Made real, embodied in machines. The spare Crater of earth, when all earth\u2019s blood has drained, Will hold its arc and torque, all else being lost. The hinges […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":8276,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[3324,6427,7346,7352],"class_list":["post-7989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry","tag-fintan-ohiggins-poet","tag-national-history-museum-in-dublin","tag-poetry-about-museums","tag-poetry-by-fintan-ohiggins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}