Three Poems from Ireland

Three Poems from Ireland Pádraig Ó Tuama (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Photo by Mark / Stock.adobe.com Click for larger view View full resolution Rite of Baptism If you pass, know that you will have no sayabout what happens. Some of our people will hate you as they hate themselves.You must create a lifewithout giving them all your life's attention. Some people will delight in destroying you.Some will strike you. Some will chooseothers as their favorites. Some have been waiting for you for generations;circling, like hunters, round your little heart.Of course they don't know you. This truth will set you free,eventually. But only after you've forgotten this. You haven't learnt to fly yet, have you? Somebody will love you.Somebody will hurt you too, but you know that already. We offer you little in the way of certainty;just that the country you live in will not always be that country. There is a lot you'll need to suffer.Remember: help is a howl and an imperative. Nothing to be ashamed of. One way or another, shamecan teach you what nothing else can teach you. One way or another. Your body is an eventand you'll spend decades unpacking what's happened. Here are some things we cannot guarantee you:guarantees, or history's purity. Here is what we can:A platform on which your past can make or breakdepending on how power is conceived. There is no such thing as the past.Just stories of the past poorly re-enacted. And nobody knows where the past begins —in the beginning it was all a dream, not a story. Remember: you must believesome of this. End Page 24 The Debts of Empire Memory is born of sensuous experience. —Wilfred Bion Do you remember when that happened? she asked.I feel it, he said.That's not the same, she said.It's not exactly opposite either, he replied. And do you hate them? she asked.Who? he said. The ones who did this to you, she said. My brother fights them, and I fear for him, he said.My great-great-uncle loves them, tried to join them,be like one of them.My granny studies all their tactics. Mimics. Mirrors.She's hoping for a crack at them. You keep avoiding talking for yourself, she said. Only in your languagehe answered back. Reading an Online Review of a Bilingual Edition of Rilke's Poems Half this book's in German! Making it twice as heavyas it needs to be. Two Stars! Count yourself lucky it's not fewer. Big books aren't easy to read when there's standing-room onlyon the morning train to work. Jolts and jostles make it hard to keep steady and I hate standing in the aisle with nothing tohold onto. Who do you think you are? someone shouted at me once when I'd reached out my arm so I wouldn't fall. The trainhad lurched. I was sweating more than usual. Fogged-up glasses. Yesterday, I made my way to the post office after work,picking up the package I'd been waiting on for weeks. I was dismayed at the size, wondering if they'd accidentally sent two.Who could cope with this on a commute? How will I manage? There is nothing to support me, I thought, rearrangingthe contents of my bag. What am I supposed to do? End Page 25 Pádraig Ó Tuama Pádraig Ó Tuama (b. 1975) is the host of On Being's Poetry Unbound and the author of Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World. He is a poet with interests in language, violence, power, and religion. Kitchen Hymns and 40 Poems on Being with Each Other: A Poetry Unbound Anthology are both forthcoming in 2025. Photo of Pádraig Ó Tuama by David Pugh Copyright © 2024 World Literature Today and the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma