POETRY IN BRIEF

Maggie O'Farrell
Sunday 15 December 1996 00:02 GMT
Comments

Your support helps us to tell the story

This election is still a dead heat, according to most polls. In a fight with such wafer-thin margins, we need reporters on the ground talking to the people Trump and Harris are courting. Your support allows us to keep sending journalists to the story.

The Independent is trusted by 27 million Americans from across the entire political spectrum every month. Unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock you out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. But quality journalism must still be paid for.

Help us keep bring these critical stories to light. Your support makes all the difference.

2 Christmas Day by Paul Durcan, Harvill pounds 9.99/ pounds 6.99. If you are at all jaded by or cynical about the commercialism of Christmas, you should try this as an antidote. Paul Durcan's new book-length poem portrays the Christmas ritual not so much as spreading goodwill as showing up the fissures and sutures in the protagonists' lives: "Christmas is the Feast of St Loneliness."

Frank and Paul, who are normally alone on Christmas Day, spend it instead together in Frank's "top-storey flat ... In the southern suburbs of / Dublin city" and the poem is made up of conversations which weave in and out of failed loves, past disappointments and the death of parents. Both are lonely in different ways and in Paul's eyes they are "two turkeys / Sitting down to Christmas Dinner/ In excitement, yet grief."

Paul is revealed to the reader in a series of intimate and brutally honest confessions. His loneliness doesn't have a frighteningly desperate edge; it is more a resigned, attritive solitude, his hair is "grey from woman-hunger", and halfway through the day he suddenly exclaims: "forgive me for raising my voice ... But the womanloneliness is beginning to get to me, Frank."

Despite the unquestionable dignity of the two characters, this poem is bleaker than Durcan's other works. He is a master of minor tragedies and melancholy, self-mocking humour. Don't be intimidated by the idea of a lengthy poem: Durcan is utterly at ease within the form. The demotic language and the short, rhythmic lines pull you on through even the most painful recollections of the men. It is a beautiful, poignant and wry piece of writing. The firm yet hesitant friendship between these two men is the most genuine note of goodwill you could come across in a whole month of Christmases. Maggie O'Farrell

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in