Poem of the month: "Lighthouse" by Sinéad Morrissey30 August 2013
Each month we feature the writing of a celebrated poet. Our August poet is Sinéad Morrissey
Lighthouse
My son's awake at ten, stretched out along
his bunk beneath the ceiling, wired and watchful.
The end of August. Already the high-flung
daylight sky of our Northern solstice dulls
earlier and earlier to a clouded bowl;
his Star of David lamp and plastic moon
have turned the dusk to dark outside his room.
Across the Lough, where ferries venture blithely
and once a cruise ship, massive as a palace,
inched its brilliant decks to open sea—
a lighthouse starts its own nightlong address
in fractured signalling; it blinks and bats
the swingball of its beam, then stands to catch,
Then hurls it out again beyond its parallax.
He counts each creamy loop inside his head,
each well-black interval, and thinks it just for him—
this gesture from a world that can't be entered:
the two of them partly curtained, partly seen,
upheld in a sort of boy-talk conversation
no one else can hear. That private place, it answers,
with birds and slatted windows—I've been there.
Sunset over Belfast Lough (c) Ross
Sinéad Morrissey tells us about her poem
Your poem is set in a place where heavy industry and nature meet. How do they get on?
Better now than previously. Ten years ago the silt from the Lagan river was toxic, but now it's much cleaner. There are more fish in the waters of Belfast Lough and seals and sea lions have followed. There are so many seabirds the RSPB has a lookout on to the mudflats.
Why "birds and slatted windows"?
Two things associated with lighthouses -- but they are also evocative (at least to me) of a troubled interior space. So they are the connection between the lighthouse and the little boy.
We value nature while inflicting huge damage. Can poetry help?
Good poetry can raise awareness of environmental issues, and can respond with appropriate complexity to what's happening to the Earth and our climate. But the message can't be elevated over the artistic integrity of a poem. Paul Farley's "The Big Hum" is the best ecological poem I know.
"Lighthouse" by Sinéad Morrissey is taken from her latest book "Parallax".
Find out how you can help us campaign for the environment, join our Make it Better campaign.
© Carcanet: Sinéad Morrissey
