Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, AFTERNOON OF A MCGRATH, by THOMAS MCGRATH


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

AFTERNOON OF A MCGRATH, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: This morning there was one mcgrath in aitken county
Last Line: Dark holes in space I must recognize as home
Subject(s): Fathers; Names; Sons; Towns


This morning there was one McGrath in Aitken County.
Now
There are three: the town, Tomasito, and myself.
And at this rate of growth
The County will remain alive at least ten minutes longer,
Though the town is disappearing: fast: in a thickening snow:
Which is also the snow of time, the secret invisible snow
That falls in summer and falls in the fall and in spring: the snow
We are all disappearing into -- all but Tomasito
Who has found a god-dog to mush home with if he knew where that was.

This town, which carries our name into the rising night,
Is one of those lost places in which I have found myself
Often . . . though they always had other names -- and sometimes I did.
What could I expect to find in a place where the lakes hold only
Private water? A walk or a wake away from the Dead
Sea of Mille Lacs where all class-struggle is ethnic?
Place
Where each grave plot is bespoke and the loudest talk is on tombstones?
Did I think to push open a gate and enter a century of sleep
Where only myself is awake? But that's just the world I live in
Outside the township limits . . .
Perhaps I expected to find
Death McGrath, that stranger I meet so often in dreams,
The one I thought was myself disguised in the drag of death?
Perhaps he is one of these Indians, now in full retreat
(With their white comrades) from the shots and the double shots of General
Alcohol?
But it's not the bargirl, inside whose head
It is snowing, as it snows in mine, and behind whose eyes I see
The slow turn to the left of those permanent low-pressure systems . . .

And that's McGrath. I will never forget it, now, Tomasito --
Our ghosts are here forever now because you were here
With this snow and this bar and that dog -- see: what you have invented!
And so I will put this poem under a stone somewhere
On a road I will never walk on again, as I have done
Another time.
Or put it with our hidden wishing stone
To remember us by "forever": now: as the town disappears
Into the blizzard . . .
and all the McGraths drift into
That snow, that permanent white where all our colors fade.

The night is closing down. But I'd like McGrath to continue
Beyond this winter and those to come -- though THAT beyond
Is beyond all hope.
So let me stop: here: then . . .
-- drifting
Into the universe and past all stars: toward those
Dark holes in space I must recognize as home.


Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA
98368-0271, www.cc.press.org




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