“Couple” by Justin Quinn
by Ernie on 28/06/09 at 10:25 am
The Irish poet Justin Quinn sent me this kind e-mail, and I asked if I could reprint his excellent poem. It appeared in Poetry Ireland Review earlier this year. Here is his letter:
Dear Ernie,
So picture me this fine Sunday morning, proud owner of Sixty Sonnets, reading through it again with pleasure, only to come upon “Domestic Situation” and realise that a poem which I wrote last year is completely based on it. Here it is. I liked yr poem very much when I read it, and I like my own poem too much to suppress it also. So herewith the compromise. Is this OK?
Hope all’s well.
Couple
Justin Quinn
after Ernest HilbertJ
They sat there side by side: a homeless man,
a not-so-homeless looking woman, talking.
Or he was talking, mumbling on and on
at her blank face, impassive, wholly lacking
expression or the smallest ghost of it,
unless you count the stitches freshly sown
up from her eyebrow, along her forehead’s height,
made redder by the paleness of her skin.
His face was folds of dirt and tan and grit,
impossible to see beyond these to
a person, though perhaps her gift was that
she saw a man in this man’s residue.
A sort of couple locked into each other
and shunted through the city, oblivious
to buildings, festivals and road-work clutter.
It seemed they’d ride out to the terminus
most likely so they could avoid the cold.
His drawl—his gravelled, drunken, aging drawl—
sank down to nothing as the tram rolled
to a stop at what you could call Bum Grand Central.
Knowing him was loving him? Or:
why not take down a large bag from a shelf
and just walk out on him, but not before
telling him that now he could fuck himself?
I often like to give out good advice
to people who so clearly need it and
might change, get happy, stop being so nice
or bored or brain-dead to the bitter end.
He slept. She tried to wake him with some pokes.
But he was really gone. She left him there
deep in his dream of drink or sex or smokes.
No hesitation. Went straight out the door.
I was left with his stink and parasites
another fifteen minutes. It wasn’t good.
The city streaming by.Don’t give advice.
Don’t let it even murmur in your head.
