Patrick Ramsey was born in New Jersey but was raised in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Educated at Queen’s University, Belfast, he worked mainly in publishing and bookselling. He co-founded and ran a small literary publishing house, Lagan Press, for over twenty years and is now retired. As a younger poet, his work featured in important anthologies such as Trio Poetry Introductions 6, The New Younger Irish Poets and The Map Maker’s Colours: New Poetry from Northern Ireland. He is returning to writing after a thirty-year silence.
Marie Prevost
Is this where the odd and lonely go? So why
am I here, staring at dull cathedrals
of palm trees and sky? Somewhere, distant bells
mark the ending of another day. And, in reply,
the birds of dusk call, the one to the other,
as if in the midst of some strange grieving
as if to mark my curious leaving.
I stare at the Hollywood sign and wonder
if I should phone Irving (no, he’s dead). Mack?
Kenneth? (Whose star has dimmed somewhat too)
Jack Warner? Recall days of Keystone slapstick;
my Lubitsch flapper girl movies (One review
spoke of my ‘form divine’). But I digress …
They wouldn’t want to hear from me. Not now –
going on forty with a yen for a drink or two,
I’m nobody’s idea of the damsel in distress.
At best character parts now, a blowsy wisecracker
with sorrow in her eyes; the motherly type
dishing out advice to pretty daughters, ripe
for light-hearted escapades and adventure.
This town hates failure. It’s wary of the past.
But they’re all I’ve got. (Plus, what might-have-beens.)
My fate is the dimming of countless screens.
and audience’s murmurs, thrilled and aghast,
as the lights go up: ‘That was Marie Prevost!’
‘Who?’ ‘The hero’s housekeeper.’ ‘No!’
‘I didn’t recognise her!’ ‘It only goes to show … ’,
my lost beauty becoming my very own ghost.
*
6230 AFTON PLACE: Here I spend most evenings
sipping cheap booze, lying on a folding bed,
replaying scenes, projections in my head,
almost as if they held truths or meanings.
They don’t of course, but I have time to kill.
So, I drink, starve (I still hope for work), chat
to my dead mom, re-live my stardom till
I black out or see through a weepy night.
Like a broken film, the images tangle,
snag and stop to become a knot of white light
paining the eyes. I long for a slow fade out;
a new scene. Close up: Face of a Pretty Girl …
FOUR-IN-HAND AND OTHER THEATRES
Even after twenty-odd years
I still miss bars, not alcohol
as such. The optic’s big fat tears
of ambers and honeys; the spill
of warmth and mirrored light;
the murmur and thrill
of watching day bruise into night
to the lulling of conversation
where jokes may be worn but right.
Lacking malice, no condemnation,
the slashes of sudden laughter
are like an abstract in motion –
abeyances of the regular
through rubies, yellows, minty greens
smearings of pure, shocking colour;
the overlaying of spectral sheens –
the dapplings of wood and veneers –
Fit limelights for the genial routines
of down-at-heel boulevardiers.
————-
Note: Four-in-Hand, a bar in Belfast
Pay Day
Belfast Docks early 1950s
Day sees the closing in of soft weather,
a mizzle of October rain and sea frets.
The foghorn blares and then forgets.
Here and there groups of men gather.
There is the passing of news and cigarettes.
Day sees the closing in of soft weather,
a mizzle of October rain and sea frets.
From somewhere there is sudden laughter,
a temporary settling of misery’s debts.
There is the sense that this is as good as it gets.
Day sees the closing in of soft weather,
a mizzle of October rain and sea frets.
The foghorn blares and then forgets.
Fury
When you stirred and opened your eyes –
bloodshot with long sleep and slow dying –
and stared at me, as if crazed, shocked,
to be returned here once again, intense
as a revenging fury, savagely insistent
on the carrying out of all-too-just punishments.
I was, to my shame, afraid and repelled, fearful
of the ‘Go away!’ on my lips, your own child’s lips.
No, I did not want to meet
this dread emissary from the underworld,
my own Lazarus of the Four Days,
your mouth gorged with harrowing truths
I would never want to know.
MANNERS
On a busy street, on a hot afternoon,
I knew I should love her – and soon.
In a moment, virtue and common sense
were but mine to dispense
on a busy street, on a hot afternoon.
On a busy street, on this hot afternoon,
careless she hummed a popular tune,
on a busy street, on a hot afternoon.
On a busy street, on a hot afternoon,
(resist temptation to mention June)
I glimpsed beyond its lie.
This is life. Such beauty cannot die
on a busy street and a hot afternoon.
On this busy street, on a hot afternoon –
bland as boredom, cryptic as a rune –
cars moved like a slow running river.
I knew I shall love her forever
for this busy street, for this hot afternoon.
The Galway Review 