The Drowned Book: Sean O'Brien

This presents itself as a collection of songs and poems from the North in which can be overheard and glimpsed bits of history, legend, warfare, jokes, cuisine, proto-Marxist analysis etc. The authorship of the book is disputable, its provenance uncertain, its dating confused. More than one hand was probably at work and there are borrowings from canonical poems from the English and Scots traditions as well as vernacular sources. It has never been satisfactorily edited, and now is not the time to start. It has been suggested that the whole thing is a hoax, specifically one perpetrated by Jorge Luis Borges, whose grandmother, as is well known, came from Northumberland.

Songs from The Drowned Book

i

In the beginning was all underwater,
The down-there-not-talked-about-time,
Deep North its drowned masonic book
And inaudible bubbles of speech,

Creation a diving-bell seeking its level
Down stone under stone, the slick passages
Fronded by greenery, flashlit by ore
And acetylene candles -

The blind fishes' luminous ballroom,
The pillars of coal, the salt adits, the lead oubliette of the core
And the doors upon doors, all lost
To the surface long since, with the language. Now
Is there anything there, underneath? Is there more?

ii

See
I can remember when
All this was manuscript:

How
Down the green deep we tipped
Law-clerks schoolmen state and church

And with them kingliness,
The night we sank the crown
Off Holderness.

Adam delved
And Dives swam
And sank, swam
And sank:
So who was then the gentle man?
Ourselves, or them
Whose deaths we drank?

iii

Name me a river.
I'll name you a king.
Then we shall drown him
And his God-given ring.
Drown him in Gaunless,
Drown him in Wear,
Drown him like Clarence,
Except we'll use beer.

Name me a river.
I'll name you a price.
River's not selling -
Take river's advice:
Dead if you cross me,
I'll not tell you twice.

My river's from heaven.
Your river's been sold,
And your salmon have died
Drinking silver and gold.
Your river's a sewer,
A black ditch, a grave,
And heaven won't lend you
The price of a shave.

iv

(Baucis and Philemon in Longbenton)

Hinny, mek wor a stotty cake,
Wor needs it for wor bait.
Hadaway, pet, away and shite:
You'll have to fookin wait.
Or mek yer stotty cake yerself
If yer sae fookin smart.
Aye, ah will, wor divvent need ye,
Ya miserable tart.

v

(From the Dive Bar of the Waterhouse)

I was dreaming underwater
When you swam into my bed:
How like you this? The tail, I mean,
And my long hair, rich and red?
A naiad of the standing pools
Of England's locked back yard,
It is because of you, my dear,
That makars live so hard.

Sherry from Kular's (see beggars; see choose)
Red Biddy, Thunderbird, non-booze booze,
Hair oil, Harpic, shit in your shoes -
It's casual drinking, it's paying your dues.

What would you give to know my name
And speak it in your verse,
And if I tell you, will it be
A blessing or a curse?
You are not the first, my dear,
Nor will you be the last -
Thousands sit for my exam
But no one's ever passed.

Sean O'Brien is a prominent poet and critic who lives in Newcastle. He is the author of the controversial critical study of contemporary poetry, The Deregulated Muse; and an anthology of the same, The Firebox. These poems appear in his current book, Downriver, which, like his previous collection, Ghost Train, won the Forward Prize.

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