 (Vertaling /
Translation) |
Lines
for James McLoughlin
The lines were run in circles
Into boxes, measured out in yards,
Checking each hook and spanning
Breastbone to fist for the next,
Cursing the barb-bite of a stray.
The lines were lifted early, set late.
The time between, a fury of mending,
Checking, baiting, and driving drums
To the Dutchman to be weighed. Lunch
Was eels, fried still moving on the pan.
II
Lines of eels thrown lithe-live
Into an old oil drum in my uncle’s boat.
Once, I tossed the drum, fell,
Screamed under their oozing mass
And always after fished for pike.
III
The little ones I carried home
Forefinger and thumb in either eye,
Larger ones were middle-finger
Gaffed under the last gill, taken
To be gutted, skinned and fried.
Jawbones of the biggest, boiled
And bleached, I kept for trophies.
With my fingers slashed by gills
Of one only stunned, I spent my summers
Dodging bailiffs and water-rats.
IV
Each assassin tempted out of reed-clumps
With live bait. Sink and draw, drawing out
The fight to complete capitulation on lines
Without trace-wire. My landing net was
A cold wet slapping on concrete piers.
V
Of the men who fished Lough Erne,
Professionally, few could swim
And none would fish at Whit.
It is said, the lough takes three
Lives every year, in memory
Of a sacrifice to the old god
Who lives two miles from shore
In the pit of the Broad Lough,
Where light stops and weights
Have failed to hit the bottom.
Even I, who stood on piers,
Threw lines where I would not go,
Pulled pike for fear of eels,
Even I stayed well away at Whit
Out of respect, fearing a slip.
VI
I’ve seen an eel cross land,
Snake its way to water with
A muscular will to live. Even
With the head cut off they thrash
For hours and if you poke a finger
Into the headless gullet, you can feel
The suck as it pulls towards the stomach.
VII
It’s a peaceful death, they say,
But that’s a lie that fishermen tell
To comfort relatives of the bloated
Corpse they drag, mangled from Lough
Gates or the net’s mesh, mouths wide
In a watered scream, hands full
Of grass and weed they gripped so tight
The fingers must be broken to release it.
They say, you drown by thirds, three chances
To be caught and dragged thrashing back
To land, gulping air and fighting
For your life. Three breaths before
Water sucks your dream and thought
Dissolves, before everything is water,
Your eye wide and cold as the pike’s.
VIII
I learned to swim
When I stopped fishing,
Left my singing reel
Left my line to rot.
The only thing I could not
Leave, the lough, the water,
Called me back as a mother
Would a straying child.
I never left it long. There
Is a bond of blood that pulls
Me to it: several ancestors
Dead by drowning.
IX
These days I run my lines by metre
Not the yard, but still I circle,
Box them in and check the hooks.
I run them shore to shore, have pushed
Apart the weight, the float and set
My lines to fish the deeper water.
| © Nigel McLoughlin |