Derek Mahon - An Autumn Wind

Derek Mahon, An Autumn Wind (Gallery)

Derek Mahon is showing no signs of letting up as he approaches his seventieth year and is the first poet to have two new books reviewed on this website.

Retirement is on his mind, though. The opening poem, Ithaca, concerns the return of Ulysses, who asks that Athene 'lets me live to taste the joys of home, relinquished years ago, and sit down with my family once more.' The other poems on the first pages here similarly end with a prospect of settling down and looking forward to a relaxed future, A Quiet Spot reflects that it is time to 'create a future from the past, tune out the babbling radio waves and listen to the leaves.'

So perhaps there is more acceptance and less anger in Mahon than there once was. It was never a furious rage but a controlled discontent that fuelled his discursive complaint but here his ruminations are more classical and rhymed and accepting than they've been before.

The Thunder Shower would make an excellent classroom exercise with its onomatopeia, extended metaphor and atmospheric description of passing thunder in terms of orchestration; World Trade Talks and the sad story of the Beached Whale engage with current events but even in the elegy to James Simmons, there is a sense of quiet celebration that leads into an odd little project, a final section of poems by the fictional Indian poet Gopal Singh. Quite honestly, one wouldn't have noticed the difference if these had been by the non-fictional poet, Derek Mahon, but they appear to be differentiated by an Eastern spiritual quality that perhaps refers us back to Mahon's previous book and interest in Gaia.

One almost doesn't expect poets to extend their range once they pass a certain age and Mahon hasn't done anything to shock or challenge that glib assumption but his assured voice is clear and sympathetic in this collection, resolute and apparently reconciled. Perhaps the best poem here is An Aspiring Spirit, after Quevedo, which expresses Mahon's benign attitude as beautifully as any,

There will be ashes, yes, but smouldering ashes;

there will be dust but dust glowing with love.