epitomize a living death that is also described in stanza one when the
body is stirred to an ëever-resurrectioní and then dies. The word
ëverticalí has further connotations of lines or boundaries. This image
is held alongside the notion of a delimited or ësealedí room which
evokes the sense of there being intangible bodily and communicative
frontiers written into the poem, between figures in the poem, and
between writer and audience.
What will transgress these thresholds are words themselves as
they are associated with water and flight: words ëflyí and are ëleakyí.
They are ëshallowised night lettersí which plays on the euphemism for
condoms. The night letters come from a dark and fluid realm that is
indefinable and has possible associations with ejaculation, fertility or
plurability. The word ëshallowisedí suggests that language is shallow
never hitting the depths or that language exists in the shallows. Such a
watery space can be compared with Paulinís ëAlmost Thereí (1994)
which was written in the same year. In this poem speech travels
through darkness and moisture, and it is evocative of a feminine realm
that disturbs his attempts at straight talking. This leaking of language
challenges self containment; refusing to be ësealedí it leads to the
question in McGuckianís poem: ëwhat you has spoken?í Such a
question suggests that identity in the poem is plural or made up of a
number of ëyousí. The poetic effects acknowledge that language does
not allow for any stable sense of subjectivity and so the representation
of identity becomes fluid.
As words leap out with the potential to ëflyí they challenge sub-
jectivity. The image of birds in stanza three connects with the notion
of flight in stanza two, to be followed with the image of syllables
stretching out from one speaker in an attempt to touch the absent other
as might the ëkissesí. Yet at the end of the poem, the poetic speaker is
not imagined in flight but grounded with her audience looking to her
ëas if I could give you wingsí. The positioning of the word ëifí in this
line suggests that flight, which is imagined in terms of connection and
communication, is impossible. We are back to the concerns of
ëAviaryí where the woman is trapped with only language and
metaphor as vehicles for potential fluttering, ëwhenever you release
the birds in meí. The sealed containment of stanza one permeates the
whole poem suggesting that although language, which is connected
with sexuality, provides the opportunity for flight, the bodies in the
grace
(Grace)
#1