on her shoes in the second stanza. NÌ Dhomhnaill draws on a male
bardic tradition as it appreciates the woman as nation only to overturn
it. In the final stanza the speaker disparagingly comments:
For youíd think to listen to her sheíd never heard
that discretion is the better part, that our names are writ
in water, that the greenest stick will wizen:
even if every slubberdegullion once had a dream-vision
in which she appeared as his own true lover,
those days are just as truly over.Times change as even ëthe greenest stick will wizen.í Here, green can
signify both youth and the colour associated with Irish nationalism.
The phrase ëour names are writ/ in waterí also suggests that
identity eventually dissolves and has little stable foundation on which
to ground itself and be remembered. This water imagery links with
poems written three years later by McGuckian as in ëOn Ballycastle
Beachí (1995) which ends with the image of the ëold escape and
release/ Of waterís speech, faithless to the end.í It also compares with
Eavan Bolandís ëAnna Liffeyí (1995) which ends with identity con-
ceived as fluid and seeking its own dissolution by ëriversí ëenroute to/
Their own nothingness.í^16 What these female poets hold in common is
their tendency to employ water imagery as a way of dissolving
traditional models of gender and nation.
ClichÈs such as: ëthe greenest stick will wizení and ëdiscretion is
the better partí, (a saying that is not even finished off within the poem
since it is so well known), create a further ambivalence. NÌ
Dhomhnaillís Irish and Muldoonís translation parodies the judgmental
and gossiping voice of the poetic speaker as much as they critique the
image of Cathleen. The poetic speakerís critical attitude is undercut by
the overall tone of blarney and reliance upon received phrases as in
the opening lines: ëYou canít take her out for a night on the town/
without her either showing you up or badly letting you down.í The
poem begins with a male speaker who complains about a woman in
conventional terms that are evocative of the exchanges between
16 Medbh McGuckian, ‘On Ballycastle Beach’, On Ballycastle Beach (Meath:
Gallery, 1988), p.62; Eavan Boland, ‘Anna Liffey’, In A Time of Violence,
Collected Poems (Manchester: Carcanet, 1995), p.204.