Volume 10 135
the bar in stanza one inspires in Hartnett the need
for poetry, and by line 15, he has slipped into Gaelic
with these descriptions: “mánla, séimh, dub-
hfholtach, álainn, caoin.” These Gaelic phrases are
repeated over and over until the reader is caught up
in the intoxicating beauty of the barmaid and of the
poetry. Hartnett’s preference for Gaelic seems un-
questionable when he uses the image of being
“flung back on the gravel of Anglo-Saxon.”
But no sooner does the reader become satis-
fied that Hartnett is condemning English in favor
of Gaelic, than the reader is confronted by contra-
dictory images in lines 20-22. These lines could
have been overlooked among the overwhelming ev-
idence of nationalistic love for Irish form and lan-
guage. In lines 7 and 8, Hartnett shares that the
beautiful woman pouring ale has “tripped the gen-
tle mechanism of verse” within him, and he begins
“sifting the centuries for words.” Immediately, lilt-
ing adjectives rise to his consciousness. And then?
His romance with the language of his ancestors ex-
plodes in his image of Gaelic words like slabs of
stone “crashing on the cogs, splinters / like axe-
heads damaging the wheels, clogging / the intricate
machine” which is poetry. These words (“mánla,”
“séimh”) are foreign to him and awkward, not sen-
sual like the barmaid, not intimate like a lover.
The poem continues then with distinct Irish-
ness. In the second stanza, Hartnett’s words are pas-
toral, glorifying nature with evocative images of “a
gentle bench of grass” and strawberries that
“looked out with ferrets’ eyes.” He brings forth the
old men who shuffle toward Croom and Cahir-
moyle. These black-coated men are the bards of
early Ireland who, we are told in The New Prince-
ton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics,descended
from the mysticalfilidhand held an esteemed po-
sition in Irish society. However, Hartnett introduces
another paradox. These traveling bards, dressed in
mourning black and carrying ashplants along with
a “thousand years of history in their pockets” are
also “snotnosed” and “half-drunk.” Regardless of
his justification, Hartnett has conveyed an am-
biguous message about the rank of his ancestral
poets.
A look backward at poets would not be com-
plete without a consideration of, perhaps without a
tribute to, William Butler Yeats. According to Hart-
nett’s analogy, “Chef Yeats, that master of the use
of herbs / could raise mere stew to a glorious
height” by stirring in a “soupçon of philosophy.”
In other words, Yeats could combine philosophy
and poetry and produce excellent results. Hartnett
then seems to honor contemporary Irish poets by
calling them chefs also, but he calls his own sin-
cerity into question by calling them “commis-
chefs.” By tying the newer poets to the “commis-
sary” chefs, Hartnett has thrown them under the
questionable light of politics; “commissary,” ac-
cording to Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary,is
closely related to “commissar,” a decidedly politi-
cal word that carries the connotation of an autocrat
or dictator. The culinary efforts of these commis-
chefs result in an “Anglo-Irish stew” flavored with
allusions to Ireland’s great mythology and poetic
tradition. In this description the emphasis is not on
the “glorious heights” as it was in the description
of Yeats’s poetry. Instead the emphasis is on the
stew, a many-ingredient meal in which every in-
gredient loses its distinct flavor.
The poem moves through stanza after stanza
offering contrasting political points of view as it
moves through different battles within Hartnett’s
internal war. While the first three stanzas specifi-
cally consider the value of the Irish and English
language and Irish and English poetry, the fourth
shifts to a perspective on politics which is contin-
ued through the fifth and sixth stanzas. Still, am-
biguity permeates these sections. In the fourth
stanza, Ireland becomes the brood sow raped by the
English boar, but the description is not as simple
as perpetrator and victim. Instead, Ireland is de-
picted as a wanton whore who would “allow / any
syphilitic boar / to make her hind-end sore ...” To-
wards the end of the fourth stanza, Hartnett criti-
cizes Ireland for the failure, in 1922, to make a clear
stand on self-determination. Ireland’s failure to
make her own fate certain is the exact type of am-
biguity, or ambivalence, that this poem examines
and mirrors.
The fifth stanza begins as a requiem for the
murdered Spanish poet Garcia-Lorca and the ban-
ished Russian writer Boris Pasternak. Though Gar-
cia-Lorca died as the result of a heinous act of vi-
olence, Hartnett offered a memorial to him that was
celestial in its imagery and symbolism: “my Lorca
holding out his arms / to love the beauty of his bul-
lets.” Then, at the end of the stanza, Hartnett
changes his tone as he lauds his contemporaries,
including those who “write / with bitterness in their
hearts,” and proclaims that the very “act of poetry
/ is a rebel act.”
In the sixth stanza Hartnett overtly criticizes
politicians and condemns them for not “wanting
freedom— / only power.” He blasts them for lack-
ing a conscience and thus forgetting the politicalA Farewell to English