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I. Danube
It swells and stirs,
man-handling back
the flow, then steers
off south on track.
It involves a man
sometimes. His fault,
he stumbles in
to dreams of salt.
Who found his wife
inland, though he
then spent his life
missing the sea.
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II. Familiar
The room is small,
a box of space
dead still and dismal.
Everything in place
except the cat
who ripples by.
Reminder. That
does it. So I
unfold from out
the ornaments
and move about,
my soul immense.
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III. Small Fury
The whole show folds:
the dog-days go
and the land yields
to a sheath of snow.
Leaves sail and flare
away around
in chutes of air,
light on the ground;
wheeled furiously through
much larger turns
and smaller too
to brake and burn.
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IV. Patience
Game after game
I deal myself—
no hand the same—
& the hours dissolve.
King up, ace out,
gather and fold . . .
I am about
forty years old
or ten, wide-eyed.
I am my mother
or father. Outside
there is some weather.
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V. Solstice
Deep in the ground
the massive turn
of spring comes round.
The sun will burn
the earth for days
and days, a toy
within its gaze—
like luck, or joy,
or like Aeneas
coming home
to what we see as
ancient Rome.
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Justin Quinn was born in Dublin in 1968 and studied there at Trinity College, receiving his Ph.D. in 1995. Since 1995 he has lived in Prague, and is Associate Professor there at the Charles University. His first book of poems was shortlisted for the Forward Prize, and he has been awarded the Bursary in Literature from the Arts Council of Ireland on numerous occasions. His poems have appeared in outlets such as Yale Review, TLS, Poetry Review, and The Irish Times. His translations of Ovid appeared in After Ovid: New Metamorphoses (FSG, 1994). He has published four collections of poetry, most recently Waves & Trees (2006), and his Cambridge Introduction to Modern Irish Poetry, 1800-2000 appears this year. He is married to Tereza Limanova and has two sons, Finbar & Manus.
The poems of Spare Dimes were written by my friend Justin Quinn with the intent that the short spare form known as “dimeter” would be ideal for setting to music. The resulting poems are richly evocative, suggestive, and enigmatic. In choosing the five poems that make up the cycle, I looked for common threads that would unite the work thematically and also provide the basis for consistent musical elements. In each of the five poems, the speaker reacts to the presence of water in various forms, so the instrumental accompaniment is inspired by the constant watery presence. In the first song, the surging waters of the Danube river contrast with the speaker’s memories of the salty sea air of his childhood. In “Familiar,” the torpid humidity of a hot summer day leads to languorous indolence, followed by a reactive surge of energy. In the third song, snowflakes begin falling gradually and then expand into a blizzard of snow. In “Patience” the speaker contemplates the onset of middle age while storm clouds gather outside. In the final song, the memories of sea air return as the speaker entertains a vision of Aeneas returning from his long voyage, and the city on the Danube is transformed into a vision of ancient Rome.