She was the Sunday in every week

This week: The Planter’s Daughter by Austin Clarke

THE ITALIANS have an expression for it, Un Colpo di Fulmine... the lightning bolt of love! We see, we adore, we worship. We are consumed and besotted. A tale, possibly, as old as time itself, or certainly since we all stood upright and began to partly think and feel with our hearts.

It just happens, could be any time, any where, we can never tell. And we certainly cannot explain the why or the how. Man falls for woman, or woman for man (or, to be inclusive, a few other combinations!). Yes, we may have stood upright, but we are joyously happy to be knocked right over!

And in our efforts to grasp, explain or capture the feeling we sometimes turn to the stage, the canvas or the lyrics. It might be Eddie Cochran or da Vinci, Verdi or Keats, but the message is the same. ‘Listen to me... just look at her! Have you ever seen anything like her?’

We need to share this wonderment and joy. We need to climb to the mountain top and scream, paint a mural on the bus stop shelter, take an ad out in the paper, write her name in the sand, get a new tattoo. ‘She’s sure fine lookin’ man, she’s somethin’ else!’

Or, we might simply take up the pen, and on a single half size sheet of paper, write down what it is, what we see, how we feel. Attempt to capture and explain it all in a few short lines. But can this be done? Can we open and exhibit the wonder we feel in our heart successfully in this way? Yes we can, and yes we have.

In 1928, one of our own, poet Austin Clarke, pictured below, from Dublin, penned one of the finest poems of adoration ever written. The Planter’s Daughter, a mere 16 lines long, is the beautiful description of the girl who held his gaze, and all those, he felt, who happened upon her. Written in a different time, when discretion was expected and perhaps outpourings of feelings less frequent, (far from The Geordie Shore!), this poem is verbally consummate. When night stirred at sea, And the fire brought a crowd in

They say that her beauty Was music in mouth And few in the candlelight Thought her too proud, For the house of the planter Is known by the trees. Men that had seen her Drank deep and were silent, The women were speaking Wherever she went -

As a bell that is rung

Or a wonder told shyly And O she was the Sunday In every week.

The poem is a scene of complete adoration. The setting in candlelight, with beauty described as music, gives us her as a vision, and a mystery, as mysterious as her highbrow home. Different, distant, special. The gazing men had their jaws dropped, and the women, perhaps jealous, can not help but pay her whispering attention.

But whoever or whatever she was, Clarke elevates her to the that pinnacle of everyday early twentieth century Irish life when he fantastically declares her to be the Sunday in every week. In my humble opinion, no poet has ever surpassed this wonderful metaphor.

The poem itself is a complete Irish beauty.

John J Kelly is a multiple award-winning poet from Enniscorthy. He is the founder of the Anthony Cronin Poetry Award with the Wexford Literary Festival and co-ordinator of poetry workshops for schools locally.

Each week, John’s column will deal mainly with novels, plays and poems from both the Leaving Certificate syllabus and Junior Certificate syllabus. kellyjj02@gmail.com