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Frank McCourt. Photo by Randi Rohde (c) 2010 |
CommentsHis Papa's Waltz
Elegy for Frank
By Dianne AngelAugust Print Edition
Published: August 15, 2010
Mr. Roethke would be proudPublished: August 15, 2010
By Dianne Angel
May 2010
There once was a lad named Frankie,
Who began his life as a Yankee,
Being forced into Limerick,
Was pure hell for this Mick,
‘Tis no wonder he became so cranky.
Mr. McCourt, oh Mr. McCourt,
How we loved your lessons at Stuyvesant,
Your accent was charming
Your wit disarming
Though some of your stories indecent.
###
Son of two lands,
Like your countrymen Beckett and Joyce.
Possessed by one, seduced by the other,
Irish American, American Irish.
Half soul, half heart. Eire and Eagle.
Son of such parents,
Haunted by one, seduced by the other.
Memories of Ma you could not bury,
Realities of ghost Da too painful to unearth.
What can one make of such memories?
Teacher man! Teacher man!
Expounding on Roethke
“The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.”
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.”
We did not know, we could not know
The brutal clarity of Mr. Roethke’s lyrics.
Little boy knocked down again and again
by the stink of Jamesons on his papa’s breath,
And suckerpunch’d drunk by the fury of Angela’s smoldering contempt
Spirit broken by the loss of a sibling or two or more.
It could break a man’s fecking back.
But Frankie boy, it could not break yours.
And for the love of Christ, the ashes –
You told us, you told us.
Angela stoic stoking the feeble fire, a futile alchemy.
Angela the angel, smoking her Woodbines, coping and unable to cope
Angela now hovering lifeless in limbo – her sons wandering and wondering
What to do with such ashes? What is fitting for our angel?
So dispirited, so burdened, so bogged down in the bog of poverty.
Did Frankie and the boys
Bring her a dram of joy?
#######
The tough mick on the docks liberated and full
Out of Ireland ceaselessly gay.
The sounds, the scents, the sights, and by God the American women!
Armed and loaded with a rascal’s accent,
Oh how we Americans love the lilt of an Irish accent.
The ex-Pat Paddy of the White Horse
Became our official raconteur of the White House
The mick with the thick brogue, the filthy kid with the scabby knees
And the crow’s eyes,
Whose success we measured word by exquisite pearly word.
As only Frank could tell it.
Bittersweet tales of sozzled Da, and beleaguered Ma.
And priests too fast with a fist,
And boys with nothing to do,
But mischief
In the sodden lanes of Limerick.
And so it swirls.
Story telling of the land you never left.
The land you could not leave.
Memories as firm and frail as pressed flowers found in books.
Angela, Malachy, and the twins, you could not leave.
And yet you held fast, spinning gold from the tales you told.
Transcendent, laughing in the face of such sadness,
And we laughed till we cried
With the Irish Ex-pat with the gleam in his eye
And the brogue that never faltered after so many years.
Your storied filled us, thrilled us, such generosity,
So deserving of every ounce of praise heaped upon you.
Blessed with the gift of gab,
But what’s more you put pen to paper
And shared with a grateful world such memories.
At last the ashes were leather bound
Laid bare for the entire world to see,
In a little boy voice you shared your pain, your joy, your sins,
In prose, in song, in laughter.
Golden Child of Limerick, it was beyond the beyond.
You left us too soon, darling Frankie boy.
And we weren’t prepared, to have you spared,
Into the arms of Angela, Malachy and the twins.
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