A man facing the gallows lies awake,
alert as a hunted fox, so I’ve begged
the gaoler for quill and foolscap.
“An Irishman that can write,” he sneers.
“Pigs’ll sing like nightingales, next!”
Still, he gladly snatched my coins.
Now, I scratch of that Easter
false dawn clear as fairy lights,
when Cousin Sean and I strolled
the Galway strand, after we’d cavorted
the night away at a boisterous bagnio:
Da too drunk to notice I’d gone,
mad sister Nora sobbing, as usual.
I was just steeling myself
to return to the farm and the eternal
round of mucking and digging
and dragging sacks of spuds like Da’s mule,
and any other chore he could think of
while he consulted his jug of poteen,
when Sergeant Clark and his toady,
Corporal Hodge, accosted us.
“Look here, Hodgie,” Clark grinned,
greasy as a fox after it’s fed on goose,
“a pair of ?ne Irish bucks dying
to take the King’s shilling
and have an easy life of it
in barracks and barrooms.”
“No thank’ee, sir,” Sean smiled,
“We’ll not die for an English king
on a French battle?eld.”
Hodge’s bayonet hissed and glittered,
Clark’s pistol was cocked.
“I charge you to enlist!”
Clark thundered like a preacher
spitting brimstone to cringing women,
and Hodge lunged with that blade.
But Sean’s great shillelagh caught
the Corporal’s ferret-head,
and blood ?ew like spilled whiskey;
me club spun Clark like a reeling leaf.
We ?ung them and their weapons
into the tide, prayed the outgoing surf
would carry them to the Colonies,
then staggered off to a local sheabeen.
“What have we done?” I whispered.
“Nothing,” Sean hissed. “Nothing!”
A tavern wench eyed his ?ne black hair—
more Spanish, some jest,
but only once, than Irish—
and squirmed on his lap like a kitten.
Another pretty bawd twined ?ngers
through me hair like carded wool,
and I almost forgot those English ?ends:
Sergeant Clark and Corporal Hodge.
isbn 1-59661-071-9
100 pages/$18
The author makes grateful acknowledgment to the editors of the journals in which these poems, some in earlier form, were first published:
Pacific Review: “Liam O’Flynn Contemplates Immortality”
Parting Gifts: “Liam O’Flynn Justifies the Killings,” “The Finer Points of Liam O’Flynn’s Career As a Highwayman,” “Liam O’Flynn Recounts His Last Job As a Highwayman,” “Liam O’Flynn Recalls the Girl He Once Thought He Loved”
When I sit down with a new manuscript by Bob Cooperman, I know I’m down for the count and won’t stir again until his story is told. A Tiny Ship upon the Sea, rich with the legend, lore, and history of Ireland, is a tale of suspense and surprise about the wicked and the wicked-er! The characters are thieves, villains, and hypocrites, yet in Cooperman’s skillful hands, I come to care about them. Underlying all the apt metaphors, images and other wonderful tricks of the poetic trade lies Cooperman’s always present quest for justice. I can say of this book, as I can rarely say of a volume of poetry, “It is a page-turner!”
—Carol Hamilton,
former Poet Laureate of Oklahoma
and author of Vanishing Point and Shots On
A Tiny Ship Upon the Sea is more than a spirited historical adventure tale. It is an extended meditation on friendship, sexual awakening, political oppression, and the fundamental desire for liberty—all enlivened by the richness of Irish myth and fable. Robert Cooperman is unique among American poets in his mastery of the narrative poetic sequence, and that mastery is evident on every page of this fine collection.
—Joseph Hutchison,
author of The Rain at Midnight, Bed of Coals,
and ten other books of poetry
Robert Cooperman is the author of seven previous collections, most recently The Long Black Veil (Higganum Hill Books) and A Killing Fever (Ghost Road Press). Cooperman’s In the Colorado Gold Fever Mountains (Western Reflections Books) won the Colorado Book Award in 2000. Cooperman lives in Denver with wife, Beth.