Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE PASSING OF MALONEY, by PATRICK MACGILL


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE PASSING OF MALONEY, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: In the chill of anaemic december when the snow on / the ditchway lay
Last Line: When nature was yelling in anguish and the turbulent tempest was loud.
Subject(s): Anger; Bars & Bartenders; Quarrels; Pubs; Taverns; Saloons; Arguments; Disagreements


IN the chill of anæmic December when the snow on the ditchway lay,
He bursted the jaw of the gaffer, in an argumentative way
Got handed his couple of shillings and went in the evening grey —

Into the dip of the hollow a moving speck on the snow,
Bound for the township and model, eighty miles off or so,
And his comrades leaned on their shovels, and sorrowed to see him go.

That night they kept from the card school, and smoked in silence apart,
Swore at the cloud-drift, and listened the night winds fitfully start,
And felt a chill in the marrow or an icy grip on the heart.

Quickly he padded the mountain, and dragged thro' the desolate vale,
And over the gap-toothed ridges, where the flaccid sunsets fail,
And the endless cumulus musters glaucous or flaxen pale.

Broad-chested, lank Maloney, muscular, strong and wild,
A Berserkir fierce in his anger, simple in faith as a child,
The primitive human in moleskin, uncultured and undefiled.

Crunching and crushing the snow-way, cursing his luck when he fell,
He plodded unweary, unfearing, by quagmire and tarn and well,
And a star o'erhead where the cloudrift spread gleamed like an asphodel,

Gleamed for a tremulous moment, fading as soon as it shone,
Leaving him lost in the vastness of night and its by-ways unknown,
With a charnel gloominess girded, affrighted, astray and alone.

Otiose, obdurate, ominous, drifted the snow in the air,
Gibingly, grim, geomantic, tracing the lines of despair,
Weaving a shroud for his body, shaping a wreath for his hair.

"Where am I straying to anyhow? Cold! I am cold to the skin. ...
Lord, he's a hell of a gaffer! .. how did the quarrel begin?
Called me an imp of the devil, and managed to get me my tin.

"I'm sure I am lost in the darkness — ain't it a horrible fix,
Knowing your final is coming. ... Curse him, the imp of old Nick's.
Every foot that I'm lifting drags like a bundle of bricks.

"I'm padding it round in a circle — round in a circle — and round. ...

To-morrow they'll search and they'll find me, dead like a brute on the ground.
Dead! .. 'T is the corpse of Maloney, Moleskin will say when I'm found.

"Mary, the girl that I courted — how under hell can it be —
There she's smiling ... she's calling, calling and beckoning me!
Look at the swarm of demons — and grinning like blazes they be.

"Shoving it on to a fellow, 'cause you are boss of the show. ...
Here I am raving and raving, wandering round in the snow,
Going to hell in a blizzard — well, it is time I should go!

"Drinks to the bar and I'll stand it, everyone here in the place. ...
Turn a man off in the snow-drift — go, or I'll batter your face. ...
Matey, my turn at the hammer — I'm for a bob on the ace."

He jacked up his soul in the darkness, and slept in an angel white shroud,
And the ghouls of the moorland kept litchwake under the canopied cloud,
When nature was yelling in anguish and the turbulent tempest was loud.





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