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484 The twentieth century: 1945 to the present
now writing. He is also an accomplished translator, especially from classical
Latin and Greek. The range of poetic and dramatic reference in his works
is immense. A Kumquat for John Keats finds the fruit to celebrate the famous
poet; U.S. Martial (1981) punningly transposes the Latin epigrammatist
Martial into 1980s New York. The Pomegranates of Patmos Martial (from
the 1992 volume The Gaze of the Gorgon) is an apocalytic vision:
I’m so weary of all metaphorers.
From now on my most pressing ambition’s
to debrainwash all like Prochorus
made Moonies by metaphysicians.
But my poor brother could never respond.
I couldn’t undermine his defences.
His brain went before him to the Beyond.
He took all leave of his senses.
My brother’s heart was turned to stone.
So my revenge on St John’s to instil
in lovers like these, who think they’re alone,
the joy John and his ilk want to kill,
and try any charm or trick
to help frightened humans affirm
small moments against the rhetoric
of St Cosmocankerworm.
Few modern poets are as observant as Harrison about class, or
about how speech reflects class. Them and Us (phonetic rendering
(u:z)) recalls his schooldays, when his accent ‘murdered’ the words of
Keats: at least, according to his English master. Later, the poem Y (the
initial stands for the cheapest form of airline travel) shows the same
perception on a flight across the Atlantic:
the First Class can pay
while the Y class gapes
pour encourager . . .