Paul Durcan, who died in May this year, has been a favourite poet of mine ever since I heard him read his poems after a dinner at the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (a ridiculous institution in a country that had spent almost a millennium trying to rid itself of the British crown). https://acairnofpoems.com/2025/03/01/teresas-bar-by-paul-durcan/ In the past days we’ve listened to him read on the radio his long poem Christmas Day, which is laugh-out-loud funny but also poignant. If you can find a recording of him reading his poems then be sure to listen: his fine poetry is made even finer by his reading.

Today I started reading my way through A Snail in My Prime (1993), which includes old as well as new poems. The first poem is the only one he selected from his first collection in1967. His poems are usually expansive and filled with references to places, books, people, and history, but this is a minimalist poem of only 32 words—and simple words at that. It’s witty, erotic, and paradoxical in that his love’s clothes hide the light of her body during the day but are shed at night to reveal the dark. And we all think about what happens in that dark: it’s a sexy not a scary dark.

The White Window by Paul Durcan

Of my love’s body I think

That it is a white window.

Her clothes are curtains:

By day drawn over

To conceal the light:

By night drawn back

To reveal the dark.