I’ve enjoyed the poetry of Paul Durcan ever since I heard him read his poems in the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland. He has a distinctive voice, far removed from that of Yeats and yet retaining some of Yeats’ romanticism and lyricism. Humour and unexpectedness are the hallmarks of his poetry.

The poem below is a letter written to Nessa, his ex-wife. Being married to Durcan cannot have been easy. He would have been loving, funny, and delightful, a man for a wonderful evening. But that’s not enough for a successful marriage. Eventually a sensible woman will abandon “the addiction of romantic love” with all its craziness, delusion, passion, and the discomfort of withdrawal symptoms for “the herbal remedy of a sane affection,” dull and domestic as it might be. Durcan, we recognise, offers craziness not sanity.

Durcan met Nessa O’Neill at a wedding in 1967. They married in 1968,  had two daughters, and lived in Barcelona, London, and Cork before their marriage ended in 1884.

In his poem Durcan declares his continuing love for Nessa. He would marry her again and again. He loved her patience and innocence. She must have had ample supplies of both to manage a 16-year marriage. But Durcan respects her decision (was it her decision?) to end the marriage and seek a faithful friend.

Hymn to a Broken Marriage by Paul Durcan

Dear Nessa – Now that our marriage is over
I would like you to know that, if I could put back the clock

Fifteen years to the cold March day of our wedding,

I would wed you again and, if that marriage also broke,

I would wed you yet again and, if it a third time broke,

Wed you again, and again, and again, and again, and again:

If you would have me which, of course, you would not.

For, even you – in spite of your patience and your innocence

(Strange characteristics in an age such as our own)

– Even you require to shake off the addiction of romantic love

And seek, instead, the herbal remedy of a sane affection

In which are mixed in profuse and fair proportion

Loverliness, brotherliness, fatherliness:

A sane man could not espouse a more faithful friend than you.