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Derek Mahon: The Cloud Ceiling

Poem Title

Original Publication

CP Page no

The Cloud Ceiling

Harbour Lights, Oldcastle: The Gallery Press, 2005

Not included (See also Note below)

Allusion to Classical figure Aristophanes, Cloud Chorus/'daughters of ocean'

Close translation of words/phrases/excerpts Mahon refers to the 'pitchers' of the Cloud Chorus, described as προχοαῖς χρυσέαις in Aristophanes Clouds (272), but makes no other direct references to the Greek.

Classical/post-Classical intertexts "singing in the distance" is perhaps a stage direction from a translation of Aristophanes' play, describing the first entry of the Cloud Chorus. Hugh Haughton detects the influence of the Romantic poets Coleridge and Wordsworth in Mahon's poem and suggests that "grave sisters" may be an allusion to Robert Graves' writings on Classical mythology (H. Houghton, The Poetry of Derek Mahon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, p.346-7).

Comment See also Mahon's poem 'An Unborn Child' (CP p.26-7), which is echoed in this later work.

Note Also collected in New Collected Poems, Gallery Press, 2011, p. 258-259

Derek Mahon