Derek Mahon: Glengormley

Page numbers given refer to Collected Poems: Derek Mahon [CP]: The Gallery Press, 1999

Length / Form Four Stanzas

Relationship to Classical text Mahon presents a sharp disjuncture between idealised poetic notions of a heroic past and the prosaic realities of modern life in the suburbs.

Close translation of words/phrases/excerpts ‘Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than man’ quotes Sophocles’ Antigone (332). Sophocles choral proclamation is given a bathetic treatment is the succeeding lines: ‘Who has tamed the terrier, trimmed the hedge/ And grasped the principle of the watering can’.

Classical/post-Classical intertexts The translated line is taken from Jebb’s 1891 edition (R.C. Jebb, Sophocles. The Antigone of Sophocles. Edited with introduction and notes by Sir Richard Jebb. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1891.) However, Mahon is said to have found the phrase in the epigraph to Malcolm Lowry’s novel Under the Volcano (London: Cape, 1947) which is the subject of his 1964 review ‘The Road to Parian’ (Icarus 43, May 1964, p.22).

Further Comment The Sophoclean reference is combined with allusions Northern Irish myth, Viking invaders (in their long ships), Anglo-Saxons ‘thanes’ and a supporting cast of faded monsters, giants, saints and heroes