Derek Mahon: Autumn Skies

Allusion to Classical figure Muses

Allusion to Classical place Ancient Greece

Classical/post-Classical intertexts In the opening line of 'A Country Kitchen', "Walking into eternity", is a quotation from Joyce's Ulysses (from the third episode, 'Proteus': "Am I walking into eternity along Sandymount Strand?" , James Joyce, Ulysses. Paris: Sylvia Beach, 1922). Joyce's free elisions of the Irish and Classical are recalled in the final lines of Mahon's poem (see below). The three poems in this sequence, 'A Distant Echo', 'A Country Kitchen' and 'A Quiet Cottage', were first published as limited edition broadsides, dedicated to John Montague, Seamus Heaney and Michael Longley, respectively, on their 70^th birthdays (Oldcastle: The Gallery Press, 2009).

Comment In the second poem of the sequence, 'A Country Kitchen', Mahon uses the term Quidittas to indicate a shared essence running through "the used fields/ of Ulster and ancient Greece".

Note Also collected in New Collected Poems, Gallery Press, 2011, p.353-356