SARA BERKELEYon John Montague's poem At Lastthat speaks of the timeless human need for parental approval
JOHN MONTAGUE, oft-hailed for his hauntingly simple renditions of old stories, nevertheless digs deep into human emotions with his plain style. In At Lasthe mines the seam of father-son relations. The poem is an anecdote of meeting his father off the boat at Cobh and moving painfully through the clumsy initial greetings that speak volumes of past hurts or misunderstandings or just plain distance.
The lines “something in me began to contract // but also to expand” describes so lucidly the conflicting and contradictory emotions that parent-child relationships so often entail. The vision of his father, “a small sad man with a hat”, coming through customs “carrying a roped suitcase”, strikes a wistful, even pathetic note. Here is a man returning to Ireland, perhaps after a long absence, and he has clearly not struck gold on his travels. Montague knows he doesn’t need to explain the cause of his father’s sadness. We may know, but we do not need to know, that James Montague was formerly an Irish volunteer who fled to Brooklyn after involvement in ambushes and house-burnings; that he failed in business and became a subway ticket collector; that he turned to alcohol.
In Montague’s lexicon, the two simple adjectives and the roped suitcase say all this, and much more. With the simultaneous contraction and expansion inside him at the sight of James, we are taken through a door from the room of the older man’s disappointments to the room of the son’s responses to this man: the father he barely knew from the age of four, when he (John) was sent to live with his aunts in Garvaghey, Co Tyrone. The conflict of emotions is obvious, and the “clumsy, laughing gestures” that he and his brother resort to to cover over their awkwardness seem unsurprising. But what follows is an example of Montague’s deft artistry, his ability to go deeper, use the facts of scenery and surrounding to fill out and deepen the prevailing mood:
At the mouth of the harbour lay
the squat shape of the liner
hooting farewell, with the waves
striking against Spike Island’s grey.
The poem turns abruptly for the drive across Ireland, where the mood seems to lighten at the “lush river valleys” and landscapes “exotic” to those raised in the bleaker Northern countryside. You get a sense that the drive provides both father and sons with the opportunity to relax a little after the initial tension of meeting.
And then they stop for a drink in Athlone to listen to a radio broadcast by the poet. I can only imagine the mix of feelings that led to him ensuring his father would hear this broadcast, not to mention the trepidation he must surely have felt, wondering what the response would be.
The strange experience of the “disembodied voice” is followed by a predictably pregnant silence; then, the moment of resolution, not just to the poem, but to the long years of estrangement and loneliness and wondering:
‘Not bad’, he said, raising his glass:
Father and son at ease, at last.
So Irish in their understatement, these are nevertheless two very healing and long overdue words. The balm at the close of this poem seems to radiate out, to try and touch every son who has ever felt betrayed or ignored or let down by his father.
They are universal, they speak to the timeless human need for parental approval, and they seem in two brief syllables to wash away all the sadness, the strangeness and the uncertainty of Montague’s past with his father. Forgiveness, acceptance, even approval, at last.
Essays and quotations extracted from Chosen Lights: Poets on Poems by John Montague in honour of his 80th birthday.Edited by Peter Fallon, published by Gallery Books, €20