At the time of writing this post, it is June, and this week I have picked a poem titled Christmas Day by Paul Durcan. His poem comes in at number 84 on the top 100 Irish poems list. Irish poet Paul Durcan was born in 1944. He has won the Patrick Kavanagh Award (1974) and the Whitbread Poetry Prize (1990). This is a powerful Irish poem about Christmas day and many aspects of loneliness and sorrow. Paul Durcan narrates in the first person a Christmas spent with another friend who is on his own, Frank. The poem flows along easily and gently through the pre-Christmas and Christmas events.
In case you are wondering, Acapulco is a beach resort town on Mexico’s Pacific coast set on a large bay backed by high-rises and the Sierra Madre del Sur mountains, made famous by the jet set in the 1950s and ’60s. Durcan mentions it in this line from the poem: ‘What is your idea of Heaven? –
Snorkelling in Acapulco.’
Christmas Day
The worst thing about loneliness
Is not loneliness.Christmas Day is a book-length poem that Paul Durcan published with Harvill Press in 1996. It follows two single men, Paul and Frank, as they spend Christmas Day together in a Dublin flat, swapping presents, sharing a meal and talking about old loves, faith, death and the life of a poet.
The section I have written about is set partly in Glasnevin Cemetery. A chance meeting with a stranger becomes a meditation on time and loneliness, and Durcan is honest enough to admit that loneliness can turn into selfishness. He also has fun with the question of what heaven looks like, and sets the joy of Christmas against the deeper meaning of Good Friday.
It is classic Durcan: funny one moment, raw the next, and never afraid to say the awkward thing out loud. Underneath the jokes is a serious poem about how hard Christmas can be for people on their own.
Christmas Day is still in copyright, so I can’t print it here. You will find the full poem in Christmas Day (Harvill Press, 1996).
christine mulcahy
Saturday 18th of June 2022
not my favorite