Desert Island Poems: 'Leaves' by Derek Mahon

Read the next in the series of Andrew's deep dives into classic poems.

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Leaves

The prisoners of infinite choice

Have built their house

In a field below the wood

And are at peace.

It is autumn, and dead leaves

On their way to the river

Scratch like birds at the windows

Or tick on the road.

Somewhere there is an afterlife

Of dead leaves,

A stadium filled with an infinite

Rustling and sighing.

Somewhere in the heaven

Of lost futures

The lives we might have lived

Have found their own fulfilment.

Derek Mahon's poetry is dazzling in its range: acerbic, witty, philosophical, esoteric, allusive, elegiac, wistful. His oeuvre is one of the most underrated of recent poetic oeuvres and I'm convinced will yet make its way to wider acclaim and recognition. However, this is a poem that I first encountered in 2008, in a class given by Don Paterson at St Andrew's as part of my MLitt in Creative Writing. I was immediately taken in by the apparent simplicity of its title, and the shapeliness of its four free verse quatrains. I can't say I understood all of it immediately, but I understood enough of it, and sensed enough of its immediate sensibility for it to be stamped on my mind and ear ever since.

We might think that leaves, fallen leaves, are one of the biggest clichés in poetry, and in the wrong hands, as with any image, we'd be right. However, great poets take stock images and present them to us in new, surprising, beguiling, poignant, philosophical ways, and this is what Mahon does here. Is this another poem about fallen leaves and the transience of life and the passage of time? Yes, I suppose it is, but by God will you be hard pressed to find a better one. Also, it is about more than just fallen leaves.

Opening Lines

Let's start with the opening line: 'The prisoner's of infinite choice' which raises so many questions: is he referring to the leaves as the prisoners? how can you be a prisoner but also have infinite choice which suggests freedom? Or is he suggesting that they are prisoners because they have infinite freedom and therefore so much choice as to have no choice. Is he suggesting that the leaves by being able to be blown about are prisoners to the wind? It's very difficult to have one confident interpretation of this line. I think he means that the leaves on trees are like the prisoners of infinite choice and by building 'their house in the field below the wood' i.e. falling to the wood's floor 'they are at peace.' In this he is suggesting that peace can be found in nature, or that by dying the leaves are now at peace on the forest floor. The preposition 'below' is essential here in pointing out that the leaves are underneath the trees and have fallen. It also chimes with the idea of death in the poem and connotes with the idea of being buried 'below' the ground. In any case, the fact they had 'infinite choice' and have chosen to build 'their house' in the woods is significant. He is suggesting that solace and quietude is to be found in the woods, and the fact they are at peace suggests that having 'infinite choice' is burdensome. This would certainly have chimed in 1975 when Mahon wrote this poem as part of his collection The Snow Party in an increasingly commercialised society, with Margaret Thatcher becoming the first female Prime Minister and forcing a strong capitalist, market-first ethos on society. We can't help but feel that this first quatrain is one of seclusion, retreating, and Mahon achieves this well with his imagery of the woods. The fact the leaves have 'built their house' also points to the idea of ownership and Thatcher's view that 'every man a capitalist and every man a man of property.' However, Mahon is toying with this idea in suggesting that 'The prisoners of infinite choice/ have built their house' which is not really a house at all, it's a final resting place, where they've been blown by the wind. In this he's challenging or rather mocking the idea of ownership, as the leaves have not built a house and neither do they own it. He's also mocking the idea of the restlessness of leaves and how they are blown about at all angles with the phrase 'at peace.' I can't help but feel 'on' would have been a better preposition for the third line and I'm still not entirely sure who 'the prisoners of infinite choice' really are, but hey-ho. All in all, though, what a first four lines to unpack, which marks out the vision of a poet intent on presenting the trope of the fallen leaf to us in a new (autumnal) light.

Second Quatrain

'It is autumn' is such a simple, plain-speaking, effective way to begin the second quatrain, and his use of enjambment and short line length are paramount in making this poem have a slow, meditative, autumnal I suppose, mood, as we move gently from one image to the next across these prematurely cut-off lines, as in the end of the fifth line's 'dead leaves.' I can't help but feel though that declaring 'It is autumn' was really necessary as leaves don't fall at any other time of the year. The other bone of contention I have is that he remarks that they are 'on their way to the river' but in the first stanza has remarked that 'they have built their house/ in the field below the woods'...? His use of 'scratch like birds' and 'tick on the road' though is what I find most interesting in this qautrain. The use of scratch suggests that the leaves are almost trying to find a way into this house, that nature is trying to encroach upon human habitation and ownership as pointed out in the first quatrain, with a scratch being a pretty harmless word. But then again wasn't it Mercutio who said 'Ay, ay, a scratch, a scratch; marry, tis enough...' And in this poem, only a scratch is needed for Mahon to be inspired to pursue this thought about leaves and impermanence. The 'tick' on the road is loaded with meaning: it has connotations of a bomb ticking down to its explosion, or the ticking of a clock, either way, Mahon seems to to suffuse this part of the poem with an incredible sense of suspense, but in a muted way, due to the controlled short line lengths.

Third Quatrain

Mahon begins each of these quatrains anew, by which I mean he takes a new sentence. Each of the quatrains are their own little word of mediation and philosophy. I can't help but wonder what the poem would have been like if he had connected the stanzas and whether it would have given the poem more of a through-line as at times, I think what holds this poem back is a sense that the quatrains are working individually as opposed to with each other. What does connect them though is imagery and repetition, which we can see at the start of this quatrain which begins with the same phrase as the fourth quatrain's 'Somewhere...' Touches like this are what make Mahon so understated in his mastery. What really strikes me about this quatrain, though, and indeed all of the quatrains is the way he opens them. Most poets would be happy to have the opening lines of each of any of his quatrains as the opening lines to their poems, and Mahon just seems to be able to write them so easily. The opening lines of each of this poem's quatrains feel like the openings of new poems. 'Somewhere there is an afterlife/ of dead leaves' is a great use of enjambment where the line ending does such greart heavy-lifting. Perhaps, though, overdoes the abstractions in this poem as we have: 'prisoners of infinite choice', 'afterlife/ of dead leaves', and 'heaven/ of lost futures.' I think he overuses this device in this poem and as result the poem gets lost in its own philosophising at times. In saying that, the image of the stadium filled with an 'infinite/ rustling and sighing', despite the unfortunate repetition of 'infinite' from the first line and despite the cliché of 'rustling' leaves, is still a very memorable one.

Final Quatrain

Michael Longley once said that “I tell my children, reading books makes up for only having the one life" and you feel that what Mahon really wanted to say, he says in this final quatrain: the idea or frustration of only having one life, and being limited to choices we make, and the impossibility/fantasy of having 'infinite choice.' In many ways he leaves us a with a poem with no little sense of regret for some life choices, and the impossibility and luck in choosing wisely. We get this sense particularly in his use of 'heaven/ of lost futures' suggesting that the speaker feels that the roads not travelled may have held more happiness, or to use his term 'fulfilment.' This term, in fact, 'fulfilment' is different to happiness, one can lead a fulfilled life that is largely quite miserable, but feels somehow complete or replete with achievement. In that sense, then, this is a poem of longing as much as it is about uncertaintly, and whether the path the poet, Mahon, had chosen in being a poet, was a fulfilling one. After all, his father's words to him which seem to ring through his whole life were 'when are you going to give up the poetry nonsense?' It seems in this poem, maybe Mahon was entertaining or questioning the notion of just how fulfilling the life of a poet really is, and whether he had made the wrong choice. The ultimate irony is, though, in writing a poem in which he doubts his own decision to become a poet, he has written a beautiful and lasting poem which, while it is not perfect, further consolidates his position as one of the great Irish writers.