Desert Island Poems: ‘Donegal’ by Robin Robertson

"I've often thought there are three themes in poetry: life, time, and their passing. Robertson's poem explores all three..."

Donegal

for Ellie

Ardent on the beach at Rossnowlagh

on the last day of summer,

you ran through the shallows

throwing off shoes, and shirt and towel

like the seasons, the city's years,

all caught in my arms

as I ploughed on behind you, guardian still

of dry clothes, of this little heart

not quite thirteen,

breasting the waves

and calling back to me

to join you, swimming in the Atlantic

on the last day of summer.

I saw a man in the shallows

with his hands full of clothes, full of

all the years,

and his daughter going

where he knew he could not follow.

from Swithering (Picador, 2006)

I’ve often thought there are three themes in poetry: life, time, and their passing. Robertson’s poem, Donegal, is a poignant exploration of all three in 18 lines of free verse, which lingers long after reading. For all its themes, though, Robertson weighs down the flightiness of such concepts with the place names of Donegal, Rossnowlagh and Atlantic. Donegal, or Dún na nGal in Irish, means fort of the foreigners, or strangers, which is fitting in a poem in which a father watches his daughter in the present moment swim away into, to paraphrase L.P Hartley, the foreign country of the past. At the shoreline, a metaphor in itself for a kind of boundary line of time, he is met with the melancholic realisation that his daughter is no longer a child, and that he is becoming a stranger to himself as much to his daughter, as he stands ‘full of all the years.’

Beginning with the stressed syllable ‘Ar’ followed by three unstressed syllables before the monosyllabic stress of ‘beach’ there is a wonderful wave-like movement to the rhythm of this poem’s opening line which is immediately inviting. The adjective ‘ardent’ is also an unusual choice and a word which is almost archaic in tone, indeed it can either mean enthusiastic, or glowing/bruning as it comes from the Latin verb ardere, meaning to burn. The Presbyterians among you will be familiar with it from that denomination’s motto ‘ardens sed virens’ which translates as ‘burning but flourishing’. Robertson, whose father was a minister in the Church of Scotland, may well have been familiar with this phrase. ‘Ardent’, in many ways, is a sounding note for this whole poem, with its connotations of the glowing bright light of the beach, the glowing promise of the the daughter in her youth, counterpoised with the burning wick of time, and the father, standing there watching his life wash away in front of him.

The whole poem seems poised on this precipice of time as it’s ‘the last day of summer’ as the clothes become ‘like the seasons, the city’s years,/ all caught in my arms.’ The last day of summer seems significant and a metaphor for innocence as the daughter is ‘not quite thirteen’ and therefore on the cusp of adolescence and everything that will entail. So, the poem, then, becomes a poem which balances intense joy of being alive in nature, and of parenthood, with the realisation that his daughter is growing up, and therefore away from him, the difference and distance symbolised in how the daughter is ‘breasting the waves’ (note the use of breasting which has connotations of a girl physically becoming a woman as well as a movement in the water) while he stands ‘in the shallows/ with his hands full of clothes…’

Many poets would have ended the poem on the line ‘the last day of summer’ but what Robertson does after this, is an example of what marks him out to me as one of the most underrated lyric poets of our time. After this line, he then changes the perspective, and gives us a birds-eye view of himself as he ‘saw a man in the shallows’. This shift in perspective works perfectly in highlighting the speaker’s sense of separation not only from his daughter who is growing up and away from him, but also from himself, as if he doesn’t know who he is anymore, but yet ‘knew he could not follow’. It’s an epiphany of sorts, then, where the poet realises the limits of his knowledge.

If you enjoyed this and want to know about Robin Robertson, you can read a longer post I've written about his 2006 collection Swithering, in which this poem appears, here.