Paul Durcan – Thinking About Suicide

Although I may never commit suicide

I spend parts of each day thinking about suicide –

Thinking about how I lack the courage to do it.

–

I wake in the mourning with 60 per cent depression.

That’s how it remains for the whole day,

Except for the odd occasion in a year

–

In the doorway or on the street I meet by chance

For a few minutes a woman passing-by

Who has the time to stop and talk for three minutes

–

Or five minutes or even sometimes seven or eight minutes,

Who rocks back on her heels in her pink, hooped skirt

With laughter, no matter what the topic.

–

Depression and despair are two different states

Of mind, not having a lot in common.

Although I have 60 per cent depression, I do not despair.

–

I do not see eye to eye with Samuel Beckett

Who disapproved of suicide and who promulgated

The doctrine of ”going on” for the sake of ”going on”.

–

Estranged from my family, if I do not soon

Take my own life, others will take it from me –

Hooded males with knives in their tracksuits

–

Or medics in their scrubs prancing corridors

Or cowpat-faced ward sisters smirking

Or ice-cold proprietors of old peoples’s homes.

–

How is it that you do not see it, Samuel,

That I do not want to go on for the sake of going on –

Seeing the same old, tired-out impressionist paintings again and again?

–

Men are such po-faced bores.

Each one of them an editor-in-chief.

I wand to stand still by the water’s edge.

–

I want to hold a woman’s hand for the last time.

I want to fill my pockets with Palaeozoic stones.

I want to open my eyes.

 

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From the collection Praise In Which I Live And Move And Have My Being (2012).