It's true that in the South there is, in general,
an absence of agency - I mean of the efficient sort.
Things somehow get done, if you know what I mean.
But things could just as easily not get done.
Things happen according to the seasons,
and even then they depend on mood, which depends
in turn on the weather. The people of the South -
even in bigger towns, such as Li-Chung and Li-Ciao -
lack any sense of urgency, they haven't yet
pulled themselves out of the benignly lazy state
that natural cycles warrant in a generous climate.
(Apples taste sweeter in the orchards round Li-Ciao
than anywhere on earth. The children's cheeks
are as rosy as the cheeks of the apples.)
When the Emperor comes on his five-yearly visit
there's something of a flurry, but it would look
to Northerners like the Day of Rest: people can be seen
out painting their houses or fixing wagon wheels
(again, of course, depending on the weather).
The women are more beautiful in the South;
sensuous, fun-loving, they make bad secretaries;
not that there's much need for secretaries
in Li-Chung or Li-Ciao. It's said the healthy lustre
of Southern people's skin comes from bathing under
the many waterfalls, which they'll do all day in good weather.
Very few people here except state functionaries -
usually recruited from the North - are able to write:
poetry is indistinguishable from song, although
the songs have the epic quality of being endless,
which suits the temperament and is indifferent to
the weather: when they can't sing out of doors
in their traditional wine-gardens, they sing indoors
in their traditional wine-taverns. The one thing
they do with great gusto is to sing.
Singing has no social function of the kind
the Emperor's anthropologists seem to think
must be latent under any manifest activity;

there's no hiatus between life and singing,
but that is not to say, as might be said
by one of our pretentious litterateurs,
hell-bent on poetry as celebration,
that singing is life for them as life is singing.
Between songs, there's always a period
for conversation, or in the case of wakes,
for silence. New songs are composed
almost every day, and either enter the repertoire
or don't: the only critics are the singers,
which means the people, whose final verdict
is to sing or not to sing. This may all strike you
as being egregiously mindless, as it did me at first,
but I found out that they discuss their songs
with one another in the throes of composition
rather than post-factum, and they say:
Better to make sure the wine is good
than to drink it and make a bitter face.
In this way, they ensure that very few
of the songs composed are dropped as unsingable,
and it means that their repertoire is infinite
and that everything that happens is sung about,
as well as the possible and fantastic;
their political debates, even, occur
as an exchange of songs. Apart from that,
and the apples, the naked bodies under waterfalls,
the apple-cheeked children, the births and funerals,
the slow creaking of cartwheels towards the huge
granaries of Li-Chung and Li-Ciao; as I said,
apart from beauty and ease, love, death and apple wine,
nobody does anything here in the South;
things somehow get done, if you know what I mean.

Part 1 of "The Myth of the South"
from Listening to Different Drummers
by Ciaran O'Driscoll, Dedalus Press, 1993.

Ciaran O'Driscoll was born in Callan, Co Kilkenny, and lives with his wife and son in Limerick, where he lectures in the School of Art and Design at the Limerick Institute of Technology.

He has published five collections of poetry, the latest of which is Moving On, Still There: New and Selected Poems (2001). He has also recently published a childhood memoir, A Runner Among Falling Leaves. In January 2000, he was awarded the Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in Poetry.

From Bait
By Peter Howard

They say he was a legend in the South.
He looks the part: his fur like copper wire,
his claws like razors and, in his red mouth,
his teeth like rocks. His bloodshot eyes like fire.

Find out more about Peter Howard
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From Sestina: Altaforte
By Ezra Pound

Damn it all! all this our South stinks peace.
You whoreson dog, Papiols, come! Let's to music!
I have no life save when the swords clash.
But ah! when I see the standards gold, vair, purple, opposing
And the broad fields beneath them turn crimson,
Then howl I my heart nigh mad with rejoicing.

From I Hardly Remember
By Rafael Guillén

It was a spoiled remnant of the South. A beach without fishing boats, where the sun was for sale.
A stretch of shore, now a jungle of lights and languages that grudgingly offered, defeated, its obligation of sand.

Find out more about Rafael Guillén

(By the way he is not Subcommander Marcos!)