ENGLISH EXAM
I was a bowl of odds before the start.
They all said John Masefield was a cert.
I’d learned everything about Sea Fever by heart.
It was Cargoes came up. I knew Cargoes
Began with Quinquirème, which I couldn’t spell,
And had amethysts, Isthamus, and Topazes,
which I couldn’t pronounce, never mind spell.
‘Write an appreciation of Cargoes
Quoting the poem in full.’
I said I certainly appreciated Cargoes, but
I thought Sea Fever was oceans ahead.
I said Sea Fever was a class of a disease.
I MUST go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
Anyone who read the poem would catch the disease.
And anyone who’d never even seen the sea could see why.
I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
I said Masefield had it so bad he was in a lather of sweat,
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
Like that time I got the measles, only different.
Sea Fever was contagious, without
a cure I said, and I was willing to bet
John Masefield wasn’t in the better of it yet.
* * *
When I read the next question I knew I’d lost the score.
‘A historical figure, supporting your essay with facts’.
I couldn’t think of any figure, and I wasn’t good on facts.
So I made one up. I made up the facts as well.
I re-invented my father. I wrote everything I knew about him
And a lot that I didn’t. That he was the hero of the Flying Column.
That his name was Timsy Mc Andrew and he was a fright.
That he shot forty Black and Tans in one night.
Afterwards they were all saying that they’d written about Parnell,
Michael Collins, or Padraig Pearce. One fella wrote about Churchill.
When Fr Kiely asked who I’d written about I admitted what I’d done.
‘Good man yourself,’ was all he said. I was a bowl of odds again.
— Michael Mc Carthy
Michael McCarthy grew up on a farm in West Cork, Ireland.
His first poetry collection Birds’ Nests and Other Poems won the Patrick Kavanagh Award, and his children’s books have been translated into seventeen languages.
‘English Exam’ is taken from At the Races, which was the overall winner in the Poetry Business 2008 Book & Pamphlet Competition, chosen by Michael Longley.
He works as a priest in North Yorkshire.
