One of the Most Beautiful Places in Ireland

This poem, The Green Road, refers to one of the most beautiful and very walkable walks in Ireland; the green road skirts around the north-western corner of the Burren in county Clare. A karst limestone landscape with unique fauna, herds of wild goats, and the most stunning views of Galway Bay, the mountains of Connemara and the Aran Islands. A lot of people will drive on to the Cliffs of Moher, but if you've got 2 working legs beneath you and a couple of free hours this is an unbeatable pleasure.

The poem was included in the anthology, Fermata: Writings inspired by Music (Artisan House, 2016) which was edited by Eva Bourke and Vincent Woods. It's a magnificent collection, featuring writers such as Thomas Kinsella,Vona Groarke, James Joyce, Seamus Heaney, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Paul Durcan, Derek Mahon, Pearse Hutchinson, Paula Meehan among a host of others and a foreword by composer/musician Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin. These writings sing to the music that inspired them; be good to yourself and buy it.

The Green Road.© Copyright David Purchase and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

The Green Road

The blackthorns above Fenore
are flight rooted;
they are folklore’s skeletons,
beggars of the green road.

Scoured to the knuckle,
stunted on burren karst,
they are the hags on the mountain
hunched from Atlantic gales.

Yet even this stone-weary day,
with hunger perched on their throats,
a robin is singing in each
notes that singe the February air.

Beneath the huddling sky,
into the ear of the green road
it pours, clear as water,
the music of tin whistlers’ dreams.