Dunbrody Abbey

If whole, Dunbrody Abbey would be astonishingly beautiful.

As ruin, it stands, vestige of a medieval past, stripped of context;

its magnificence magnified by isolation, a gemstone outcrop

in a pasture, now lichened to the colours of the Irish sky.

Occasional flourishes in the stonework coax imagination’s

wooden scaffolds, ladders, ropes and pulleys to be assembled:

ribs must fan across vaulted ceilings, capitals must crown the columns,

grotesques and gargoyles must emerge, trespassers from the walls.

And though a melancholy breath pervades the ruined passages and doorways

from the devastation wrought by men, now smoothed by centuries’ weathering,

and the ceiling of sky that portends change and the eventual passing of all things,

its splendour prevails, and like sun dazzling on water, the old walls enchant.