The Walls Below The Mountain

The walls of old fields are everywhere,

walls that counted bones.

Feet dug into wet earth, knees bent, backs arched,

boulders raised to waist height;

carried to walls, walls growing, knees bent,

knees straightened, arms bent, arms straightened;

feet dug into wet earth, knees bent, backs arched,

boulders raised to waist height;

carried to walls, walls growing, knees bent,

knees straightened, arms bent, arms straightened.

Beneath the cling film of skin,

the clank-free movement of levers

and hillside cleared by slow degree;

in this way they daily hauled the sun from east to west.

Where they lived

 

 

 

 

I’m always tempted to stop at derelict houses, old ruins, etc., sites where past generations have left their mark. There’s a particular atmosphere, a poignancy. In their state of aging or decay, they suggest sadness’s, hardships.  The tiny rooms, the (often) miserably poor land, potato ridges still outlined in a nearby field, a fuchsia in full bloom.

I hope to find something more than just the gable or bare walls, something that will transmit a stronger sense of the people that lived there. A surviving hearth, the lintel over the window, over the door, the details that bring some personality to the remains.

The other day I came upon the ruins of an old cottage at the top of a valley in the Bluestacks in Donegal. What a hard place it must have been in deep Winter; now its walls half gone, but its extent and layout still very clear. In a recess in the gable, there was a stone clearly shaped for some function; was it a pestle, or a weight?

It is so rare to find anything but bare walls scoured by the weather. I thought of holding onto it, but, much more than any museum exhibit, it was where it belonged; I left it. 

 

No People

The hunch-doubled thorns,

ingrown pantries

dung-puddled;

the moss-stone walls

tumble-gapped.

 

The nettle-cracked doorway,

lintel-fallen

byre-footed;

the cloud curtained windows

elder-berried. 

 

The stone-sheltered air

bumbled still,

ruin-reverent;

the submerged garden ridges

dumb-founded.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Remembering

A lot has been written on the subject of the Irish famine; most of what’s needed to be said has been said. However, when I found myself digging potatoes in water-logged soil beneath the Bluestacks, gathering up marble-sized potatoes; I couldn’t but be reminded of the value even these had for families whose survival depended on ground such as this. 

Hard to appreciate, but the span of two just lifetimes (by today’s standards) would land us right back into the middle of those years, and hard to credit also, that affluence and starvation still live cheek by jowl today. 

Remembering 

In November, this charcoal month of sagging

clouds slung low between granite mountains,

while the trap-jawed landscape stalks,

diggers hunched double to the ground

are harvesting bright potatoes that constantly

endeavour, like mice, to escape, scuttle back

into the sodden soil, where roots compete

for water, and decay is life rekindling.  

Round-backed labourers, boulders fallen off

the mountain, sieve the soil for each stunted práta,

(size of a fingernail, ten minutes of a child’s life),

that scampered off the sleamhán, scuttled back

into the earth, fugitives from scrabbling fingers.

Potatoes, apples of the soil, sole currency of life

to those whose DNA shaped these fingers,

now rough with working the same earth.

Summer-time

Looking forward to having a few pints in
















Biddy’s in Barnesmore, and walking in

















the Bluestacks, getting started on a Roscommon anthology and lots and lots of eeeeeeease.