In Díseart Cemetery, Co Donegal

Considered to be Christian since the 6th century, but evidence of  Neolithic burial. Díseart is spare and magical. Religions pass into each other, rituals too. Díseart, among many sites in Ireland, is an example of this.

Silence, a bell without a clapper,

a call to prayer;

cross the bridge

you'll reach a state of grace.

Through the long grass, 

a well, earth's blood;

cleanse yourself

to the purity of water.

Three cairns 

to the the freedom of souls;

then, beneath the stone arch, pass, 

free into eternity.

Lowerymore River at Barnesmore Gap

Sinuous river, beer-brown water,

easing past bows

where heaped

granite stones, rounded beneath

numberless years flow,

curl tighter

your mosaic bronze bed

shining now

under inter-crossed

ripples grinning

back straw-coloured sunlight.

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.