Fog, it’s the mountain’s breath.
We arrive at the first cairn,
looming out of nothing:
fog ‒ colour of limestone;
fog made into stone.
We breath it;
breath in their spirits;
mountain of fog;
we enter the cairn;
enter a womb.
Crouched inside;
in no place, no time;
stone, air, water speaking
the language we have forgotten;
we must be reborn to hear it.
Ballindoon Priory is on the shores of Lough Arrow in Co Sligo. On a warm Summer's day it is a place of delicate beauty and calm.
Ballindoon
Cattle grazing, quiet as jellyfish;
mid-summer's trees drowsy,
loitering in the pools of their shadows.
The ruined priory of Ballindoon
perched between meadow and lake, asleep
with its dead congregations in its arms.
Stripped now to white-lichened limestone,
colours of an Irish sky;
scoured of medieval ostentation;
freed from the half-light of doleful nave
and chant-droning chancel,
the austerity of ceremonial formalies.
No longer prisoner,
no longer locked in to itself,
but open, earth to heaven, heaven to earth.
