The House on the Hillside Opposite

The house among the trees on the hillside opposite is visible in the afternoon light.

I could not see it this morning nor yesterday evening, but now I see its rusted roof;

it shows in a gap between the fir trees. Four cleared fields bound by stone walls

and crossed by an overgrown path are a napkin fixed at its neck; behind it,

the hill rises, a patchwork of confer, fern and heather: rough, poor terrain.

The house, empty of its people but their belongings remaining where they were.

Mountain sheep come near but don’t trespass; the trees, however, will. They will

break and enter, force their way through the walls, dismantle the roof, split the floors.

The effects of a household will mix with leaf litter: bottles, cups, saucers, a necklace,

an old radio, a hammer, an iron, a light shade, the cheap picture frames, a tin box

with buttons still inside, no, the buttons with the black flakes of rust mixed through.

All will be buried in the soil, but not the people.

They are already in the soil, but not the same soil, nor anywhere in these parts;

they are buried across the sea, where necessity took them.

So the house was of no use; the possessions had no use, not even to looters or vandals.

How strange are lives that can be so intense minute by minute and, yet, one morning,

bags packed, a home is left with all its paraphernalia in place; the fields are left, the hillside left,

and for love or health or money, what was once all can suddenly be valueless.

Inheriting The Land.

  Emigration seems to be a never-ending feature of Irish life. This poem  is rooted in the Ireland of my childhood.  The boat then had the effect a little death for those left behind.

Inheriting The Land.

Here the sea is no more than a sigh in a shell,

conversations speed past, pole high, Dublin to Galway

and music is the wind whistling beneath a door.

Slightness describes Summer's step,

stonework its skies; a little light drips

from its edges but it's falling from a miser's hand.

Across the fields the church, within its necklace

of dead congregations, is a rusty hinge;

a place filled with a century's stillness.

And the ivy-choked trees lean closer together

like old men guessing at each others' words.

If you were to fly over these patchwork hills,

along the hedgerows and through the lightless haggarts,

you'd never meet a soul. The old farmers are sitting

in their twilight kitchens, their families standing

on the mantelpiece in the other room that's never used

with faces tanned beneath American skies.

Only the din of crows seeps into that silence;

crows more numerous than leaves on the sycamores,

always bickering, hogging the light,

building their cities, staking their inheritance.

Emigration never left

There was a time, maybe thirteen or fourteen years ago when it seemed the country was rid, once and for all, of the sad days of mass emigration. All was lift; then came the collapse. Now, Dublin is vibrant again, but in many rural parts it's the old story of population decline, absence of youth, absence of vigour.

The scene I'm describing seemed like it was becoming less relevant, but unfortunately no.

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.

Old Houses in an Old Country

Emigration from Ireland in the middle of the 20th century led to a countryside that was dotted with farmsteads that had an eerie stillness to them. Warm Summer afternoons sagged with the silence. The lethargy that hung over the fields had more to do with the absence of children than  draining heat. The older people remained in stifled attitudes in darkened kitchens. Sun beams seemed to purposely miss them.

 

Is this an accurate memory? I'm afraid I cannot say.

 

 

A Stranger In The Townland.

 

 

In Autumn the farmhouse

with the sun-folded field beneath its chin,

traps the daylight in its spectacles,

then flashes it away.

 

A swing hangs among the orchard's arthritic trees

without stirring;

without remembering

a frantic liveliness now reduced

to the occasional commotion of a falling fruit.

 

Once songs of apples filled the farmhouse;

but the children became photographs,

the dust settled on their frames

and soon Autumns were flying uncontrollably by.

Today, between its curiosities, a bluebottle drones.

 

Now that the conversation with the hillside

is ended, the farmhouse

with the sycamore stole

has become an eccentric;

a stranger in the townland. 

Emigration - Empty Houses

An upshot of emigration is the aging of the population, particularly in rural parts. Old farmhouses, their young families gone, used to be a much more prevalent feature of the Irish countryside in the sixties and seventies; the  new wave  of departures may, sadly, turn the clock back. In silencing dead summer  heat, the emptiness of these houses is accentuated.   

 

 A Stranger In The Townland.

 

In Autumn the farmhouse

with the sun-folded field beneath its chin,

traps the daylight in its spectacles,

then flashes it away.

 

A swing hangs among the orchard's arthritic trees

without stirring;

without remembering

a frantic liveliness now reduced

to the occasional commotion of a falling fruit.

 

Once songs of apples filled the farmhouse;

but the children became photographs,

the dust settled on their frames

and soon Autumns were flying uncontrollably by.

Today, between its curiosities, a bluebottle drones.

 

Now that the conversation with the hillside

is ended, the farmhouse

with the sycamore stole

has become an eccentric;

a stranger in the townland. 

Strange how the world turns

Strange how the world turns. Empty houses dotted the countryside in the twentieth century. Emigration hollowed out rural Ireland right up to the nineties. Old cottages in various stages of dilapidation were everywhere. Then came wealth and with it those houses were demolished and replaced, or they were renovated; the semi-ruins of previous decades became thin on the ground.

Now empty houses dot the country again. Half-built housing estates abandoned without even the melancholy beauty of having once been inhabited; ugly building sites on the peripheries of towns;ugly as rotten teeth.

Both situations happened because of the lack of money, but one marks an era that was tarnished by run-away excess, and frequently greed. These remains will, since they have no other redeeming factor, at least remind us of that.

This poem from Sunfire (Dedalus Press, 1998)was an attempt to catch the sadness of emigration and the aging of the resident population as I saw it in the seventies.

A Stranger In The Townland.


In Autumn the farmhouse
with the sun-folded field beneath its chin,
traps the daylight in its spectacles,
then flashes it away.

A swing hangs among the orchard's arthritic trees
without stirring;
without remembering
a frantic liveliness now reduced
to the occasional commotion of a falling fruit.

Once songs of apples filled the farmhouse;
but the children became photographs,
the dust settled on their frames
and soon Autumns were flying uncontrollably by.
Today, between its curiosities, a bluebottle drones.

Now that the conversation with the hillside
is ended, the farmhouse
with the sycamore stole
has become an eccentric;
a stranger in the townland.