Giorria

Noiméad ar a shuaimhneas,

ina thiarnas ciúin, folamh.

Go tobann ag ropadh tríd an scrobarnach

mar a bhí mé í láthair.

Draíocht an nóiméid,

é ina shuí ina áit féin,

imníoch, ach an méid atá nádúrtha dó

í dtús Aibreáin, é ar faire ar chnocán féarmhar.

Agus draíocht a éalú,

an aclaíocht sin agus an diongbháilteas;

treo áirithe aige, an cinneadh agus an bhogadh

déanta ar an bpointe.

Transl.

Hare

One moment at ease,
in his quiet empty dominion.
Suddenly flashing through the undergrowth
because I am present.

The magic of the moment,
him sitting in his own place,
anxious, but the amount that is natural to him
at the beginning of April, him on the lookout on a grassy hillock.

And the magic of his escape,
the agility and the single-mindedness;
a particular direction, the decision and the movement
made in an instant.

I love You

This is an updated version of a poem I posted about two years ago.

I love you

The chives’ purple heads standing on their bottle-green stalks

were June’s bright soldiers above the dun-coloured sandstone;

beyond them, on the hillside opposite, the soft pile forestry

was our wealth, especially in the rich glow of evening sun.

I moved closer to you, held out my hand to find yours already there.

to be links in this chain of beauty; and then I said, ‘I love you.’

It was not just the moment, but the magnificence we were part of;

happiness was bubbling,  the words came like breaking into a song.

Minnows

Compass needles

in current,

still

as thought.

Flint arrows,

they darted linear,

abrupt angles sparked

and quenched

Euclidian

in execution.

Feichín's Penance

January, frigid dawn. Rain

forged in heaven's graphite-dark belly

flaying the island.  

Fifteen strides out from the shore,

Feichín’s head, gull on the water,

chanting to the glory of God.

Waves crash over, tearing hair,

weed on the rocks, and eyes,

cockle-shells bleached staring.

Charlie Brown's Eyes

This isn't the first version of this poem that I've posted, probably not the last. Rewrite follows rewrite until, like evolution, the series of mutations leads to  a completely new poem. And for that reason, I've always thought it important that all rewrites are kept.

Charlie Brown's Eyes

On the Lower Kimmage Road

I stopped to watch Charlie Brown's eyes

winking in puddles;

an iodine-stained filth was polluting the city.

In the pub a burnt-out match

and a rib of hair snagged my attention,

my convexed eyes;

I drank more than intended.

A carrier bag gulped on the broken white line

and I moved on. In the hallway,

removing my overcoat, I counted sixteen balusters,

re-buttoned my overcoat and walked out.

Gliondar

Ag siúil ar gconair choille trathnóna geimhridh,
caonach fíorglas mór thimpeall: ar stocaí na gcrainn,
ar na carraigeacha, sna locháin uisce.

An cosán go léir mar srútháin glas os mo chomhair;
sámh ar mo shúile, ciúin i mo chluasa, bog ar bhoinn mo chosa.
Anseo is ansiúd, paistí geal buíglas le solas ghréine

– meangaidh gáire ar aghaidh an nádúir –
iad ag rith aerach mar coileáin a bhí ann
agus mise líonta leis an gliondar a thagann leis an radharc sin.

At last, my first Irish poem

It has taken a long time, my Irish is getting there but slowly; I've a long way to go. A friend of mine suggested that we both take the plunge, mind you his command of the language is far greater than mine.

Anyway, I’ve wanted to write in Irish for a long time; the language suggests poems that English doesn’t. It brings me closer to the land, its atmosphere and its grain. Even though I lack the linguistic fluency, it still prompts me with words that convey more deeply the textures of the landscape and the spirit of the people who have lived here speaking with these words before me.

In the past, and perhaps still in some quarters, one of the slights thrown at the Irish language questioned the point of  a language that had forty different words for the same seaweed but was adrift (excuse the pun) in modern lingo. There are few who would quibble with Cezanne's multiple takes on Mont Sainte-Victoire or Monet's garden scenes.The same applies in language, different words bring different nuances; they open different circuits in the brain. A wider vocabulary gives rise to a wider richer range of expression. This applies to the use of different  languages also.

So, some might say I’ve got a nerve, but one of the blessings of blogging is having a reason to write and a place to post the efforts. I would, however, be very grateful to any reader who has enough Irish to correct my grammar, as I’m fairly sure there’s changes to be made.

I've included a rough translation below.

Oileán     

Sé an suaimhneas timpeall na dtithe a théann i bhfeidhm ort;

tá tú in ann gnáthsaol an phobail a shamhlú go héasca 

mar tá iarsmaí a shaolta scaipthe i ngach dtreo

ach iad go léir ag dul ar ais go mall go dtí an cré.

Thall, torann fharraige mar a bhí go deo, bualadh saoil na ndaoine.

An cé, a bhí lán beo le gníomhaíocht na hiascairí

ag deisiú a líonta, ag ullamhú potaí gliomaíde,

gan bhád amhain feistiú ann inniu.

Agus rianta chruathain na ndaoine le féiceáil

sna garraíthe mór thimpeall, fíorglas le iarrachtaí na glúnta uilig;

na hiomairí a bhain siad, ann fós ach ina fhásach,

mar scríobhneoireacht ársa gur mhair cine laochaois anseo fadó.

Island

It's the calmness around the houses that strikes you/ you can easily imagine the lifestyle of the people/ because the remnants of their lives are scattered all around/but they're all going back slowly into the earth.

Beyond, the noise of the sea as it has always been, the beat of community life/the quay that was full of the activities of fishermen mending their nets, preparing their lobster pots/without a boat moored there today.

And the hardship of the people to be seen/in the fields all around, rich green with the efforts of all the generations/ the ridges they dug still there but overgrown/ like ancient writing that a heroic race lived here long ago.

St Féichín's Warning

As hare – whiskers taut, eyes bulging –

he scours the mainland

in the grey hour of evening

when demons go searching for currency.

Sitting sentinel on day’s shore-line,

grabbing at the seen and the half-seen,

reining in phantasms,

deciphering the commotions of molecules,

he senses, suddenly, a juddering in the air

from around some looming presence 

– an approaching darkness, darker than night – 

and an ice-bolt hits him.

With the flesh creeping along his flanks,

he kicks back his hind legs

and bounds through the tussocks,

to the church in the hollow.

The bell’s baleful clonk, strange at this hour,

draws shadowy figures out of the night

into a bedraggled huddle

standing anxiously in the sanctuary of the church.

.

Féichín, with one last tug on the rope,

and hare’s wild gaze in his eyes,

turns to them gravely

to announce the arrival of Satan on Omey.

And on that ominous note, happy new year. 

The Discovery

Many years after he had died,

I found the smell of my father’s office in his briefcase.

Pipe-smoke, cigarettes, pencil-parings, paper;

not just his office but part of himself
still in existence after all this time.

When I was small I would ask to sit there, beside him,

in the heat, the smoke, that mixture of smells. 

He would say if you’re quiet; I would promise

until, minutes later, I talked too much or stirred too much

and, well, I was ejected.

I opened the case to an assemblage of atoms 

unique to my childhood,to the sixties even, 
put there by my father and now dissipating 
like an art treasure in the sunlight,

the last of my father turning to nothing.

St Feichín Takes His Followers To Omey

Continuing adventures of St Feichín of Omey:

St Feichín Takes His Followers To Omey

Feichín in the wooded Glen of Fore

declared that men must shun trees,

‘for’, said he, ‘sinners thrive where rain

does not flay the hides of men.’

 ‘Let us go to Omey where trees have shrivelled to stone,

where thorns are the sea driven ahead of wild winds

and skies of  gorse will lash our backs.

Let us go far from trees who throw their shade on our repentance.’

So they built their monastery on the island

where the winds rode in on the dragons of the ocean,

where the rains fell incessantly, nails, even out of  a clear winter’s night

and their ears rang with the booming of souls drowning in eternity.

Encroaching onto the landscape

In leisure

                     Forgetful of the Gods

                              Blood

      Hardship

                   Famine

How those soul-sodden fields must detest us

The After-Mass Men

Remember those figures by the church wall 

Sculpted in after-mass conversations:

Blather-tattooed men

That hung there by their jackets;

Museums with pockets,

Pockets full of knives, pipes and matches.

Stone men:

Pre-Christians defiling Sabbaths

With their Saturday conversations.

Gargoyles:

Coats would be wrapped against them

As though they were sudden showers of hail.

The Angel and St Feichín

Readers of my blog will be getting familiar with St Feichín by now; I, myself, have taken a great fondness to this 7^th century Irish saint. 

He’s got all the powers of a super-hero without the noise of contemporary technology around him; he’s the perfect, early Christian, Jedi master. But better than that, he had all the wonderful traits: abstinent, pleasant, charitable, powerful, emaciated, just-worded, honest, pious, rich in sense, godly, affectionate, discreet, opportune, wise, prayerful………………………………………………..( from a medieval document via a seventeenth century rewriting); yet he was wonderfully contrary, when called back to confront St Ciaran, he walked backwards so as not to look him in the face. And, guess what, he died from a plague, he himself called down.

So here's my version of his call to convert the pagans of Omey.

The Angel and St Feichín

One night a very large bird settled on the roof of the cell in which St Feichín was sleeping; this event occurred at Easdara in the present day County Sligo.

Still there at dawn, the brilliance of the early sun reflecting off its magnificent plumage caused a crowd to gather. And as the morning progressed the crowd swelled further, to such a size, in fact, that their tumult distracted the saint who was at the time in a transport brought on by the deepest meditation. And so, it was not with little annoyance that he emerged from his hut to inquire as to why such a large crowd had gathered in that spot.

When the extraordinary bird saw Feichín, it started up a jabbering that amazed all those who were there. Feichín, for his part, recognizing the bird as a gannet, and knowing that they never travelled so far inland, moved closer to listen and soon found himself conversing in a language, the like of which he had no previous knowledge.

All marvelled at the bird: its gleaming white plumage, the extent of its wings whose span was greater than the width of the cell, the fierce grey eyes which never ventured from the saint’s face, its insistent natter.

The conversation continued for two hours; an engagement between man and bird that had the mouths of all present gaping like the black caves in the hills to the south. Never once were they deflected by the milling of the crowd around them nor stop to wet their throats nor, even once, did the flow of their communication wane.

And then, quite suddenly, around noon, to the amazement of all, the gannet rose with a great pumping of its wings, followed by Feichín who rose from the ground like a leaf gathered up in a gale. Into the sky, side by side, growing smaller and smaller, eventually two black dots like stars that went out, the gannet and Feichín disappeared into the clouds travelling in a southwest direction.

All those that gathered fell to their knees and, as one voice, emitted a howling that was partly extolment of the greatness of God and Feichín, partly lamentation at the taking of their saint.

But it was that same day that Feichín landed on the brightly flowered sward of Omey, and it is since that day that the people of Omey have their faces turned to the one God.

Flight Mechanism

I found a bird

dismantled;

a pair of wings,

still feathered,

on an axis of miniature bones.

Only yesterday,

this anatomical array

imparted the capability of flight.

Head, legs, belly

removed;

I found it,

like a daVinci investigation,

a perfect isolation of the relevant parts.

Peninsula

A peninsula: shingle, cockle and barnacle shells, strips of desiccated wrack,

greened with sea-holly. The wooden cabin, though frequently lashed with spray,

was salted dry, and coloured somewhere between bone and limestone;

I lived there for five months before you came.

From the land our light seemed no more than a single candle burning;

the clothes on our line had the appearance of  rags,

and the smoke from our fire curled into the sky with a nonchalance

that suggested our daily struggles with lighting washed up timbers.

You’ll remember the shingle made walking difficult; with each step the stones rolled.

You said it sounded like the grinding of a mouth full of loose teeth; but, around the bay,

 a billion stones rolled thunderously with each beached wave;

and the  breeding terns came at us like boomerangs.

Nights: we were  unlit stars perhaps, but at one with the universe, free and alive

 in the unbroken expanse of shore, sea and sky; we had  space

 to be colossal, to exhilarate; and moonlight, our spotlight to roar songs into the cosmos,

to take the universe’s light into our eyes and exult in it.

Came the day of migration: wings outstretched, muscles fluid, necks craned to our separate
destinations; we, without backward glances, took to the air

with eyes big enough to countenance the curve of the earth, greedy enough to fly it;

and left our peninsula, a finger  pointing to somewhere .