Anam Cara

In cold that fasted solid from light,

A hermit space that let in no question.

This dark is all eyes; but cannot feel

How it blackens the breath and the heart.

It weighs me down as it would a stone.

 

ANCHOR

 

For Laurie

 

Everything

Depends

On the fall

Being utterly

Helpless

A meteor shaft

Of dead weight

Slicing through

Dreaming water

Aiming straight

At weakness

Underneath

In the stone

Destination

To vent

A wound

Desperate enough

To grip and hold

The strain

Of a pilgrim vessel

Swaying in the dark

On a surface

Where storms sleep

Lightly.

 

A BURREN PRAYER

 

Oremus,

Maria de Petra Fertilis:

May the praise of rain on stone

Recall the child lost in the heart’s catacomb.

May the light that turns the limestone white

Remind us that our solitude is bright.

May the arrival of gentians in their blue surprise

Bring glimpses of delight to our eyes.

May the wells that dream in the stone

Soothe the eternal that sleeps in our bone.

May the contemplative mind of the mountain

Assure us that nothing is lost or forgotten.

May the antiphon of ocean on stone

Guide the waves of loneliness home.

May the spirits who dwell in the ruin of

Corcomroe Lead our hearts to the one who is beautiful to know.

Go maire na mairbh agus a mbrionglóidí

I bhfoscadh chaoin dílis na Trinóide.*

 

NOTES

 

“The Banshee’s Grotto”—The authoritative work on the Banshee tradition in Irish folklore is Patricia Lysaght’s The Banshee: The Irish Death Messenger (Roberts Rinehart, 1996).

 

 

“The Secret of Thereness”—This poem takes its title from the title of a photograph by the Conamara photographer Fergus Bourke.

 

 

“Encounters”—The rosary is a form of devotion accompanying the contemplation of fifteen mysteries highlighted from the life of Jesus. They are divided into the Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious Mysteries. Fifteen decades of Hail Marys are recited; each decade is preceded by an Our Father and followed by a Glory Be to the Father. This devotion is usually prayed on rosary beads, consisting of a sequence of beads which represent the five decades corresponding to one set of the mysteries. According to the theologian Noel Dermot O’Donoghue, the rosary enfolds the mystical heart of Christianity. The name “rosary” comes from the flower, the rose, which in the medieval period was understood as a symbol of life eternal. The rosary in its present form emerged in late medieval Christianity.

 

 

“An Paidrín”—This poem was first written in Irish, and “The Rosary” is the English translation.

 

 

“Mountain-Looking”—Mullach Mór is a spectacular mountain in the Burren in the West of Ireland. It has been the subject of a recently successful ten-year environmental campaign by the Burren Action Group to prevent the Irish government from building an interpretation centre for tourists there.

 

 

“A Burren Prayer”—Corcomroe is the ruin of a twelfth-century Cistercian monastery in the Burren. It was dedicated to Maria de Petra Fertilis: Mary of the Fertile Rock.

INDEX OF FIRST LINES

 

Note: Entries in this index, carried over verbatim from the print edition of this title, are unlikely to correspond to the pagination of any given e-book reader. However, entries in this index, and other terms, may be easily located by using the search feature of your e-book reader.

After a hard climb 26

A kiss on the back of the neck tingles, 44

All night long, and all through the white day, 18

Among the kingdom of the winds, 15

And the earth fled to the lowest place. 19

As though the music of the ocean 35

Cast from afar before the stones were born 36

Don't ask me to walk here 70

Everything 80

Has to. Crack. Wet street. 75

I awaken 5

I gcuimhne ar Cyril Ó Céirín 34

In the empty carton 65

In the morning it takes the mind a while 37

In the winter night 30

Is the word the work 17

Is the word the work 78

It grew between you 60

It was a long time ago in another land. 50

I would love to live 23

Life sentence. First night. 21

Night carries blame for dream and 28

No man reaches where the moon touches a woman. 38

Nothing between us, so near 31

Nothing can make the night stay outside, 79

Oblique to the heart, the word a man seeks 40

Off course from the frail music sought by words 2

Oh, the rush with which the forgotten mind awakens 46

Oremus, 82

Parents know not what they do 3

Perhaps time is the keeper of distance and loss, 49

Rooted in the quiet earth beneath 24

Sometimes, behind the lines 67

Sometimes you see us 76

Somewhere in our clay remembers the speed of cold, 48

Stranger sometimes than the yellow crotchet 22

The angel of the bog mourns in the wind 58

The glistening, neon dome 9

The messenger comes from that distant place 13

The mountain waits for no one 63

There is a strange edge to the wind today, 56

The thorns woven to your head are nothing 43

The words of a secret have rivet eyes 39

They allow themselves to be strangers. 73

Through its mouth at Gleann Corráin, the rising 71

To travel through the trough 7

Unknown to us, there are moments 11

Was it a choice once, 68

Whatever veil of mercy shrouds the dark 41