Anam Cara

Originally published in paperback in Ireland by Salmon Publishing, a division of Poolbeg Enterprises, Ltd., Dublin, in 1994.

Three Rivers Press and the Tugboat design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

O’Donohue, John, 1956–2008.

Echoes of memory / John O’Donohue. — 1st pbk. ed.

p. cm.

Originally published: Dublin : Salmon Pub., 1994.

1. Ireland—Poetry. 2. Spirituality—Poetry. I. Title.

PR6065.D574E24    2011

821′.914—dc22                   2010045523

eISBN: 978-0-307-71759-7

v3.1

Dí féin, anam-ċara

Mo smaoínte agus mo shaol

Contents

Cover

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

I

Air Holds Echo

Nowhere

Taken

After the Sea

Raven

Beannacht

November Questions

Uaigneas

Lull

Fossil

Woman and Steel

II

Hungers of Distance

Purgatorial

Exiled Clay

Instead of Kissing the Cross

Anything Can Come

Young Mind

Broken Moon

Expectation

Nothingness: The Secret of the Cross

Self-Distance

Ich wünsche mir

Cottage

The Voyage of Gentians

Betrayed by Light

Voices at the Funeral

i Body

ii Grave

iii Coffin

iv Forgetfulness

III

Clay Holds Memory

Exposed

Origins

Raid

Damage: A Conamara Cacophony

Gleninagh

Selves

Tropism

Outside Memory

Chosen

IV

Icons of Love

Nets

The Grief of Love

Invocation

Frail Shelter

Afterwards

Jealousy

Skeletal

Messenger of Sight

Moon Blessing

Nothing Else Matters

Love Notes

Found

From the Womb Before the Dawn

Conamara in Our Mind

Arrival

First lines

About the Author

I—Air Holds Echo

Not on my lips look for your mouth,

not in front of the gate for the stranger,

not in the eye for the tear.

PAUL CELAN

Nowhere

They are to be admired those survivors

of solitude who have gone with no maps

into the room without features,

where no wilderness awaits a footstep trace,

no path of danger to a cold summit

to look back on and feel exuberant,

no clarity of territories yet untouched

that tremble near the human breath,

no thickets of undergrowth with deep pores

to nest the litanies of wind addicted birds,

no friendship of other explorers

drawn into the dream of the unknown.

No. They do not belong to the outside worship

of the earth, but risk themselves in the interior

space where the senses have nothing to celebrate,

where the air intensifies the intrusion of the human

and a poultice of silence pulls every sound

out of circulation down into the ground,

where in the panic of being each breath unravels

an ever deeper strand in the web of weaving mind,

shawls of thought fall off, empty and lost,

where only the red scream of the blood continues unheard

without anonymous skin, and the end of all exploring

is the relentless arrival at an ever novel nowhere.

Taken

i.m. my father, Paddy O’Donohue,

died June 21st 1979

What did you see

when you went out

into the cold region,

where no name is

spoken or known,

where no one is

welcomed or lost,

where soon the face is

closed and erased?

Could you touch

the black hearts

of rocks hanging

outside their shells?

Were you able

to sense the loss

of colours, the yellows

and cobalt blue that you loved,

the honey scent of seasoned hay

you carried through the winter

to cattle on the mountain?

Could you hear no more

the shoals of wind swell wild

within the walls of Fermoyle,

or be glad to sense the raw rhyme

as those rosaries of intense limestone

claim the countenance

of every amber field

from weather and time?

Or was everything dream-

framents stored somewhere

in a delicate glass

on which a dead hand landed?

Did you plod through

the heavy charcoal shadow

to a sizzling white bush,

stop and repeat

each of our names

over and over,

a terrified last thought

before all thought died?

After the Sea

As it leaves

the sea inscribes

the sand

with a zen riddle

written in Japanese

characters of seaweed.

Above

the white selves

of seagulls

mesh in repetitions

of desire.

Raven

You caught him out,

the one form

fierce enough

to sustain you

in pallid days,

at the black well

before the dawn

inking himself.

Beannacht

for Josie, my mother

On the day when

the weight deadens

on your shoulders

and you stumble,

may the clay dance

to balance you.

And when your eyes

freeze behind

the grey window