Anam Cara

and the ghost of loss

gets in to you,

may a flock of colours,

indigo, red, green

and azure blue

come to awaken in you

a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays

in the currach of thought

and a stain of ocean

blackens beneath you,

may there come across the waters

a path of yellow moonlight

to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,

may the clarity of light be yours,

may the fluency of the ocean be yours,

may the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow

wind work these words

of love around you,

an invisible cloak

to mind your life.

November Questions

i.m. my uncle, Pete O’Donohue,

died 18th October, 1978

Where did you go

when your eyes closed

and you were cloaked

in the ancient cold?

How did we seem,

huddled around

the hospital bed?

Did we loom as

figures do in dream?

As your skin drained,

became vellum,

a splinter of whitethorn

from your battle with a bush

in the Seangharraí

stood out in your thumb.

Did your new feet

take you beyond

to fields of Elysia

or did you come back

along Caherbeanna mountain

where every rock

knows your step?

Did you have to go

to a place unknown?

Were there friendly faces

to welcome you,

help you settle in?

Did you recognize anyone?

Did it take long

to lose

the web of scent,

the honey smell of old hay,

the whiff of wild mint

and the wet odour of the earth

you turned every spring?

Did sounds become

unlinked,

the bellow of cows

let into fresh winterage,

the purr of a stray breeze

over the Coillín,

the ring of the galvanized bucket

that fed the hens,

the clink of limestone

loose over a scailp

in the Ciorcán?

Did you miss

the delight of your gaze

at the end of a day’s work

over a black garden,

a new wall

or a field cleared of rock?

Have you someone there

that you can talk to,

someone who is drawn

to the life you carry?

With your new eyes

can you see from within?

Is it we who seem

outside?

Uaigneas

Not

the blue light of his eyes

opening the net of history,

the courage of his hands

making ways of light

to the skulls of the blind,

the stories that never got in

to the testament, how they came

upon him in the lonely places,

his body kneeling to the ground

his voice poised to let antiphons

through to the soundless waste,

how her hunger invaded

until the stone of deity broke

and a fresh well sprung up,

nor why unknown to himself

he wept when he slept

a red furrow from each eye,

nor his face set to dawn

through time on canvas and icon

and his mind haunt thought,

No.

The crevice opens in Death

alone in the whisper of blood.

Lull

I envy

the slow old

women and men

their abandoned faces

ideal for the chiselled

edge of the wind,

the absolute eyes

of children,

meeting everything

dirt blobs jewelled,

rusty strips of tin,

ducks, dogs, flowers,

cows moored

deep in grass,

taking time to fathom

the unrelenting land,

these days,

as the maze

of silver briar

tightens in my skull.

Fossil

No

don’t cry

for there is no

one to tell,

a mild shell

spreads

over every opening

every ear

eye

mouth

pore

nose

genital,

a mildness of shell

impenetrable

to even

the bladed scream;

soon

all will be

severed echo,

and the dead

so long

so unbearably long

outside and

neglected

will claim

their time.

Woman and Steel

Homage á Susanna Solano,

Painter now working in sculpture

Was it evening in Barcelona, when

you lost the obedience of your hands

to stir the liquids of colour and turn

thirsts of canvas to yellow, blue and green?

Something startled clay alive inside you

to show how roots squeeze earth to hold trees down,

how the water dreams to assemble a stream,

how layers of air breathe off crests of wave

and a skin of green holds a mountain in.

Surface tempts your eye no more, you scrape

a pink granite from your latest still life.

For days you look at nothing but air,

the mother of shape who loans breath to thought,

skin to clay and withers colour to grey.

As the hole deepens, the echoes dry up.

You despair of the form that closes

the painted space, a picture near a wall;

urgently, you reach for metal and steel

to shape desperate cages for the air.

II—Hungers of Distance

A wind moving round all sides,

a wind shaking the points of view out

like the last bits of rain …

JORIE GRAHAM

Purgatorial

Beneath me sleep

splits like pliant silk,

I drop derelict

into a bare dream,

where my language,

dry as paper

is being burned

by a young child

over a black stove.

I cannot see his face,

but feel the fearsome

power of his play.

His uncanny hands

herd every private word

back to its babble shape,

fixes them in lines,

mutters at the order

then, in a swerve

drives them over the edge

into the fire’s mass

of murmuring tongues.

He takes too

my inner antiphon

of wild, wind-christened

placenames:

Caherbeanna,

Creig na Bhfeadóg,

Poll na Gcolm,

Ceann Boirne.

My weak words

crust the pages.

Our shy night-words,

which no other had heard,

he spatters with

yellow laughter;

to crackle like

honey in the flame.

I am glad to see his

fingers grab the sheets,