Anam Cara

She went in haste

to a woman down the road

to tell what had become

too wearisome to hold.

That night in the pub

someone hung around

her husband’s conversation,

watched for the lull

to flick the insinuation.

After this

she turned from

her torn song

and learned the hum

that hid everyone.

VI

No blind hubris

did this to her

No royal desire for

the oil of gladness

nor robes fragrant

with aloes and myrrh

just a tender

wish to nourish

a golden gleam

his touch first

sung awoke

in her womb.

Who could wonder

if somewhere deep

in an oak drawer

she kept the whole time

something intimate

maybe a silk chemise

and dreams a dance

to banish distance

and moistly with musk

entice, entrance?

IV—Icons of Love

Tá a ghoibín faoina sciathán

ag smóilín ár ngrá.

CAITLIN MAUDE

Nets

Our love is

a sister of the light;

deftly, she unwinds

our shadowed nets.

Where they become

keening shawls

to shelter loss,

she pours oil of ease.

From underneath

she rips the knots,

the mass of algae dream

unties and drops.

And the reeds

woven to cover

fear of the deep,

drift and slip.

Lines of empty eyes

that caught and held

everything blindly,

surge and see.

Water

urges us

to fluency.

The Grief of Love

Before this line of shore was touched by tide

or ever let the force of moon inside

or this risen land abandoned in the air

with its cargo of grief undreamed and bare,

before sun trembled on the skin of clay

or coaxed trees from dark up to the day,

or twilight ever closed the blue of sky

to open night to colour’s quiet cry,

before the first bird soared over this moor

or sensed insects stir on amber ground

or silence so longed for the echo of sound

that it lured from the sea the strangers here,

before hands unravelled rocks from the hill,

or set stone upon stone to stall the wind

or smoke raised the black breath of earth to air

the secrets the bog held for fire to tell,

in the cry of a well that slips from dark

the earth began to dream you; how it would

polish from precious stones dust for a face,

from tears of sycamores tone for your eyes.

Between us the lost years insist on dreams

that stir like crows among invisible ruins

disturbed by relics of laughter left in rooms

long after weather broke in where we had been.

Invocation

Pain can turn the heart’s cradle

to stone and there is in each life

a time that cuts so deep

that the soul would unmesh,

lose itself and its wish to gather

glimpses of the face

that calls like an icon,

that the earth breathing in the heart

would harden like winter ground,

choke its own growth,

that the distance to the outside is too far,

voices become echoes that struggle to return,

the pulse slows to a thud.

I, who love you more than my life,

have brought this time down on you.

Now I sit over these quiet pages

to make from desperation a raft

of words for you to hold to me.

I trawl the lakes of the dead for help,

for spirits to anoint your head with dew,

to breathe tranquillity into you,

to keep before your closing eyes the times

we were one in a place outside name

and dream and every other face.

Girl of my heart, don’t let this pain seal

the skin of stone about you, this last time

let it pass and I will let you in to fill

me as openly as air lets in the light.

Frail Shelter

Winter colours creep

towards you, cold

tightens your breath

to lock you in.

Somehow they always

sense their time

to steal through

while the air is brittle.

They must have heard

the echoes of your tears

blaming the clay.

A towel of light

will dry resemblance

from your face,

make you ghostly.

Soon,

a white emptiness

will drop about you

like a cage.

Afterwards

After

all the words

spilled out

in seas

from the clay wells

of human sound,

and the air

crocheted

with bird calligraphy

everywhere,

every earth pore

calm with dusk,

still you

would rise,

like a new moon,

unclaimed.

Jealousy

My love,

your questions

flail me

open like a sheaf.

You want proof

once whispered

in the kernel

of spring.

Skeletal

I can no longer trust my voice, its white

whisper is turning shrill, here beside me

your face is gone, withdrawn from a veil.

Desolate my words reach out to nowhere.

Outside rain refines the October light

mellows the restraint of the amber moor;

yellow gorse illuminates in expectation

yet one rag of cloud and the colours sink.

For us there is no embrace and nowhere else

to go with this hunger for each other;

Winter is our mother, her deaf hands rise,

feed us nothing but the grey bread of silence.

Messenger of Sight

I would send a raven

to your window with a green blade

to show you the flood that blinded

is gone down and my eyes can see

the torn sinews of the impoverished

earth gasp in this white, winter light.

Moon Blessing

A circle of white wind

plucks wild hyacinths

for your hair.

And no one hears

you blossoming,

fresh with love scent.

Only a young moon

flowing like a silver

well over sky mountains

meets your gaze.

Nothing Else Matters

From you

I don’t want anything new

no more gifts

nor the scent of landscapes

rising to fill us,

no bouquets of insight

left by my head