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
Contents
I
Air Holds Echo
Beannacht
II
Hungers of Distance
Ich wünsche mir
III
Clay Holds Memory
IV
Icons of Love
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
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
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
