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
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
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,
