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
