I open my poem . . . I open my poem . . .

New and Selected Poems Gabriel Rosenstock

Translations by the poet & Paddy Bushe TABLE OF CONTENTS

Burning Sage 13

Susanne sa seomra folctha (1973) / Susanne in the bathroom A dream of myth 41 First published by Cló Iar-Chonnacht 2013 The weekend of Dry Martinis 42 The lay of the displaced Tribesman 44 Derek 50 Rifle with a telescopic sight 51 Poema 52 Season 53 Hey 54

Tuirlingt (1978) / Descent

I open my poem 55

Méaram (1981) / Pax

Gale 57 Thank God it’s raining 58 Mountain 59 In a vase 60

Om (1983) My father’s dispensary 61

5 Clock 62 Oráistí (1991) / Oranges Splint 63 Sometimes I’m a scarecrow 64 To my husband who is labouring on the Great Wall 89 Television 67 Lines written during the Gulf War, January 1991 91 Quest 68 Nourishment 93 Lascaux cow 71 Abortion 94 An apologia for daddy-long-legs 72 Ní mian léi an fhilíocht níos mó (1993) / Nihil Obstat (1984) She has gone beyond poetry now Black humour 75 Last embrace 95 Portrait of a civil servant 76 Science lesson 96 Brahms 77 A glance from Semiramis 97 Evolution 98 Migmars (1985) Dybbuk! 99 Name 78 Close your eyes 100 Billie Holiday 79 Laboratory 101 Restaurant plants 80 She has gone beyond poetry now 102 To my fellow poets 81 A view 103 Hares 82 Raven goddess! 104 Like an owl 105 Rún na gCaisleán (1986) / The shadowy crypts of your soul 106 The secret of the castles Syójó (2001) Ear 83 For Meg 84 Syójó 107 Interview 109 Portrait of the artist as an abominable snowman (1989) Zen meditation at a cliff 110 Liadhain 113 A portrait of the artist as a yeti 85 Ocean 118 Homage 86 Seán Ó Conaill 119 Maenad 87 Harry Thuillier Jnr (1964-1997) 120 Kilfinane Motte 88 Hakuin 121 Mustanbih 123 Wind song 126 6 7 Am light 127 Géaga tré Thine (2006) – Haikúnna/Haikus Homesick 128 Haiku 172 Pope Joan 129 from Rensaku in the Pyrenees 176 Rarity 130 from Rensaku in Wales 177 Never again 131 Cup of coffee 132 Xolotl 134

Eachtraí Krishnamurphy (2003) / Bliain an Bhandé (2007) / Krishnamurphy’s incidents Year of the goddess [Translations by the poet] Aviary 157 From each and every pore 178 Butterflies 158 Clean air 179 Coincheap 159 Barefoot 180 Murder 160 Everything 181 Language 161 Castrato 182 Self-portrait 162 Candle 183 Death 163 Not mine 184 Mountain man 164 Journey 185 Escape 165 Midnight 186 Apology 166 One poem 187 Slow death of summer 188 Krishnamurphy ambaist (2004) / The caveman knew you 189 Krishnamurphy, indeed Ozymandias 190 Papaji 167 Irish 191 The Buddha 168 Whortleberry juice 192 Burning 169 Take me to Your drains 193 Send Your snow soon 194 Tuairiscíonn Krishnamurphy ó Bhagdad (2007) / Advaita 195 Krishnamurphy reports from Bagdad Cat food 170 Krishnamurphy and his critics 171

8 9 Sasquatch (2013) / Fire 227 The sasquatch [Translations by the poet] Unbroken silence 228 The sky 229 Prologue 196 Blue silences 210 The sasquatch looks at himself 197 Bird in flight 198 Dánta Nua (2014) / When he looked in the window 199 New Poems Once by the coast 200 Flowers 201 Did you hear the latest 231 The smoothness of stones 202 The silenced wind 232 Stars 203 Inspired by Davitt 233 Cloud 204 I knew it was only a tree 234 When snowy peaks call 205 ScnØd: an explanation 235 Mother 206 Wolves 207 One morning 208 Ferns 209 Nothing 210 Loggers 211 Reeds 212 Sasquatch among stars 213 Rainbow 214 Geese flying north 215 Offerings 216 He 217 A dream, perhaps 218 Eagle 219 Clouds are bleeding 220 Bird flying into the moon 221 Fences 222 Autumn 223 White owl 224 Snowclad mountains 225 Moon geese 226

10 11 BURNING SAGE

Gabriel Rosenstock, our most prolific writer in the Irish language, is a vast subject matter, an expanding universe of words that keeps growing and growing. Poet, dramatist, novelist, children’s writer, essayist, editor, translator, encourager. I am dazzled by the huge and heady daring of his work. For more than forty years he has been a luminous and a liberating force in Irish literature. With his energy and enterprise, his stir and sparkle he has helped in no small way to liven up and embolden the arts in our country. As a mentor he has energized many of us by his encouragement and counsel. He has the capacity to put other people in contact with their own creative vitality, to make them receptive to the inexhaustible cosmos of creativity within themselves, to make them voyagers in the universe of their own imaginations. I first met Gabriel Stefan Rosenstock as he called himself in those days at Slógadh, the annual Gael-Linn youth extravaganza – which sadly is no more – in 1972. I had read his poems in the magazines; they were already causing a bit of commotion in the Irish language literary world, stirring up a somewhat stale scene. I was excited by their offbeat themes, their catchy wordplay, their brash uninhibited playfulness. Alive and vivid, they strutted right off the page and into my mind in a way that the pale and

13 bookish poems of the classroom failed to do. This exotic doves out of a hat of abundance, he let a flock of those presence with a name alien to Gaelic – which gave an bright ideas loose in my imagination. added mystique to the poems – became my rolemodel as I Gabriel is a child of the Sixties and together with his attempted my own first fledgling flights in poetry. For me, friend Michael Davitt (1950-2005), brought all of the a brooding teenager in the throes of poetry, his poems were expanded-mind exuberance of that decade to bear on the messages in a bottle from a distant Tír na nÓg; a revitalised, writing of poetry in the Irish language. That sixties-state- groovy Gaelic Ireland that flourished defiant and free on of-mind – getting high on expansiveness – primed their the margins of English. poetry and shaped the imaginative scope of it. As editors Meeting him at that festival was a momentous occasion of Innti , their flamboyantly subversive poetry journal, and for me. He had judged the poetry competition and with the precocious brilliance of Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill awarded me the main prize. I was fired up at the prospects and Liam Ó Muirthile, they made Gaelic getupandgo with of meeting him. And I was not let down as happens so dash and swagger. often with hero worship. Here was this commanding In Gabriel’s case the bliss business of Eastern beliefs gave presence, eloquent, perceptive, engaging and, best of all, his poetry a rich shimmering of mysticism. Blake and responding to my poems with delight and affection. burning sage gave his poems an incandescent glow. Swami Listening to him on that glorious April afternoon in 1972, Vivekananda, Sri Aurobino, Krishnamurti, Ravi Shankar, a new door was blown open for me on to poetry; a Rajneesh, Suibhne Geilt, A. E. (George Russell) were some liberating doorway. of his guardian angels; the spirit guides who enabled him He advised me that poetry is more about divination to blend Vedic and Druidic strains into a rich sensuous, than data; more about feelings than facts. It was not so ecstatic melody; a new utterance in Gaelic. much Truth he was seeking in poetry but what ought to be Truth. He was urging me to think of poems as lived experiences and not as thought-up experiences. Poetry as perceptions of the heart was what he wanted and not as A slow but formative period of modernism had set in ever conceptions of the mind. since Pádraig Mac Piarais, (1879-1916) a genuine I sensed in him a joyous creativity, an abounding messenger of modernity, argued for a new aesthetic in curiosity about life, a need to bite into and taste the Gaelic. In a handful of bleak and beautiful poems he multitudinous and teeming flavours of the world and the conveyed human vulnerabilities and personal frailties in a Word. He stressed that poetry lifts us out of spiritual torpor startlingy modern manner. Liam Gógan (1891-1979) was and leads us into a richly sensual, ecstatic even, sense of the another innovative influence; an erudite and intensely Divine; well beyond the constraints of doctrinaire religions. creative formalist with an ear to European trends, he An impressionable youth, I was enthralled by the beauty explored new forms of expression to deal with the and sublimity of his ideas. And like a conjuror drawing complexities of modern life and the disillusionments of a

14 15 post-independence state. But it was not until the late forties Lemass era and its new prosperity ushered in private and early fifties when the great triumvirate of Ó Direáin, yearnings for wider horizons and newer freedoms. Diverse Ó Ríordáin and Máire Mhac an tSaoi met the challenges and assertive voices were beginning to question the of their times with a new inventiveness in theme, language prevailing assumptions. There was a loss of confidence in and tone that an identifiably Gaelic modernism emerged. inherited values whether social, political or religious. A Ó Ríordáin’s (1916-1977) first volume, the magisterial gritty, urban youth culture was coming to the fore. It was Eireaball Spideoige (1952), is a majestic sweep of intense a country slowly emerging from the oppressive domination lyrics that dramatize his existential malaise with of the Catholic Church. Still, that rigid and harsh Baudelairean grandeur, a truly modern work in its delicate institution held its moral sway over a whole range of handling of unsettled identities within the dark and murk human affairs. Emotions, ideas and creative expressions of the psyche. were still being stifled by a severe religious hierarchy. But Ó Direáin (1910-1988) and Máire Mhac an tSaoi change was in the air. Old cautious orders and stern, (1922-) were not lagging behind in their efforts to attain inflexible understandings were breaking up and giving way contemporaneity. In a country desperately seeking to to a brash, youthful impulsiveness. define itself, they were equally at pains to try to reconfigure That change was reflected in Rosenstock’s early work; an idiom that would pay homage to the sonorous native a poetry of delightful impudence and waywardness, a achievement in poetry but also move it into the daily sensibility that resided in the attitudes of youth and did not expediencies of living speech. It is a testimony to their craft abide by what was traditionally and routinely acceptable. and ardour that they brought forth a poetry that resonates “Freaked-out pharoah” shows exactly how funky, defiant and with a native lyricism and yet in form and thematic free his work was at that time. He was taking Gaelic on a concerns embodies the harsh strength of a modern psychedelic trip: sensibility. Throughout the Sixties, outstanding poets like Eoghan Don’t know Ó Tuairisc (1919-1982), Seán Ó Tuama (1926-2006), Art was it worth it. Ó Maolfhabhail (1933), Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh (1931-2005), Constipated, alleluia. Pearse Hutchinson (1927-2013), Micheál Mac Liammóir (1899-1978), Réamon Ó Muireadhaigh (1938) and Caitlín The gods are weeping in the temple of hashish, says D. Maude (1941-1982) challenged literary conventions and (Constipated also?) forged new strategies to deal with the global forces shaping Irish society. Look around, you little poet you, Rosenstock and his coterie of kindred spirits – the Innti or set – were emerging as Irish life was beginning to undergo (failing that) turbulent transformations. The economic ease of the acquire some Arabic tongue or other

16 17 and ride the camel’s back over balding ruins of sand. to the ethos and experience of Gaelic. It is as much a Kiss the Sphinx! commentary on the burgeoning of the nouveau riche in the Repeat three times Ireland of the late sixties as it is an account of an erotically before retiring for the night . . . charged encounter. It is very different, say, from the highly formalized free verse of Ó Direáin or the stunning, songlike I’m a Pharoah, intensity of a Máire Mhac an tSaoi poem. Rosenstock’s thy will be done on earth, O Lord – poem expresses itself in an easy, off-handed manner but for sifting my body’s dust. all its ease and directness of speech it has a wiry vigour in (Translated by Gabriel Rosenstock) its phrasing. Here, Gabriel is attuning the poem to the new rhythms of urban Gaelic and catching the excitements and appeal of that lingo. It is reminiscent of the freewheeling, fragmented style of Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems – those Susanne sa Seomra Folctha , his first collection of poems, was midday, observational, stroll poems, through the published in the autumn of 1973. It is a landmark book; a intoxicating thrills of Manhattan – and like them it glows brazen, wildly inventive, erotically charged volume; bursting with the same fresh, frank, spontaneous attentiveness to with an irrepressible urge to defy, to challenge settled habits details. It’s a poem that has kept its appeal and its iconic of decorum in style and in subject matter. The luscious status for a whole generation of Gaelic poets who were nude sitting in a steamy pose on the irreverently green coming of age at the time of its appearance. It brilliantly white and gold cover was indeed a bold statement of catches something of the stir of those times and above all intent. It was in stark contrast to the more sombre and it still holds the sensations of youth. modest images that beckoned from the covers of Irish The volume as a whole was at variance with the language books of the period. With a certain licentious folkloric and bucolic character of much that was being mirth this cover was saying that the time had come for written in Gaelic. Here was a new youthful idiom; a trendy, Caitlín Ní Uallacháin to find her G-spot and exult in a lush roguish, urban lingo underpinned by the dúchas but not, by Gaelic libido. any means, entrapped by it. Rosenstock was coining a It is a book that announced the coming of a Gaelic that was colourful and current, a speech that was marvellously assured poet and signalled new beginnings in alive and had a slangy, joie de vivre streetcred about it. He Gaelic poetry. I would like to take a brief look at two wanted to have a less mannered, more informal mode of pivotal poems from this volume. “Deireadh seachtaine na poem than hitherto experienced in Gaelic; a kind of anti- Martinis Dry” is a somewhat wry, urbane poem of social poem that would debunk the shibboleths of academia and and sexual allure, very different in style, mood and tone to the jingoistic myths of culture. He had the nerve and the what was expected of an Irish language poem. Its setting, a humour to air such laid-back baloney as “Coinín, soirée of world-weary, glib, modern day socialites was new Préachán, Colún, Asal/Rabbit, Crow, Column, Donkey,”

18 19 just to rattle the old fogies who had preconceived notions This is the wretched of the earth, downtrodden and of what a poem should be or not be. degraded by colonial greed and treachery; betrayed by land-grabbing governments; their culture shamefully wiped Did you ever see my sweetheart in her pyjamas? out, their self-esteem sapped, their lives reduced to drink, Yes indeed, she’s always in pyjamas. lethargy and dependency. Just like a rabbit in the back garden. For months now I’m on the lookout for its tail. They doled out clay to bury our people; The wind blows; I swallow the marrow of a race; Did you ever see my beloved in her thighboots? Yes, thighboots I tell you. A drink for God’s sake! Jet black as a crow on a green lawn, Strength to wring drops from cactus. Where is its nest? Upstairs of course. They gave us new clothes to cover our shame; Did you ever see my adored one after a shower? The people’s temple is razed; the totem seized by frost. Yes, a hot steamy shower. Just like a glorious white column you’d see in Rome. We speak a different language, that chokes us A column has no need of a towel. More than the endless dust spewing from the ravaged land. Envoy If you see her tell her that . . . It is a stark, unsettling poem that summons up the sheer Mention to that lass . . . agony and loss of a people who have their language, their Tell her anything that comes into your head, customs, their way of life taken from them ruthlessly. It Say to her that she’s a donkey, a useless bloody ass . . . carries a rare quality of moral weight as it tries to make (Translated by Cathal Ó Searcaigh) sense of the plight of these people, trapped in their own helplessness by the brutal forces and the unjust fate that Such lovely, saucy Rosenstockian insouciance! He would impinges upon them with calamitous results. It is a perfect that tone in later volumes and with it make an sustained heartfelt lament, raw and blunt in its immediacy; indelible mark on modern Gaelic poetry. The book opens, a powerful outcry against the demeaning of human dignity. however, with a long poem, “Laoi an mheir-Indiaigh When Gabriel was composing this poem in 1972/1973 dhíbeartha/The lay of the displaced tribesman”, one of the there was a significant reappraisal of the Native American most moving works of modern Gaelic literature. It is a being effected in the media. The ruthless, scalp-hunting deeply imagined narrative; heartbreaking in its painful savage of so many Hollywood movies was slowly giving depiction of a heroic race reduced to impotence and ruin. away to a more humane perception of these people. The

20 21 pioneering film Soldier Blue and Dee Brown’s engrossing naïvete and a considerable breath of vision. Behind its bestseller Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee did much to dispel extempore childlike expression and its playful clowning I the ignominious myth of the bloodthirsty savage and to have no doubt but that it’s a serious attempt to comment alert an ignorant public to the real story of these Native on the tumults of the times and to find an alternative Peoples; to their culturally rich and varied tribal heritage delivery to deal with violent histories. and to their shameful extermination at the behest of a rapacious policy of State encroachment. . . . I open my poem to all the elements This outspoken poem of sympathy and indignation by alive and dead and Gabriel Rosenstock, and translated masterfully by Paddy some ivy comes in trailing Bushe, is an important addition to the writings that set the its own wall record straight on this shocking case of American ethnic the wall falls on the cat cleansing. this poem is a tragedy It’s a significant poem in Gabriel’s ouvre, setting the of sorts scene for his abiding and ongoing engagement with the Somewhere in the world upheavals of history and the shadows cast by history. A wall is falling on a cat on a child I open my poem again to bright things There is something of the imaginative nimbleness and the but there’s nothing left. deft narrative tact of the East European poets of the Iron Curtain era – a Rózewicz perhaps, or a Holub even, in the One of Gabriel’s most admired poems is the superbly quirky and provocative stance he takes in “Oscláim mo realized “To my husband who is labouring on the Great dhán / I open my poem”. Wall” from Oráistí , a volume of selected poems. It’s from Tuirlingt (Descent), a book in which I shared Rosenstock is always in search of emotional correlatives equal billing with Gabriel. Tuirlingt was published in 1978. – plausible parallels from the remote past – that would I’m not sure what I was descending from – perhaps the last allow him to make sense of the malaise of the present. It is bus to Gleann na nGealt. Anyway, my poems looked and a strategy that enables him to put his own life, and ours too, sounded as if they had jumped off a vehicle in full flight. in a larger historical setting. In this poem we get a potted They were in shreds, concussed and incoherent. But unlike history, albeit an invented one, of a woman pining for her the indulgent, cryptic nonsense of my poems, Gabriel’s husband who is labouring on the Great Wall in a China work in that volume has a radiant ingenuity about it. A that is struggling to safeguard its frontiers from attacking wonderful collision of ideas occur in his poems that make hordes. The poem is in the form of a love letter sent to the you view things anew. “I open my poem” has an attractive front; the cry of a woman separated from her beloved and

22 23 fearful for his survival in the face of hardship and death. It Is it true what they say about the Hseung-noo? is a tender, mournful message, speaking to us, as it were, That they eat their own young across the abyss of the ages, about love and loneliness, grief In times of shortage. and fear, the cruelty of war and its futility. That their palms sprout red fur?

. . . If only the moon would shine tonight The poem voices itself in a finely tuned, assured usage of and you - my heart’s gleam – were watching it. Gaelic; beautifully graceful and yet, bold and daring in its Do they really think it will last forever? delivery. We have a long tradition in the Irish language of Against wind, against rain, swashbuckling, sabre-rattling poems full of a reckless, heroic Against frost, against the Barbarians? rhetoric. Gabriel eschews that kind of foolhardy bombast This countryside is under the sway of terror, in favour of a more muted, subtle speech. And as a result Just the other day he achieves a more humanely affecting poem. A two-headed foal was born! Too often the work of major writers in the minority tongues is overlooked and is hardly ever included in the It is a glimpse of a barbarous era, not unlike our own, of crucial and influential canonical anthologies. As an unstoppable wars, strife and wretchedness, in which authoritative and telling war narrative this poem stands as women and children are the forgotten victims. The poem a strong and convincing contender for all such inclusions. is full of omens, superstitions, horrors, as happens when the natural order of things is convulsed and thrown into disarray. And it captures the dread and disquiet of a war- torn country. Truth, as we know, only too well, is the first Part of Gabriel’s charm as a poet is his sensitivity to ethnic casualty of war. Dissenting voices are silenced. cultures elsewhere. Crossing boundaries and forging alliances with others is one of his foremost concerns. A Recent times have seen more men from this area widening out beyond the confines of Gaelic and a Pressed into service. I will mention no names. willingness to identify with other indigenous cultures has Scholars and poets. Their scrolls were burned. enriched the scope of his vision. He is Xolotl, an Aztec They were roped together divinity with a Celtic outlook; he is with the pygmies, and, stonefaced, wordless, they set off for the north. paying homage to the elephant; he is the hunchback dwarf in Montezuma’s Inca court; he is a disaffected yeti and a The abusive war propaganda that demonizes the enemy visionary sasquatch. is always being spread:

24 25 Nothing but his own desires the fast-changing soundscapes of modern Irish. An taught him how to read experimenter in new forms and a new expressiveness, he the stars nevertheless, upholds the vigorous continuity of the Gaelic he followed them poetic tradition. He is as capable of stanzaic elegance and a they, him tight formal control as he is of a wild, spacious vers libre (“Stars”, from Sasquatch ) spontaneity. “Scairteann sé ar a aonsearc”, from Ní mian léi an fhilíocht níos mó conveys an impeccable discipline and a He is a poet who occupies many spaces and is, strange as it bardic refinement reminiscent of the “laoithe cumainn”. may seem, grounded in this diversity. He succeeds, somehow, in integrating a heady mix of the local and the Scairteann sé ar a aonsearc global into a coherent and a cohesive vision. He is not so Fuar an chré orm, an leac is cruaidh much an internationalist as an universalist. His allegiance Tar is siúil ar m’uaigh go sámh, is not so much to a particular race but to all of humanity. Do dhá bhonn bhána mar bhalsam bisigh dom, He is on the side of minority languages, marginalized Crom orm arís, a Dheirdre án! tribes, outcasts, endangered species, threatened ecosystems. His true homeland, it seems to me, is language rather Can! Smiot oighearthost an gheimhridh, than any geographical locale, and the fact that he is bound Rinc! Is péacfaidh lá, to language rather than to a flag or a particular piece of Léirscrios fógair ar ár naimhde, earth allows him to be boundless in his pursuits. Irish is not Ríomh ár ngníomhartha gaisce i ndán. his mother tongue but he has immersed himself so much in the wellspring of Gaelic that he speaks with the Díbir deamhain dhorcha mo dhrólainne, expressiveness of a native speaker. He inhabits the language An t-uaigneas. An t-éad. An tnúthán. with grace, resides in it as securely as a tree in its bark and Glaoigh as m’ainm orm “Naoise!” as snug as an animal in its skin. Aon uair amháin. As a poet he is very conscious of the tonal qualities of the language, the mantric properties inherent in it. He has Although he shuns any small-minded nationalist learned much from the Gaelic tradition; the clear-sighted agenda, he is a ready campaigner for the rights of the clarity of early Irish nature poems; the exquisitely language. Even though things have improved slightly, the fabricated interplay of sound and rhythm, assonance and reality is that Gaelic is still on the margins of the alliteration of bardic poems; the thrilling sonority, the loops mainstream literary scene in Ireland. And Gabriel has been and whorls of sound of 18th century love poems. He has a keen and tireless voice in our struggle for literary used this knowledge to great effect in his poems, creating visibility. His well known poem “A portrait of the artist as a compelling dialogue between the riches of the past and a yeti” tackles this predicament with irresistible wit and a

26 27 sweet, sad wistfulness. The poem showcases all of Gabriel’s As I drain into you poetic strengths – his inventiveness, his ability to make It will generate such heat unexpected connections, his sense of the absurd and his That I will crystallize in you: persuasive rhythmic charm. All of that is brought to bear Crystal upon crystal on the quandary of being an artist, an outsider, “neither Taking shape in you man nor beast”. In his uniquely peculiar style Gabriel Coming and going in you succeeds in saying something pertinent about the Irish Here and there, there and here, language writer lost between two languages, two cultures, Like sunshine between showers, until two worlds. My very essence is distilled. - from “Science lesson” He knows that the redemptive rapture of the erotic union Ní Mian léi an Fhilíocht Níos Mó is a book of frenzied, is when we are most in touch with the life force, and, enraptured love poems from 1993, the most sustained despite what institutionalised religions say and teach, the expression of sexual desire in modern Gaelic literature. By poet knows, that the flesh can enlighten and edify the spirit. turns gothic, demonic, shamanic, these poems address the From Syójó (2001) onwards his poetry is a realm of beloved with an obsessive fervour. From first sight to last mythic beings. Xolotl, Krishnamurphy, the Goddess, “slán”, through moods of anxiety, moments of euphoria, Sasquatch, inhabit his consciousness. He has always been in beguiling joys and forbidden desires, the poet’s rapt gaze touch with the ancient wisdom of antiquity, whether follows this capricious play, this carnalia, with savage Indian, Celtic, Chinese, Mayan but now, through a intensity. You get the impression from the poems that it’s heterogeneous array of guises he embodies that knowledge; an experience of desire well beyond the social strictures; he gives it a new utterance. Some ineffable essence an abandoned and exultant merging with the Muse. permeates these poems; a vibratory force and a resonance that is hypnotic and oracular. There is also in these poems “You have chosen death in life a belief that the rhythmic pulsations of words – the mantric before life in death with me” source of poetry – is restorative and healing. A belief that – “The shadowy crypts of your soul” poems can rouse us up and embolden the sluggish heart and the slack mind to open up to the Sublime; to get out It is a book of voluptuous lyricism, delicate and fiery of our confined selfhood and taste immense existence. sometimes, rancorous and spiteful at other times but always shot through by a lush, alluring melody. Every poem written for you Is the one poem One breath One word, one syllable

28 29 One star pertinent poem for our times when the healing wisdom of Among all heavenly bodies the Feminine is surely needed to cure humanity; to free it In a limitless sky from self-hating codes of belief and creeds with repressive One fragrance ethics and to guide it into a bounteous consciousness of Among all Love; a culture of compassion and care. Gabriel’s poetry teems with an abundance of fauna and Since it is You flora especially in his haiku and his children’s verse. (He is That gives fragrance to the word our very own Edward Lear of Gaelic literature.) He has That surpasses meaning always been strong on global ecological issues and in his Beyond the stars work he laments our loss of natural diversity. The earth that Beyond the word nurtures us also needs nurturing. Now, more than ever, it That shines in me needs holistic healthcare. Sasquatch (2013) is a sequence of – from “One poem” poems by a mystic anthropoid who gives uncanny insights into the plight of his ever-vanishing habitats. In short, Gabriel is truly open to the Word, welcoming its mysteries, aphoristic poems he gives stern testimony to what happens realizing it can connect us to the sacred and the cosmic, to when we denude our world of its wonderful biodiversity. the local and the astral. Poetry prevails where institutional religion fails. In recent volumes, Syójó (2001), Year of the Goddess (2007), Sasquatch (2013), his poetry speaks with the mystical fervour of a Kabir or a Rumi. They are the poems Since the beginning of his career Gabriel has an affinity of the inner voyager, of an individual yearning for true with the Japanese arts and its aesthetics. He has devoted liberation, for unnameable Bliss. much of his energies to the writing and the promotion of Here we have poems that deliberately evade the Haiku and is now Ireland’s pre-eminent haijin and its most intellect and connect with a deeper instinctive strain within authorative and inspiring teacher. the psyche. They are poems that go beyond the limiting The classical Japanese haiku is a mere seventeen syllables conventions of our creeds and speak to us with the glorious of brevity and formal delicacy. It speaks with the dazzle of unorthodoxy of the mystic Fool. a raindrop dripping from a bough. For the haiku poet it’s Bliain an Bhandé /Year of the Goddess (2008) is both a a question of seeing; being attentive to the immediate. He tantric and a gnostic hymn to the Sacred Feminine – that becomes by virtue of seeing, a visionary of the real. liberating, instinctual life-force that is so abhorrent to the Strange as it may seem, the haiku is not at all alien to patriarchal power bases of our society. It is a poem full of the Irish literary tradition. Its anti-discursive stance and its the wonder and adoration of a person who intuits the delight in the natural world is akin to early Irish monastic divine dance of energy that permeates Creation. It is a lyrics; those poems of formal concision and clarity from

30 31 the sixth, seventh and eight centuries; written by monks frosty morning and hermits, ascetics who achieved a high degree of a robin bares her breast attentiveness in their lives. These luminous moments of to the wide world theirs tell us how to evoke things by suggestion, how to be emotive without being sentimental and slushy. Just like the There it is, an experience made vivid. Like Japanese haiku, the same attentive mindset. painting, it has a minimalist approach to subject matter, a I can see its attraction for Gabriel. The haiku – a lesson landscape by Hokusai for instance; a few brushstrokes and in compactness and insight – is indeed an endorsement of a whole scene is evoked, alive and vibrant. It is interesting his own world view: in order to savour the full potential how Paddy Bushe – a distinguished, prize-winning haikuist and promise of being you have to remain open and – translates the last line. “Fódlach” pertains to Ireland and attentive. is a common idiomatic expression in Irish, meaning “the Gabriel’s vast ouevre of haiku contains many whole country.” But Paddy, to avoid any awkwardness, opts memorable compositional delights. Here is one for a comparable phrase in English, something that is equally simple and idiomatic. “To the wide world” is an bláthanna i vása agreeable match for the Irish idiom. A good translator siúlann cat amplifies the text rather than altering it. trí gharraí lom flowers in a vase a cat walks The bringing of a poem from one language across the abyss in a bare garden to another language is a hazardous journey but in the capable hands of Paddy Bushe a poem can be assured of a I love the clear, uncluttered brevity of that. It’s purity of safe passage, a successful crossing. There are many kinds of attention. It rings with the clarity of a little Buddist temple translations – versions, re-tellings, imitations but Mr Bushe bell. A poem like this makes us aware, and by doing just will have none of these. He strives for fidelity, for attaining that it broadens our compassion, deepens our care and a close equivalence. Like Dryden, he favours keeping the extends our sympathy out to all that lives and coexists with sense of the words; this sense can be amplified but not us on this earthly habitat. altered. Even in poems that exist wholly in the purity of their diction and in the subtlety of their rhythmic maidin sheaca modulations – the most difficult of all poems to translate – nochtann spideog a brollach he manages to imbue them with the same charge and don saol Fódlach tension that is achieved in the original. In a short poem like “Gála”/ “Gale” a lovely exercise in euphony, Paddy

32 33 shows us what an inventive mediator he is between the two Labhraímid teanga eile a thachtann sinn languages: Níos mó ná síoraiseag smúite an talaimh bhánaithe. Fuaim na gcos ag damhsa, ró-annamh, róleochaileach, Cleatráil doirse is fuinneog Gliogar glan á chur le seanfhonn eolchaireach. deatach, dusta, duilleoga, Tobac saor ag sreamacháin athmheilte go fulangach. tá an lá ina ghála – from “Laoi an mheir-Indiaigh dhíbeartha” aondomhan gan fál. from “Gála” We speak a different language, that chokes us More than the endless dust spewing from the ravaged doors and windows are tumultuous, land. leaves and smoke and swirling dust, The thud of dancing feet too rare, too lifeless, the day is blowing helter-skelter An old air of exile becoming pure jingle! and it’s all one world without shelter. No-hopers passively chewing dole tobacco. – from “The lay of the displaced tribesman” He has reconstituted the poem in a diction that is commensurate with the original and in doing so has By any standards that is an impressive translation. It achieves produced a valid poem in English that has the same the twin feats of being literally faithful and poetically cadences, the stress and pitch of the Gaelic. A bilingual charged. It is so attuned to the original that it carries the reader will immediately grasp how apt the translation is but same gestures of language and the same movement of for the non-speaker of Gaelic it would take a tedious words. Let us consider the phrase “an talaimh bhánaithe” language lesson to elucidate the rightness of it. Suffice to meaning in Gaelic anything from whitened, depopulated, say that Paddy by a linguistic sleight of hand flicks the cleared out, laid waste, emptied, devastated land. From this original into credible English. The only way to translate a range of expressive possibilities Paddy opts for a word that poem like this, as Auden said, is to write well. embodies all of the above but is even more revealing. Poetry is language articulating itself at its most acute. “Ravaged land” is a weightier choice, a more forceful, Each word glows with its own rainbow of meanings. It’s compelling idea and its similar to the sentiment of the difficult for a translator to capture all those tones and original. Likewise with the phrase “seanfhonn textures of colour. A whole range of sub-textual lore may eolchaireach”. “Eolchaireach” itself is a literary word with be contained in a word but how is a translator to evoke an ancient feel to it, a rich and rare word, not in common even a hint of those riches? Paddy Bushe accomplishes this usage. It means homesickness, grief, lamentation, longing, task wondrously. sadness, home love. “Seanfhonn” literally translated means old tune. Again Paddy comes up with a cogent equivalent in English, “an old air of exile”. It’s a perceptive choice. You

34 35 could spend a long time praising the merits of that one words and the bright harbours of sound. He chants from verse, how each word is assiduously chosen to correspond the way of the White Cloud, hymns of light. Out of a with the original; how the musical phrasing catches limitless universe of language he shines on all of us - a something of the timbre of Gaelic, how the translator Gaelic sunburst. himself takes delight in his labour. Gabriel Rosenstock is our greatest Gaelic traveller across linguistic and cultural borders. His numerous translations into the Irish language attest to that. He once Dhoirtis grá remarked that translation was like a blood transfusion Is bhí an uile ní faoi bhláth between friends. In that vein the present enterprise between himself and Paddy Bushe is hugely invigorating. You poured love “Tuirsíonn na Himáilithe mé,” changes from slangy and everything blossomed. Gaelic into “the Himalayas wreck my head”, an equally slap-happy colloquialism. And in Syójó look at how Cathal Ó Searcaigh “Bodach an Chóta Lachtna” a fabulous character from the Oíche Shamhna, 2013 Fenian lore – but unknown to the ordinary English speaker – becomes the much more textually understood Mr Hyde. Seek and you will find is Mr Bushe’s motto. And in these marvelous translations he brilliantly catches the stir and sparkle of Rosenstock as that sage freewheels his way around the world, divinely intoxicated by the light of other cultures. Gabriel Rosenstock is an extraordinary presence where East and West meet in a full frontal benediction of the Word. Wherever he is, a sense of wonder informs his vision. He is blessed and he believes in living the faith of poetry. He’s on a high in the flea market in Valparaíso, his mule drinks from the Ganges. His mule drinks from the Ganges and Semiramis casts him a glance. For the past forty years he has been taking the Irish language on amazing journeys into unfamiliar realms; unchartered spaces of the imagination beyond which no “Modh Coinníollach” ever ventured. And he continues to roam the dark depths of

36 37 Gabriel Rosenstock defies gravitational laws, leaping out of the confines of the Irish language through the vigour of his writing THE POEMS and its total disregard for the limitations of time and space. He employs the poetic resources of all ages and languages to describe the central dramas of the soul with beauty, humour and precision. – Gwyneth Lewis

Gabriel Rosenstock is the most accomplished and prolific Irish poet of his generation. A translator, haiku master, and novelist, he is simply one of the most talented voices to emerge from Europe over the last few decades. Like Yeats, his work represents the best of the Irish tradition combined with an impressive knowledge and openness to world literature – especially Indian poetry and philosophy. His poems are fearless, expansive, delirious, hilarious, but always astonishing. His words are as poignant as the last cicada singing against winter, startling as the silence after thunder. – Bill Wolak

38 39 A dream of myth

When Fionn looks from under thick eyebrows at Gráinne She is a hind. His eyes course her without let-up (until her blood seethes) until evening. Then Fionn calls off the hunt crooked smile on exhausted lips. How long will this torment last? Forever? She would prefer by far To embrace death lying on the dew With a hero who would pay her fierce homage Than to live like this, torn among the living.

41 The weekend of Dry Martinis All at once I’m being called. Aren’t they gone yet? After the second (bottle) Sons and Lovers I left them at it. Closed on page 265. But they were still with me. The glasses back in my pocket. Somebody playing slow piano Blues and early twenties. “We know, Gabriel, Fred most likely. That you’re studying A party’s not a party without Fred. But we heard . . . ” Yes, your Highness? One lot playing cards. She looks around. In good form, merry. “He’s not only clever Tired, wornout every one of them But he can sing too!” Like a fag-butt. Applause. Bracelets, thighs, “Give us a song,” goes the crowd. New teeth. Susanne is looking at me. A glass on her kneee. In the bedroom Fresh, gleaming. I was trying to read. “Fred, help me out.” Susanne in the bathroom “Please,” goes the Duchess. Stripping – A glimpse of flesh – Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten A swimming cap on her head. Steam. And . . . The scent of Susanne. Back in the room again Eau-de-Cologne. I don’t fancy the company. Nor the music. But Susanne, I do fancy; I’d like to take off with her On Friday maybe, Before The Weekend of Dry Martinis.

42 43 The lay of the displaced tribesman We speak a different language, that chokes us More than the endless dust spewing from the ravaged land. And we were given desert; our gods went thirsty; The thud of dancing feet too rare, too lifeless, Feathers abandoned their colours; a silence of birds. An old air of exile becoming pure jingle! No-hopers Where is the waterfall’s resonance that used waken me passively chewing dole tobacco, each morning? An old tincan grateful for the spit. Here at the journey’s end, on a bare nameless plain. I want to tear it out of their mouths: Do not remind us of any cynical promise. No longer do we own the earth; no longer covet its fruits! It was not we who tended the crop. And my poor mother! Do not wash your breasts again The tail of a rat, a vulture’s entrails – until doomsday. There’s the food that should be laid before us. Let flies invade the waterhole. This country is petrified, all its faces flint I pray each time I see the rainbow: That once was a paradise for the red man. Let the sun no longer broil me, Let me not be buried alive; They doled out clay to bury our people: Let not the gods ignore The wind blows; I swallow the marrow of a race; The bitter pleading of the exiled tribe. A drink for God’s sake! But my prayer is corrupted by unfamiliar dialects, Strength to wring drops from cactus. My voice is blown tumbleweed; now I invoke evil spirits.

They gave us new clothes to cover our shame; My mother heard me speak to a rattlesnake The people’s temple is razed; the totem seized by frost. And she screamed in terror. The sun is skinning; the rain is claws; But I search for life morning, noon and night, Snow clothes us; the ice is torture. Ways of living never yet practised here. And my poor mother! My moccasins . . . where are they? Instead of a tomahawk you’ll see the lightning dart of a wild man Alone, surrounded by a desolate plain. They prey I bring home is not for eating and drinking And I spread it freely around, without anyone knowing.

44 45 That was a great omen, we thought, in October The dogs’ pelts are painted by the stony soil, When the clamorous wild geese flew over the tents. They’re too played out to scratch their fleas: It was an old woman who noticed them The breasts of the women are limp, their veins are And ran out, alive with urgency swollen, Yelling at the elders: Come out, out! Hurry! Betrothals are forgotten, evil times are close. And we looked open-mouthed at the passing host. They were like a troop of heroes going to battle Our urine burns, steams into vapour, Or a gathering for the hunt, or crowds of old men The mule can’t stand the foulness, makes her own stream: Assembling from all directions for a council. The bald eagle soars to where it belongs . . . A man began to fumble with his quiver of arrows – A tithe of its dignity would save me. I stretched him on the spot: One sunlit afternoon I determined to finish everything, People of my heart, do you not see? These Rid myself of it all – hadn’t it all shrivelled Are messengers the dead have sent us to relieve our pain. Even before my birth? No more pretence, No more being swallowed by ghosts, no more surrenders. But nothing has changed; there is still want; Bearing poisoned berries, I headed for a remote part: Still hatred; still we spit; Halfway there a coyote spoke from a hill. I still gather spells; now I understand the gentle speech The sun fled; of stones. I squeezed the potion, the juice spilled; Clouds and burning skies are in the marrow of my bones I had to return to the tent But still my soul blossoms only in bitterness. The nits in my hair oblivious to the immediacy of sorrow.

46 47 In the labyrinthine night, I combed the coyote’s words, In a dream I determined That touched on treason and the laying waste of the prairies To revive the skeletons And she got relief from uttering her subversive passion: To summon them from their graves I hear the buffalo stampede, I taste smoke in my throat, To drag them from their tombs I see virgins tormented to infirmity To plough with them the scorched plain of slaughter . . . And I smell the whole world as a foretaste of Hell. But they were not to be persuaded from the Eternal Hunt.

Sweat engulfs me, I drown in myself, They left us without salt this last winter, Peyote, the pet, insinuating silken pins into me. Four braves perished searching for kindling on the Great Leave me alone! Bluff, I wounded myself . . . threads snapping, Children’s faces were hostile, Cold. I’m cold. Stark naked They played little with sticks or bones, Old women raved, Every part of my transfigured body, Men spoke only when necessary. A multicoloured, writhing mass Where is the joy of laughter to soothe this affliction? Overlaid In my heart? The blistered sky bleeds with pity! With the lore of desert places: How it blossomed, centuries ago, prospered . . . The corn failed this year; every last acre destroyed; Plump beavers . . . they lured the stranger, The Government promised aid, no sign yet. Monkfish, trout, clover. Twenty went to New York, stayed in the city. The stranger’s presumption changed it forever, They left a vacuum, heartbreak after them. Treachery stole the summer. Tonight there is a sandstorm, out of the blue. The first thing to go was the tin can; It was swept away into the darkness with the speed of the Iron Horse, And took my people’s essence, and stole the end of the poem . . . Derek Rifle with a telescopic sight (Rockwell is a boarding school) (for Juniper)

When the game was over the hare leaped from the thicket He sat down beside me at six in the morning Sweating the sun hurt him Drops falling he closed his eyes a moment From his brown skin then hopped over towards the lake From his forehead. nobody would see him in the rushes Fresh green grass not even the sharp-eyed hunter In the swelter of the day. if he had the dúchas of an otter “It’s a pity you don’t play cricket,” he’d swipe a fish without diving Said Derek. or the dúchas of a fairy – But I was listening to his breathing. he’d dance a reel: At the time but the dúchas of a poet was his lot I was going to bring him, he wept Hand firmly in hand, To the wood. But this was not approved As a matter of course In Rockwell.

50 51 Poema Season

Your sad face like a portrait done here’s the dream In a small, untidy room in a Spanish court. she had last night Velasquez, El Greco, Goya? Who found you first a salmon in the bed Or are you really our contemporary – or do you spring wind exist? an egg

Let slip the camouflage of your grief. Let your eyes a dream Focus on something besides the clay. of mine Where were those sighs conceived? In the pit of a salmon’s eye your life? In yourself? winter wind Or do you not hear words in the wasteland womb the tears of Venus wetting me of your silence? it turned out the fish Is there anything on earth that might waken you? yearned for the star A blackbird, maybe, or a bird from Africa (a a quiet scream tells us this chatterbox, with yellow plumage). Pipes from the glens of Scotland, a fife from Ulster Or me whispering this little poem in your ear?

52 53 Hey! I open my poem

What qualities do you like a person to have? I open my poem to bright things Loyalty? Honesty? here come oranges, dandelions, If loyalty’s what you want come in Go and buy a dog. take a seat If it’s honesty I’ll be right with you Stop reading now. Colours of choice? into my poem Yellow? Blue? comes a lovely cuckoo snow in its beak Go out in the fresh air, child. welcome Have a look at showers in May. what’s this? Which season? oceans of sunshine (There are only four). Make up your mind . . . I open my poem to all that is Or this one will be over. that will be that was that could be Which music? a bad move Céilí ? Jazz? Brahms? The first one’s absolutely gone here comes Brahms is under the weather an old cat Which leaves – sea, a dhuine . a pigeon’s leg in its mouth (shit happens) Which poet? sit yourself down Raftery? Me? mind the cuckoo If the roebuck’s your boy it’s got snow in its mouth Get a blind-drunk fiddle And beat a blind-drunk woman with it. make room for yourself If it’s me: between Likewise. the oranges and the dandelions where are you from your catself? where’s the rest of the pigeon?

54 55 I open my poem to all the elements Gale alive and dead and some ivy comes in trailing its own wall Doors and windows are tumultuous, the wall falls on the cat leaves and smoke and swirling dust, this poem is a tragedy the day is blowing helter-skelter of sorts and it’s all one world without shelter.

somewhere in the world a wall is falling on a cat on a child

I open my poem again to bright things but there’s nothing left

56 57 Thank God it’s raining Mountain

rain pitches into roofs are the mountains black, white or blue? scours television aerials, can they be seen through and through? gives a new lease of life was any mountain truly seen to grass poking through tarmacadam. ever by a human being? not even the tiniest germ, you’d think, could survive this intense purity: drainpipes and channels sing celestial cantatas.

58 59 In a vase My father’s dispensary

I have put you, flower, Outside, a motorbike backfires. in a blue Chinese vase, Straightaway I am back in Kilfinane. I’d dare not lay a finger on your Cradling a rifle terrifying exquisiteness; My father is in the dispensary – stars and moons converse with you, “Was your father in the German Army?” runic poems from on high, “Yes, but he was a doctor . . . a pacifist . . . ” teaching you their ancient ways, “I heard he killed up to fifty Russians!” cold and adamantine “A lie – ” Finger on trigger, he closes one eye. Mammy screams then; but her voice Is distant, will save neither Me nor the rat splattered on the floor. Horror and satisfaction trip over themselves As my eyes bulge. I still do not understand why This visitor’s welcome was a bullet. Save him! Here’s medicine for him right here. Switch on the infra-red lamp, open the bottles! Too late. Death lies before you. That was the first killing The first lesson in death; the teacher my father.

60 61 Clock Splint

I put the clock in the fridge tonight. It was like a miniature (People say that I’m odd). Clocks upset me. Sculpture by Calder, They deafen me. Your cactus in the kitchen, There is a certain tribe (no idea where they’re from) Your nursing plain on its wounded arm – Not yet under the fist of Time. A splint! Yesterday is the same I doubt that I’ll see again As last year It’s equal for kindness to prickliness. They reckon You poured love (People say that they’re odd). And everything blossomed. For example you might get your grandfather’s milk bill But you’d take no notice of it Whatsoever. I put the clock in the fridge tonight To put something (what exactly I don’t know) To the test: The beetroot, the cheese and the frozen carrots Will waken up at ten to eight. Let them jump on a bus. I couldn’t care less. I put the clock in the fridge tonight.

62 63 Sometimes I’m a scarecrow From my soul’s furnace Sparks break free Through my eyes. (i) Sometimes I’m a scarecrow . . . Sometimes I’m a scarecrow, Scared of my self – (iii) My own lies torment me. My head doesn’t matter Any more – Strip me of my clothes But leave me my hat. Tear them to pieces At Confirmation Burn my entrails I would steal the bishop’s ring That I may hear the agonized I would buy loaves Cry of my birth. And two salt fish I would move then as a flame through life And wait for a miracle I would speak in tongues of fire Until I was famished. I would dance at fairs Sometimes I’m a scarecrow I would frighten children Scared of myself – What would I not do! Traverse the sky as northern lights (iv) As shooting stars from the Milky Way. Who tarred my tongue Sometimes . . . And feathered it? Who cares! (ii) The wind will speak through me Let the raven come Always Let it pluck out my eyes From all points I would make a black comedy of a wedding Icy stories I would jump out of my skin at a christening Travellers I would eat grass! Stories of refugees, of the homeless. I would drink hare’s piss! Sometimes I’m a scarecrow, I am a scarecrow Scared of myself – Between heaven and earth My own lies torment me. Blind to my fate My provenance unknown

64 65 (v) Television Bear me to the river (about my daughter Saffron) The Boyne The Nile Immerse me in the Ganges Five o’clock in the morning Or in the Jordan: And she wanted television. I have travelled through fire Was I going to argue Through desert With a two-and-a-half-year-old madam? And across ice Downstairs with us Headless and faithful. Didn’t bother to dress By Heaven! And the room was perishing. I claim a final haven! Still pitchdark We stared wide-eyed at the white screen. Okay? Satisfied? But she could make out snow And a giraffe through the snow And an Arctic owl Gliding Overhead.

66 67 Quest You are studded with it. Nouns and vowels and consonants, Every idiom in the language: (i) Eithne, I tender you the essence! Where are the poems I promised To write for you? (ii) They haven’t seen ink – Generation after generation I look for your imprint You’ll find them in river foam As a wing In oceans As a leaf, In vapour above cliffs When we are children In whirlwinds Heroes In an eagle’s eyes Elders In the clouds On the threshold of death In the skies And even in the womb. Even in the stars. Every moment of the world without end They ply their eternal course Is preparing my poem for you – From nothing into nothing. For your welcoming. They are not in print – Do you hear a gale rising? The scent of flowers abducted them The world turns As you hunkered down in the garden, Everything turns Nettles wounded them Hills and mountains turn. Thistles touched them We closed, opened our eyes Ladybirds alighted on them And closed them again in wonder. And critically toured them In search of rhyme and metre (iii) Without finding even a title. Do not greet me You are unnameable! Do not look at me I conjure you day after day Do not seek me With breath after breath. I am in flight Where are the verbs? In search of you You have absorbed them. We do not exist The adjectives? In any place They nestle in your white breast. In any time, Punctuation? 68 69 We are not found in utterance Lascaux cow We are not found in love (However much in love we are). Take my hand, Thou bovine child of silence and slow time Dear heart; feel the rhythm On a cavewall in Lascaux, That beat for us in another time. Isn’t it frisky you are We do not feel its meaning yet. After thirty thousand years! Some of us, madam, in a year or two, Who knows if we’ll still be around? O you immortal, enduring, bucklepping cow, Bellow me into wakefulness!

70 71 An apologia for daddy-long-legs (iii) Daddy-long-legs Walked the air (i) On a carpet Daddy-long-legs saw Of invisible flowers. Silver light-beams – He sipped at the pinkness of clouds, Snail slime-trails – Swooned on the grass. On every side When he came to The morning he died. He was told It was inappropriate Epitaph For the like of him He was dazzled. To be wandering abroad Many would say With his head in the clouds. Eternal light shine upon his soul – At that moment he grew long legs If he had one. The better to isolate And earth himself simultaneously. (ii) Daddy-long-legs was (iv) One day Daddy-long-legs was let know Emotionally up and down. (Politely, it must be said) It was a breath of wind That in this way or that he was That finally Too long Did for him Too light Like that. Too . . . His reflection To-whit, to-who Still fluttered Who cares? Tremulously “I am who I am,” said Daddy-long-legs Over a dark pool. (Did he believe this himself?) He wept until laughter came. He laughed until his bowels ached.

72 73 (v) Black humour Trample down trees in Burmese forests, (after Rosalía de Castro) Trumpet away for yourselves And do what elephants do. Daddy-long-legs will dance When I think you’ve retreated, Throughout Europe, throughout Asia – You black humour that shadows me, This rope-dancer is the most amazing! There you are in bed with me Mockingly ahead of me. (vi) In silver beams of starlight When I think that you’ve gone Daddy-long-legs will revive, You appear in a sunburst, Will open one eye . . . You are the star that shines “Look at that, faith! Now! What did I tell ye!” You are the wind that sighs.

If they sing, it’s you that sings If they keen, it’s you that keens, You are the river softly speaking You are the daylight breaking.

In everything, you are every thing, In me, for me, is your meaning, You will never leave my side You black humour that shadows my life.

74 75 Portrait of a civil servant Brahms

He arrives at the office You would take your shoes off coming in And the telephone is in its place – In case you’d disturb the house – As it is, unmoving, day after day. Suanmhar síothach go lá!

He thinks about You were a boyo with the skivvies The teabreak But the woman you really cared for – Wondering how long can the interim take. ’Measc na lilí is na mbláth – Clara, Schumann’s widow, He opens a file You never touched her. And scrolls the contents With the unflappability of the pensionable and You alienated all your friends permanent. In Weimar, Hamburg, Vienna – You must have fallen out with yourself. Nothing worries him Unless it’s the prospect of curdled milk Go mbeirse, a stór, gan tuirse, gan bhrón. Or a biro that might leak. On your deathbed A sneering seagull passes the window. You cried your eyes out. Was it yesterday he saw the same one? He licks an envelope and thinks (With distaste) of his tongue that never pleased a woman.

76 77 Name Billie Holiday

I met a Jew You wrung pain Who had forgotten his name and his surname – from the height of sweetness He changed it so often. sweetness He has problems at the cleaners – from the height of pain Is he Blumenfeld today when you were raped at the tender Or Field age of ten Or Harry Bloom it was the first nail Or who the devil is trying to reclaim his clothes? in the crucifixion of your race, your womanhood He has one name in the golf club and your art And another name still in the synagogue. until at last I didn’t ask him about his sons your own voice frightened you, Or what their families are called lady in satin. But when I said goodbye to him I felt I was shaking hands with many people.

78 79 Restaurant plants To my fellow poets

Nobody talks You all know very well To the plants in the restaurant. That when I go angling for a poem They see no sun As like as not Taste no rain. I’ll let the fish escape! Relentless music I present you with the ones that got away From a single pirate station Against your hungry times. Is all that nurtures them. Servers, weighed down with processed food, Once I thought fishing was free for all, Have no contact with them. That if someone of us broke a line Sometimes, however, Or a lure got tangled In the middle of the night, You’d only have to – Silent leaves reach But now I know different. Towards God. I see bootprints in the mud That I don’t recognize And a shadowy figure on the far bank Who casts no greeting towards me

Solitary rites in the cold stream of morning.

80 81 Hares Ear

Hares cavorting over sandhills Lying beside my wife That’s all it was from behind Don’t worry. I saw all at once her left ear Our outlines dissolve again a frightening phenomenon We are sand jutting from her skull. Distant stars This happened at six in the morning An ebb tide. when I should have been asleep but things waken me early now Hares in the marram grass a dawn bird That’s all it was daybreak Don’t be afraid. an ear.

82 83 For Meg A portrait of the artist as a yeti (Who sang in Gàidhlig, one night in New York)

The Himalayas wreck my head I’d like Do you know A cottage in Connemara that when you sang (I hear there’s no snow there) there were To learn sean-nós no more To wear tweed, cut turf, lower pints, draw dole. skyscrapers Sir Edmund Hillary says I don’t exist that New York But I’m going to go on Raidió na Gaeltachta was filled And make a liar of him (the cantankerous Kiwi). with heather with holly The Himalayas wreck my head no company that the blare of traffic Only saints in caves (they’d drive you to drink) turned itself Who speak to nobody into piping Only God OM OM morning noon and night. a sweet exhalation The weird eyes of them do my brain in echoing Like the blue light in the ice. along the moorlands I’d like to learn Irish properly of Manhattan To be the first ever yeti (and the last) and I was On the staff of the Royal Irish Academy. a buffalo bellowing If by some miracle I made it through space To Ireland’s emerald shore Would I be accepted Or would some Údarás funded Factory in the Gaeltacht Make white carpets from my fur?

The Himalayas wreck my head too near to Heaven And – devil carry them – too far too I’m neither man nor beast and I’d love the sky to swallow me.

84 85 Homage Maenad

There’s no part of the elephant In her womb she bears the constant sound of bees That the pygmies will not eat – That will be silenced only when a wave Sri Ganesha Namah! Surges to her waist They gouge out the marrow And swallow it raw She stands in the sea Sri Ganeshaya Namah! Something unspeakable There’s no part of the jungle In her almond-shaped eyes That doesn’t quake at this downfall Sri Ganeshaya Namah! Salt foam soon will sting The elephant’s death is the song of life: Her swollen vulva and she will cry out Come, leaves, and celebrate The waves will shrink from her fury With the sun arrowing through you OM Sri Ganeshaya Namah! Lemons and oranges will rain down Rainbows of fish will arc from the water The elephant is like a god And there will be one great humming Like a mountain Like thunder Later Its tusks bear the earth’s weight Stars will appear from the silence And all it contains As if nothing had happened Sri Ganeshaya Namah! As if this were the first of creation Come . . . let us eat and drink of it . . . She will clamp jellyfish between her thighs This is the core of God OM Sri Ganeshaya Namah!

86 87 Kilfinane motte To my husband who is labouring on the Great Wall

I think I understood Long ago that it would survive us I send you greetings, O Lord of my soul and That it was more ancient, more lasting Sovereign of my heart. Than the tuneful contention of hurling. It is seven long months now since I laid eyes on There were things around us growing up your gentle features That blessed us with sweetness and awe. And since then every star in the firmament The holy well . . . is it visited now? darkened: The Protestant church; (chains heard in the The moon herself hides her face from us! graveyard The wind bears horrific news from the north – In the dead of night!) That rice is scarce among you and millet even And the motte – scarcer A mysterious unspeaking echo from the pageant That frost clings to you like mud Of forgotten history. That the air is black with ravens From the top you could see That the arrows of the Barbarians rain down upon The fertile territories of Limerick you A flighty cloud over a tree-clad hill That the Great Wall slithers like a dragon A miserable old hound sunning himself near the Over mountain and desert. ditch And at night the stars Recent times have seen more men from this area Staring down at the motte Pressed into service. I will mention no names. As if it had been orphaned from them. Scholars and poets. Their scrolls were burned. They were roped together It was our own Tara, to tell the truth, And, stone-faced, wordless, they set off for the The very heart of the universe. north. Two months of barefoot walking ahead of them . . . and for what? A wall to protect us from the Frozen North.

88 89 Is it true what they say about the Hseung-noo? Lines written during the Gulf War, My curse on them! January 1991 That they eat their own young In times of shortage? That their palms sprout red fur? (i) My Uncle Wolf practised If only the moon would shine tonight by the sea And you – my heart’s gleam – were watching it . . . Do they really think it will last forever? the monotonous waves Against wind, against rain, sparse grey hair Against frost, against the Barbarians? a lone cellist This countryside is under the sway of terror. on the run Just the other day A two-headed foal was born! from post-war Germany The wind insinuates treason through the pine trees. A monkfish jumped from the Yellow River (ii) Just once Stood on the bank and proclaimed in a strange he spoke of language: “To the north, the bones of the night a woman Gleam in the Silver River of the Milky Way.” raped twenty-five times Since you went away, a bleak wall has encircled my one after the other heart. during the Russian offensive Return and demolish it, O lord of my soul. But in the final days of the slaughter soon. it was then I understood his empathy with the cello on the shore the resonant hollowness of the womb the curved sheen of the wood

90 91 (iii) Nourishment If he lived a thousand years there would still be spume that would not be erased Hugh MacDiarmid’s first poem When he was about eleven or twelve an agitation deep in the waves Was about a hedgehog: that would not be tamed How gypsies used prepare it grains of sand forever captive Coating it with mud Laying it gently in the embers and that redemptive chord And when the baked mud was cracked off forever just beyond his bow. The meat was tender, even juicy. The Romany for a hedgehog? Parchywechy! (The title of his first poem).

We poets in Irish, Our illustrious language is Gypsy, Syllables forever going astray; Savouring this sally, that syntax, The other distinctive note. We tear after them Unsure of our poetry’s future.

Astray on a hillside, brethren, Would we live on our words in lean times? Would we, between us, concoct a meal? Too right we would. We’d eat each other. Raw.

92 93 Abortion Last embrace

Yet another unfinished painting You have made a ruin of me Left by Cézanne in a field the wind blows right through me Just outside Aix-en-Provence grass clings to my roof only the odd Cézanne’s mellow apples slowly rotting migrant bird The feathers of the game birds would nest here, astray Being drained of shape and colour my walls weep Cézanne’s sky turning morose the moon rains bitterness down on me The canvas sheds The tears of its unlived life outside a heron stands sentry even the water rat would not brave this night

soon now the ivy will take over in a last embrace

94 95 Science lesson A glance from Semiramis

a fish’s trace on a river If you were homesick a bird’s trace on a tree For your own place a man’s trace on a woman . . . Among the mountains, - the three most impermanent things Plant upon fragrant plant I would sow, – Irish triad Flower upon flower, Trees and vines on the terraces – Sugar disappears into water. Brick upon brick Sugar is a solute. Stone upon stone, Water is a solvent. I would build the Hanging Gardens of Babylon For you, Queen Semiramis! I wanted to dissolve in you. But here I am still. I would watch over Solid, Crystalline. White. Your every evening stroll, Insoluble. The remote moon Would kiss your cheek, Where did the experiment go wrong? As the otherworldly stars made wonder Of the sheen of your eyes, Have we the genius to begin again? The fragrance of the flowers and heathers Rising from below As I drain into you Would ease the heartache from you It will generate such heat So that you you would forget completely That I will crystallize in you: This city Crystal upon crystal At the edge of the endless desert. Taking shape in you Coming and going in you A glance you gave me one day, Here and there, there and here My queen, Like sunshine between showers, until Made a craftsman of me: My very essence is distilled. I would build and rebuild for you now and forever One of the Seven Wonders of the World – I am, however, merely a Scribe, A recorder of epic deeds. 96 97 Evolution Dybbuk!

I have not evolved enough to cope with you. You’re virtually an organism now, The polar bear has fur on the soles of its feet A virus, a cancer So that it won’t slip on the ice: Spreading throughout my body – I slide all over the place You increase in me by the hour. (Not necessarily with drink). Is it through your eyes I experience The whale can hold its breath All perspective? For two whole hours: Is it through your ears I hear I sigh once every minute. The din and uproar of the world? The armadillo gulps enough air What else but your heart stirs in me? To allow it float on the surface of a pool: It is your breath that escapes from me as a jinni I plummet to the bottom, On a winter morning, With my heart a stone. Your steps that echo tinnily under me The camel has three eyelids On a leafless path. As a shield against the sand: Even with my eyes tight shut Aroint thee! You will be a sandstorm and blind me. You are a dybbuk , a ghost! The octopus has three hearts! Lord hear us! The cuckoo sings with closed mouth: Take yourself to frost-bound mountains, far away! Tight-lipped or loose-mouthed, no matter, Lord graciously hear us! I cannot say your name. Live among faraway clouds! I have not evolved enough to cope with you. Torment puck goats, dance with rams! Drink cold blood with the raven! Take on the shape of a wolf! Smile or bark at the moon! I excommunicate thee, witch, In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

98 99 Close your eyes Laboratory

Before the shark Since you have abandoned the unfathomable regions of begins an attack poetry its back arches It is in the definable terms of science becomes a hump. I account for you on paper.

When it rips apart 320 kilometres an hour a seal underwater Is the speed pain travels from a wounded extremity it closes its eyes To the brain. not in distaste of tearing up meat It always seemed slower to me or squirting blood But it may be that it is a slow motion but to protect Silent film that I see now those eyes against bones. As you buffet me . . . The tempest of your hair, the lightning reflected in your You, also, used to close your eyes . . . eyes. the transformation of the kill spreading through your body Swifts mate at speed before you seized me, On the wing: taking a blind man’s And were we not, also, airy lunatics – quick reading Whichever saint had cursed us – of the alphabet of pleasure. The air among the branches was clear and cool, My love, beak to beak, feather to feather. The odd time now we are thrown together 250 million times is how often a person winks they are wide open – During a lifetime . . .

Close them. Do. Yes, I collect interesting facts, insects and so forth. Were you to unexpectedly visit The laboratory, some day, It could be that you’d recognise fragments of yourself On shelves, under a Bunsen burner, and on the floor. 100 101 She has gone beyond poetry now A view

In the blink of an eye she has banished the hawks You were stark naked The eagles and the lions looking for your contact lens She who knew so intimately and I bent down The beauty of prey taken in flight. to help you She has chased away the moths and you, blind as a bat, Their timid pleadings are heard at windows never even noticed No longer, that it wasn’t any little gleam One by one under chair or table She plucked the shrieking flowers that was urging me on Even the bog cotton: but your strange new shape She has gone beyond poetry now; crawling on all fours It doesn’t satisfy her, nor does it stir her soul like an animal lost in the woods Or answer to her needs – and the beast had almost broken out in me She has put her life in order. when your sight was restored to you.

It would be easy to part company With someone now immersed in the world’s prose Except that you remember the rhythm of her breasts The consonance of your name repeated on her lips – That caesura beyond words before she blossomed into poetry.

102 103 Raven goddess! Like an owl

What second given name do you bear? The streamlined feathers of the owl Some saint who never existed ensure the silence of its approach And wouldn’t suit you, I’ll take a bet. a silent glide between Stefan, of course, is my own second name. one unknown and another The martyr. and the woodland mice and insects It was myself who chose Alexander are filled with terror For my confirmation name. before this beak, this claw of the night Emperor. Horseman. Xolotl was the secret name I received – Like an owl you come to me The morning star, spectrally Hound, nightly Twin brother to Quetzalcoatl. tearing at me – (You don’t care a damn for Aztecs . . .) I waken, abruptly and there is nothing I will give a secret name to you nothing at all staring at me Neither Christian nor Jewish, only the confused memory Hindu, Buddhist nor Aztec: of a kiss A Celtic name: gliding into obscurity Badhbh I call you. on the wind There is no day in the week Week in the month Nor month in the year That you do not come ravenous To pick at my bones. Who told you I was laid low? You killed Stefan with one shot. You choked Gabriel. Alexander is outlawed. But Xolotl lives, Badhbh, Shining defiantly over the killing field.

104 105 The shadowy crypts of your soul Syójó (A syójó is a kind of orang-utan who is very fond of sake, or rice wine.) Without misgivings I frequented the shadowy crypts of your soul I’m slowly turning into a syójó. where in silent repose There’s a me in the mirror I don’t want to know. the bones of your ancestors lie: “Please, Dad, have a shave,” and one day you also My daughter groans at me, will whiten under the sod. “My friends are calling you Mr Hyde.”

You have chosen death in life Smartass! before life in death with me. I went to the priest. So! Eat, drink and be merry! He heard my confession. You’ll fatten worms yet! “You stink of drink,” says he. “Father,” says I, “I know. Listen, and mark my words. You will I’m a syójó . . .” shrivel before my eyes. Mmm . . . But I will die, my good woman, before you Syójós don’t have it easy. and I will reserve We search for ourselves in the sake. a place for you at that ghostly table But more often than not where we’ll drink and reminisce until morning We can be found staring into an empty goblet about those long ago nights Muttering to ourselves, when, without misgivings, I frequented “For God’s sake, where’s the sake? the shadowy crypts of your soul. Where has the time gone to? We’ll have the one more While we set the world to rights.”

Listen! Of all the cities in all the world – Salt Lake City, even The Vatican – Is there one without a syójó glued to a bar stool?

Faugh-a-baladh! 106 107 We don’t need passwords or a secret handshake Interview To find our own congenial company: We smell the drought from one another . . . Sometimes the real citizens don’t even see us . . . Who do you write for? We debate the big subjects For your contemporaries? “For God’s sake, where’s the sake? For future readers? Where has the time gone to?” For yourself? It’s a real howl. For God?

It takes a syójó to know a syójó. All, I must admit, of the above, We’re all the one crowd, from away back. But I’m always jotting down bits and pieces Our genes were modified ages ago. For readers who are dead The heat that we were conceived in And for readers who never have Was generated under women’s skirts, And indeed never will have been (if you follow me) Women in rice paddies up to their knees in water. alive. One of them jerks her head up with a gasp, Points a dripping finger at a reflection, And who are your readers? And with the height of terror, supposed to be, The Magus of the Mountains . . . Cathal Ó Searcaigh. Lets a screech at the woman beside her Just two? Are there more? “Mind yourself! Syójó fancies you . . .” There’s a fan club in Uranus Peals of laughter. The echoes of that laughter shaped (I might as well own up). us. They’re big into the dative case We are air. We are liquid. But – oddly enough – they haven’t an earthly notion Rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb! What a possessive adjective is. Success means nothing to us. Interesting . . . Our social skills are zero. And how do you expect to be remembered? We don’t play golf. As a poet? If people like you find syójós like me strange As a fool among God’s fools. How come you don’t find people like yourselves Thanks. strange? Or do you have the answers to the big questions: “For God’s sake, where’s the sake? Where has the time gone to?”

108 Go on ya boya! 109 Zen meditation at a cliff to be washed in the new syllables, vowels, sleeveens of consonants I can’t listen to your old guff (i) get out of my hearing. Tap on a cliff hoard the echo (iv) leave it go again In a sentence away with the wind in a phrase until the currents of air in a word lap at Arctic wastelands in a syllable let them be until enlightenment holds sway in a breath over the fresh, tender melting in lips about to open in lips about to close (ii) in the licking of lips In me and in the tongue that licks the lips let there be the bone hoards Beyond all of these fiddlings – of enlightened men thought! through me And who is in thought let there shine or who thought of thinking their energy in the first place – and their forbearance and why? without end. Now and forever (v) Inside me, things happening (iii) outside me, things happening How plentiful they are, the syllables that flow through my mouth Should they be organized from God knows where – be ordered, be shaped? you seductive little whirlpools, get a hold of yourselves! Taste an apple. Kiss a woman. Go back to the spring of wisdom Give a blast of a song. that you bubbled from

110 111 (vi) Liadhain One arrow will bring down the eagle with one draw of the bow why fumble in your quiver? (i) The bird has flown Liadhain . . . has already gone beyond the far horizon Knowledge flowed between us. I am Cuirithir. (vii) God goes halves in me Put the run on love with Liadhain and put the run on hate love can cheat as cleverly as hate God’s share as surely as you have an ear to listen! is sterile, lifeless Put kinship, put affection on the run run the whole herd over the cliff – Liadhain’s this is the hour for havoc, slaughter boils me alive close your ears to screams for quarter We lay together among oaks it was like a nut being shelled and placed in my mouth by a creamy, invisible hand

She said nothing at all but when she closed her eyes she could see the sap rising in trees, hear the old fulfilment of branches

(ii) When she hides from me I see her everywhere

I follow the deer’s shadow and the hawk’s her absence flits among the oaks 112 113 (iii) (vi) When she wakes in the morning Look! Liadhain in the pool, I look deep into her eyes swimming on her back mirabile visu – She is a well she is moon, that reflects me a star-filled storm Christ, do not approach me I drink of myself Virgin Mary, avert your eye

(iv) (vii) She is all winds, My prayers the middle of all seas – don’t go anymore Everything that moves to God and does not Liadhain, Liadhain, on the tip of my tongue She is a change in season, all the months of the year (viii) Her shape in the clouds, She is day and night, her laugh between showers night and day the rainbow her soul’s colours (v) Sleep now, sleep! Sleep, Liadhain, (ix) on your mossy pillow, sleep easy . . . My beloved is dazzling I’m like a hedgehog If I could, I would dive far into your sleep, waking too early on a spring morning to be forever, bright one, part of your dream. light hurts my eyes In the middle of the forest, the boar is restless, but sleep now, easy in yourself

114 115 (x) (xv) A waterfall thunders far off On this, my slab of supplication, Liadhain will perish without pause and I in unknown territories there’s no relief from the way things are (xvi) my words are foam Dear God! Bring us together again in air couple us – I beg you – for just one night taste it in the splendid Paradise of saints

(xi) “Liadhain! Liadhain!” murmurs the dark river “Liadhain!” calls the cuckoo in the valley the plump salmon shouts out “Liadhain!” “Liadhain! Liadhain!” cries the slender doe

(xii) Breezes comb her dewy hair I am envious of elements

(xiii) But an icy blast rose uprooting the oaks the blackbird’s whistle froze in its beak all the waves of Ireland wailed

(xiv) My own self I had lost lost Liadhain and her merrymaking Christ bared His wounds – for me, also, He was crucified.

116 117 Ocean Seán Ó Conaill, storyteller

I am the ocean In my mind’s eye I have him now, That knows no ebb. Out in the open I do not know what creatures plumb my depths. And – for the want of an audience – I cannot name the reefs and islands Muttering stories to himself That stipple my skin For fear they’d slip from him altogether. But I know they will be given names. A sudden foray of wind I hoard the treasure of the merchants and pirates Snatches a runic pattern of words. Who sank without trace: Porcelain, golden guineas, instruments of navigation. The men with the long stories Not to mention the gewgaws: bottles, vanity mirrors, Are in the grave Meerschaum pipes . . . talk about wrack! And along with them Neither storm nor calm is foreign. The Son of the King of Greece Pelican, albatross, gannet . . . Fionn and the Fianna I love their voices, their habits. The heroes and lovers of other times. Whales rise through my cold waters to inhale And descend through me again. Must they fade away Seals sing salty lullabies to me To allow us breathe? Lobsters dance for me Flying fish leap for me. The Grey White-Forked Cow King of the Cats I observe the stars through millions of eyes. Eight-Legged Dog They stare back down at me. Bull in Mist We are all awash in timelessness . . . Hawk on Cold Cliff . . . Here’s an end to the litany. Yesterday, I bared radioactive teeth And today I vomited oil onto a beach. A rangy man in a field Rehearsing ancient stories Before the sun sets.

118 119 Harry Thuillier Jnr (1964-1997) Hakuin

You were your own lens on the world: Three men in the library, a motorbike disappearing over frontiers coaxed in by the heat. in search of eternity – One of them yawns silver fish, although dead, gilding the morning as wide as the book on his knees. on a market day in Vietnam – All three stinking of piss. the sun eclipsed in South America, A queue for the Internet, oxen returning to the village mostly Chinese students. after straying for a thousand years – I’m looking for Hakuin’s autobiography, the Zen ducks on the road to the north, a blustery day, monk. the Buddha . . . the silence of stone . . . I find it eventually motion . . . non-motion . . . speed . . . among the gardening books – you saw skulls this place is in a fierce rírá . embryos naked, blooming women Aren’t the three a class of monks themselves? and shadows, how they glowed! Mendicant. Idle. You saw all of life, Harry, A swarm of mosquitoes, I read, settled on Hakuin and death, too, revealing itself while he was meditating. now and forever in the darkroom of your soul! He never stirred. Having transcended mind and body he stroked the mosquitoes off and they fell from him as softly as petals.

Books going out. Books coming back, dog-eared.

It was no grá for learning, or wisdom, or philosophy that brought in the three buckos, only to be inside from the cold. They don’t want encyclopaedias, fiction, newspapers or poetry,

120 121 only a haircut, a shave Mustanbih a change of underwear (for Peter van de Kamp) a kind word a greeting even a bowl of soup. An Arabic word for a Bedouin who entices dogs to bark by imitating them, especially when he is lost in the desert at night Who are they? trying to find a camp – perhaps his own camp. Often it’s not a I don’t like to stare. dog but another lost Bedouin who answers him. Will they be noticed yet in a public park divining the weather I am giving voice now for twenty years at an auspicious time? and my echo – a rare thing – has been swallowed by the last bog. I haven’t a blessed thing to say to them. I am more lonely than the tasteless dew I drink Hakuin, too, is stumped. Struck dumb. to keep hoarseness at bay. I know in my wheezing heart that it’s in endless circles I’m walking and to tell the truth I might as well have kept my mouth shut stared long at the stars and stretched out to die quietly. My country is foreign to me. Let them all be poured into a pot, all those old placenames, boil them until the poison of unfamiliarity is drained from every bitter syllable. The blackbird speaks pure gibberish. Plants have forgotten their own secrets. The Man in the Moon has disappeared overseas. The rain doesn’t cleanse my skin. The sun after it doesn’t dry me. Stone alignments send me astray.

122 123 Nora-the-Bog can’t show me the way. so that I went searching for Cnú Dearóil, I have long forgotten the lovely dwarf that Fionn owned, what signs I must watch for. all four fistfuls of him! In Kerry I whined like a pup, But he’s just about dust now, in Tipperary I spoke like a wolf, no more than the tiny bride they found for him: in Kildare like a hunting beagle, Blánaid, forgotten by her own. like a gentle hound at the Border. At a golf course in Clare Bizarre, isn’t it, this hound-language a politician showed his teeth to me, that the hounds themselves can’t follow! a man who wouldn’t know Oscar’s sword – Follow they could . . . but they don’t want to hear. the Bodyslicer – From now on I’ll walk arseways from his own golf club. and out through my own tail East of Waterford, a Dutchman strings barbed wire to where I’ll find Cnú, and a sign in English barks his heart as big as himself is small, KEEP OUT! charming whole worlds to sleep Along the Shannon’s tributaries 3,000 fish rot. with airy trick-o’-the looping fingers. I heard a whisper in Glenasmole that put the heart crossways in me: Patrick, the Adze-Head, slagging off Oisín, Oisín, son of Fionn, who spurned Heaven without the faithful companionship of his hound! A strain of fiddle music in Leitrim depressed me. Badger blood glistened on a moonlit road. A banshee in Aughrim, at the door of a heritage centre, combed my locks gently: “Dear, dear, where did you end up?” I whooped from a cliff in Connemara. Not even a seal answered. A clam dropped by a seagull down on top of my head drove me clean mad for a week

124 125 Wind song Am light

He would take off with the clouds before they froze Who? in the sky: the world’s last dreamer. Before the birds Khepri at dawn shrivelled, before the worms abandoned their dumb Ra at noon rootings. Searching for his own reflection in a nib of Atum at nightfall. frost. Trinity of light. Dark is only light not there. Am Khepri-Ra-Atum Ray that penetrates mound of otherworlds First spark of first word Last shining syllable.

126 127 Homesick Pope Joan

Dawn pads like a white bear over the lake. I am – God protect me – Pope Joan. How my sinewy kayak My time has come. The infant will be torn to pieces. arrows its way like a salmon! As will I. And here’s me Our entrails will spatter pointed for home. The streets of Rome. Already the dogs are licking their lips. She will be waiting at the igloo. Children will be dismembered. We will go inside, Rape, burnings, drownings will abound. she will light the lamp, I am Joan. Death stirs in my womb. I will stare at her. She will hear the heart inside me melt.

128 129 Rarity Never again

Hailstones He was a strange one, lived by himself, wanted Flickering on a black man nothing to do with anybody – least of all himself. Across the road Difficult, because the fuchsia spoke to him softly, and In North Frederick Street. the morning breeze loudly. Even so he ignored them. Turned his back on them; ran out of food. Only a Sometimes the world can be seen scrap of cheese in the house; a mouse came; devoured In black and white. the cheese. He never even once effed or blinded the mouse, and God spoke to him; the Devil spoke to But rarely. him. Ignored them too. The Devil gave up and went off hoarse from whispering day and night to your man. And God? Fair play to Him forever, He was so impressed with this act, He said He would take it up Himself and never again speak to another living soul, ever ever ever.

130 131 A cup of coffee Looks out the murky window: Swords being brandished Firebrigades and guards in a deafening blue dazzle. I’m having a cup of coffee. Not at my ease. He sees nothing out of the ordinary. Builders in their yellow helmets behind me. They’re on about some match over in England. What’s bothering him Between them – between bacon and sausages – Is the tattoo along his arm, they’ve horsed half a pig. A big purple heart “Excuse me”, says my guardian angel, Pushed sideways by the mark of the needle. “Although I’m not into the meat myself I understand that their equals need protein – Unlike a poet who never lifted anything heavier than his pen . . . ” There’s music from Hell being vomited from the radio. The coffee is only so-so. A Coke can is kicked up the road. Plastic bags are being carried by the wind. The waiter throws me a wary eye. What’s he scribbling? Could he be the Health Inspector? The coffee turns to blood . . . The angel scarpers. I imagine the Vikings back again The ones in bearskin shirts Ravaging and roaring An axe gleams A spear flies The traffic stops (it was stop-go anyway) Drivers take to their heels A church is razed (it was half-empty anyway). A heroin addict in a grey apartment

132 133 Xolotl Xolotl who loves the deer the eagle I was born the snake once again is as one last night. with their pain their triumph This time their fate. in the shape of Xolotl – A new name twin brother or duty of the Morning Star. another perspective. The other died a sudden death A task . . . neither peaceful to be seen nor unpeaceful in hiding. as an ending. I will slip away from you It was sudden snakesilently without sorrow if you cannot see that. or pain sadness An eye or separation. hanging over one cheek. In the blink of an eye we can There is change: companionship in truth under stones there is no way in the desert but this the best of company to our salvation. without envy

134 135 copulating Love endlessly is rooted in me without lust like a cactus without desire. now That lizard my blood blinked is tequila. an eye towards me In this year incredible of Our Lord 1992 the energy generated I dedicate and consumed myself in the world to the shade of Columbus. each millisecond. Come and I am Xolotl drink of me voice of the desert and this forged time of the silver of Venus go in verdant Ireland astray I am a cloud let the caravels over Fódla all go astray the evening star let them plough that wakens Banba. the Milky Way let Venus be circumnavigated Who now let the sails be filled has been loved by me with cosmic or who has been wronged? winds Come to the ceremony weep then and to the sacrament sailors of reparation. in the doldrums and may every last tear fall

136 137 over all because now is the time the deserts of watchfulness of the Americas the time in a downpour for mothering of forgiveness. we must nurture I am Xolotl the world I demand the calf this pilgrimage suckling for this universe its mother world do our lips without end. lie on one another so that we can In the Aztec calendar suckle see no longer? how we approach Pray then the year for tenderness two thousand and to tenderness and eleven lay your finger the proclamation on your lips. of the age of justice. How liquid Rejoice! the world is the heart at its centre that was greedy like a cuckoo tequila let it rise that keeps it as an eagle eternally strong intoxicated majestic in its orbit watching in its ancient dance. ceaselessly without sleep

138 139 I am Xolotl The stone to my extremities in the fruit I learned the nuts’ kernel to dance acorns to walk on the ground water – as the deer streams treads a waterfall with reverence. a lake great rivers There is sanctuary the ocean everywhere and every part of us cherish is sanctuary. them with tears Who would raise of joy a hedge renew or who them. would destroy it? Cherish Love the the smooth four corners. stone the pebble Cherish the monolith. the north frostbound Cherish the south rocks where the sun pyramids kisses round towers the stones.

140 141 Cherish The more complex the rising the grammar cherish the setting the richer sun. the truer the more layered I am Xolotl the utterance. the evening star I see Let all language of these come forth clear as the dew. from caves from souterrains Let us stretch from temples on from churches dewy from mosques ground. from synagogues from ruins Prostrate come forth let us taste from graves with our tongues let all tongues that nectar come that will revive down the ancient up tongues. east west Let us speak north without shame south. in the seven tongues. Let us proclaim Words, also, the congress are stones of all language to be cherished stones are words. 142 143 the lore through the winter of birds I will eat the poetry vermin. of the people the songs I give you of turtles burial instructions: the slithery bury your dead stories as embryos of eels. in the womb as a token I am Xolotl that here is no end at the beginning of our journey. but the regeneration of the eternal the head All the native women – towards the southeast raped by the hombres dios – for we will never m’uilleagán dubh ó – be separated of the from the clay Nahua that mothered us. Huastec Olmec (An interlude in which Quetzalcoatl speaks through Totonac me) Mixtec Zapatec “I have come Otomi Over powerful Huichol Waves Cora Through the mist Zacatacan Of the magicians Tarascan As bird I convey them as a line of petals As water snake to the sweat house – the temazcall. From that island And I will lie Of woods in the ashes Of grass

144 145 Of shellfish And she drank, too, five times Of salmon And I lay with her – Of horses Lay with my own sister Of wolves Whose thighs were stars Of wild boar Whose breasts Of heroes Were moons Of epic poems Shining Of mountains Through rain clouds Of lakes And I had to Of rivers For that heinous act Of hills Throw myself Of valleys On a sacrificial fire Of chariots And my heart Island of heather Was consumed Island of furze So that I burn Island of wise men Constantly Island of gods For all of you Island of bards As the Morning Star . . . ” Banba Fódla Hey, traveller, Éire. listen: Ahuicpa tic huica – I was that which Led you carry you do not Astray – carry at all: Me, Quetzalcoatl – your heart! And I drank the wine five times it does not shine I drank the wine through Laced with the poison of toadstools your features I called it is only On my own Sister

146 147 yollotl – Let this concerto a muscle that nobody hears that throbbing thing but Quetzalcoatl in your breast be offered that’s all . . . nurture to Him it to the Feathered Snake. to be a blossoming heart – The snail yoltéotl ! moves very slowly Let your heart up beat to the top like the womb of the temple of the ocean to view at its deepest for itself the brightest foam the surrounding plain. on its skin like the shimmer Its slimy trail of stars is a prayer that will light heard the long nights by no living being of the traveller: but Quetzalcoatl. ixtli in yollotl – every face a heart Let Him and every heart a face! be offered delicate as a flower the congregation of snails. durable as jade. Quetzalcoatl understands The flight of a butterfly the singing on a summer day of birds is music for strings. morning and evening and understands it is for Himself. 148 149 Let Him in You be offered on that marvellous day the congregation You recreate time. of birds. Did I not share the sacrifice I am Xolotl with you whooping towards the dawn did I not wound joyful my ears and parched and did I not sprinkle sated drops of blood and thirsty. on the rekindled fire? O golden sun who nurtures corn I am Xolotl who is my nurture who bestows once again my brother! ceremony. Creator of rain And at the end and drought of the twelve years within me! did I not excite the children I am Xolotl at midnight did I not swelling towards you box their ears in your setting. for fear they might I search for fall asleep and illuminate and turn hearts into mice for You gnawing away so that here and there they may sense their own illuminative madness

150 151 in eternal darkness when flesh for fear will be skinned men from bone and women when the winds would turn will be knives into wild beasts? what a scintillating jig each skeleton will dance then (ii) with the Lord of Death, Ometecuhtli holds the seed . . . Mictlantecuhtli, and his eternal lover, the seers say Mictlantecihuatl. that the Lord Divine – Do not mourn the children Ometecuhtli – who died before their time lives in lofty isolation. for they will suckle the Heavenly Tree of Milk In his hands there is a drop of water before their return and in that tiny drop to the world . . . there is a single green seed and that is the world for you Neither mourn those who drowned the wide earthly world and who repose now placed in an ocean . . . like butterflies in Tlalocan Let no temple constantly be built to Ometecuhtli giving praise to the gods I tell you in that soft rain but let him glow that begets rainbows in every hearth at the earth’s four corners. let him stir in every penis Praise without end to Tlaloc in every womb and to his bed companion until death Chalchihuitlicue pure and green and noble.

152 153 Neither mourn those Here is the proper way whose whole life to treat was sacrifice the sick: for their people set the patient before you for they will shine a statue of Quetzalcoatl brighter than silver mist behind you. over a lake the multicoloured plumage of birds Listen to the symptoms their head-dress of the sickness. messengers between the sun Lay a bedspread and the world – Place a handful of corn grain Keep flowers in a shell in your houses mixing the dark and take joy with the light. in their perfume – but keep your nostrils Then throw them away from their tips on the bedspread. for that privilege is not for you If one grain but for the butterflies lands on another – who are our guests from afar. an immediate recovery.

Happy the one If they fall on whom Venus shines an even distance in the morning. from one another – a slow convalescence. Let him not delay but let him prick his ears If, however, they fall with a cactus spike. in separate groupings Let him place two drops of blood the patient will depart on two fingers this life . . . as an offering to the stars.

154 155 And let marigolds Aviary be seen at All Souls to honour the keeper of relics I don’t know whether I was born like this Xochiquetzal. Or just never wanted to grow up. Me? I’m the dwarf in Montezuma’s court With the onerous task of making my Lord laugh. It’s a skill. I know tricks of the trade Like all the rest: clerical officer, Tinker, tailor, soldier, philosopher.

I’m a hunchback; so at least They won’t conscript me.

“Whatever bad end you’ll come to,” Says my Lord one day to me, “Your heart won’t be torn from your breast. It’s a robin’s heart you have” – laughing – “’Twould be an insult to the gods!”

The gods! They’ve had their day! At least that’s the latest around here From the strangers . . . hombres dios .

The only thing I ever wanted Was to be in charge of the aviary – The majestic eagle, the multi-hued quetzal, the canny duck. Instead I must give my Lord a fit of laughing, Distort my face for Montezuma, And flap my arms in the air Like a wounded bird.

156 157 Butterflies Coincheap

How many kinds of butterfly are there? Something I had written How many species can you give a name to? and didn’t Irish throw it back in my face. The author of Lolita collected butterflies. “You’ll have to get around that concept Where does the stress fall on Nabokov? some other way altogether,” says she gruffly. This is not a quiz. “And even the word itself, ‘coincheap’, These are questions of some substance. I have no great faith in it. Myself, I’d have to scratch my head I’m sure there are other ways twice to name three or four species to say the same thing, if it needs saying at all. in any language. Don’t be wrecking my head,” says she, So it’s likely that my family’s “with Kant, and Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. family will be as blind to butterflies as myself. Start all over again, from the top. But if any of them are around Grab a hold of some metaphor, in about half a millennium a wren, let’s say, or a flea . . .” and come across these fluttering lines who knows, they might be stirred into wandering the world of butterflies. Unless, in the meantime, they have folded their shrivelled, perishing wings: Irish, that is, and the butterflies.

158 159 Murder Language

A pool of blood on the pavement, ( . . . ) And when Frank Corcoran the area girdled writes to me from Hamburg with yellow tape. the medley is wonderful: It has to be a film. Tipperary Irish The bangharda, smiling pleasantly (I know, it’s extinct) as citizens pass by German intent on their business. Maynooth Latin But hang on, that pathologist is no actor. (I know . . . ) Italian Where was Christ during the stabbing? and a few marginal notes Where was the gentle Buddha? of faltering glissando . In the murderer’s heart, I know how he feels. aching to be born. These days to say anything any way reasonable is difficult in any language . . . issaki no kaki ku’u muku wo yurushi oku as Yoshiko Yoshino might say

160 161 Self-portrait Death

Self-portrait as a crocodile? I was reading Isaac Bashevis Singer again last night. Because only my snout In his novel Shosha Remains visible above the surface? he says he was raised with three languages But do I have that lethal quality? three dead languages Self-portrait as a monkey? Hebrew Because I make people laugh? Yiddish I make myself laugh. Pure and simple. and Aramaic. Self-portrait as a beaver? Think about that! Three languages that are – Because I’m a dawn-to-dusk worker? (wasn’t it Aramaic that Christ spoke?) But hang on – I like trees. Couldn’t knock one. My friend Seán Mac Mathúna complains Isn’t there some indigenous creature about Irish – mourns it vehemently: Could double for my inner self? “It’s on its last legs . . .” A newt? He tells that to women. Seriously. I’m bluffing. Never saw one, to tell the truth. It’s a tactic. Women feel sorry for Irish then Still, it has to be the perfect choice: a newt. and for anybody who would speak it or – God preserve us! – write in it! Tender loving care is of the essence then, empathy, the consoling word (often in Americanish), balsam to salve that wound that stretches away back to Ír and Éibhear, to salve that open wound. If it’s salvable. That’s not the line he take with me, of course. Not a fecking bit of it but spouting away in Irish as if the language would never again see a poor day!

“Yes, dear heart, Irish is shagged . . .” And then a breast opens before his eyes.

162 163 Mountain man Escape

I heard rumours of him when I was just a young Escape? How? fellow. It’s impossible. Escape? A man who took to the mountain and stayed there, Nobody can escape anymore. himself and a nasty, nameless dog. Pipedream. How? That mountain was as bare as my palm. People shrink, shrink into themselves. A puck goat would go mad there. They think that’s an escape. But he was there. My oath he was. Or they go on a package holiday What did he live on? still hoping to escape. On furze? On mist? On the versifying Time was you could escape of larks, on the quatrains of streams? and nobody would know where you were No way, says I to myself in my own mind, no way. neither yourself nor your How would a body live without a freezer, guardian angel would know where you were. a radio, a television? You were gone beyond yourself. Or who would anoint him with the last rites? But now there are cameras everywhere How was it that the dog had no name? and some of them are orbiting the world A loada balls! I didn’t come down in the last and they would recognise you shower. if your skin was over in Scotland hanging on a bush. Those same cameras are the real thing for finding someone who might have gone astray if it were possible to go astray.

I’m writing this under the bed.

164 165 Apology Papaji

I’m sorry to have to say On the point of death That I didn’t really get your poem. Papaji said: Maybe the fault was my own. “Where is the Buddha? I understood every word of it. Bring him in! Bring him in!” Nothing at all in the syntax The disciples heard Threw me, I must admit. Not one more syllable from him. Rhythm and expression, needless to say, Did the Buddha come in? Were spot-on for the times we’re in. How could he? What’s wrong with free verse? He was never not there Formality, after all, has bowed out.

But what I didn’t quite get was this: Why did you write it in the first place? It carries no trace at all of midnight Sweat, or terror, or exuberance Nor of your being unable to touch base again Until your poem was safely on paper And you had hoarsely called back Your soul, that, like a daddy-long-legs Had gone cavorting high up in the firmament.

166 167 The Buddha Burning

How far did you travel, Buddha, Moyshe-Leyb Halpern burned umpteen pairs of Or how far can you be followed? trousers. You immolated yourself in Nirvana, far on the other Supposedly a cleaner side, And a presser, Moyshe The other side of yourself, Gautama, Was, in fact, poor man, a poet, And with the height of compassion Forever trying out odd lines, You left your gentle image after you Shaping, and sharpening, and speeding them up A smile that comprehends yuga after yuga Instead of concentrating on the job – An image that says you were not there Earning his crust. To burn in the first place – Skeletons tormented him, lewd and loudmouthed. There are the blackberries Moyshe! The pooka shat on The world’s loneliness What would you call the likes of him? Impermanence Hopeless? You went beyond yourself Halfwit? That all might be threshed in the haggard of their Hero? karma You should not be adored I suppose he thought, mo léir , Because you are not a god That it wasn’t the trousers were burning on him You banished all the gods But his mind. His race and his language, vey ist mir , Fleeing, they dropped in a faint Being gutted over and over and over again. As flowers at your feet, your unmoving feet Burn these words, Buddha, gently It was a heart attack, in the end, that killed him. A heart attack, too, his language suffered. Moyshe!

168 169 Cat food Krishnamurphy and his critics

The bluebottles are manic today Let me massage you After they lighted on a lump of cat food. With the essential oil of vowels. Leave them at it. How rigid all of you are!

Isn’t that the way with poets too, Let my white knuckles Says K., Knead you with consonantal roughness! I clean up after all of you: You indulge yourselves too much. Recycler, chancer, Bluebottle – call me what you want. And then, let me wipe you from memory – Amen. And what’s the point of the whole business?

Peter Huchel gave a public reading that nobody got. “Explain!” says some dude in the audience. “I don’t get it.” Huchel at that stage didn’t give a fiddler’s whether or no – It was to just boost his miserable pension He gave the reading in the first place. (Simply that)

170 171 Haiku

as soon as it’s named foghorn the lungwort scatters itself little by little all over the place the world fades away

those faces the flea market in Valparaiso in the roaring fire a German helmet are also fated to change is rusting away

a single magpie skimming morning fields swallows a beakful a sunbeam highlights of its reflected self a hare’s urine

172 173 in morning drizzle an egret stands in a lagoon a pigeon is picking at the squelch of clothes being washed a wino’s vomit against slab rocks

the sun above the Himalayas at the foot of the Cross my mule is drinking a snail trailing blood from the Ganges becomes a buddha

frosty morning the wind abating – a robin bares her breast a deserted mountain path to the wide world to the old chapel

174 175 from Rensaku in the Pyrenees from Rensaku in Wales

Llanfaglan Church offers no sanctuary abroad in the mist gravestones bear the rain a small bell encircling the horse’s neck a marble slab he fell at the Siege of Badajos . . . a spider spinning

snowy mountains a misty valley the foal’s muzzle tree-tops swell up dappled with mare’s milk crest after crest

its own dew offers the sun a bed of rushes creaking floorboards bearing rumours of war from afar seven times the raven croaked then the whispering of the river

a tree that fell and did not fall another tree bearing it

176 177 From each and every pore Clear air

From each and every pore look how the sun beams You come from clear air On Your eternal dance Pure sky The dark side of the moon is bright Of our being If You open Your mouth Wellspring of desire Stars will escape and chant their hymns for You Your fierce intelligence pressing on me You are they There are not enough minutes to the day Swiftly swans fly backwards How can I imagine Your embrace Show Yourself Without exploding in Your galaxy? Your lips From which issue The flaming tongues Of my poem

178 179 Barefoot Everything

The moon lies on her back Everything points to You Mad drunk As You have ordained Keeping birds awake All works praise You They chat in a foreign tongue Every syllable A silvery river flows up the slope It is good that the universe is limitless Bearing with it the reflection of a fairy bush Or we would all be flaming lunatics You must be out walking, in Your bare feet

180 181 Castrato Candle

I allowed myself become a castrato A candle flickers late at night Steeped in milk, in opium, I was cut, Greedily hanging on to its flame To sing the highest, the sweetest notes for You And then nothing. What a miserable angel I was in the sight of the Is your light so short-lived? world Are You, too, nothing? I sang until I lost my voice Wax and wick are substances And my senses And, as such, come to nought. My chin is bare I will try new tactics tomorrow But You are all substances and none. Be a shoemaker Nothing of You can be less, or more. Yes, begin all over again at Your feet. Only by plunging deep into Your flame Can we know that You are.

182 183 Not mine Journey

Not mine this house Bank holiday weekend. Not mine the books I read The station is teeming Or write As we travel in different directions Not mine the food I eat For our tryst with You. Or what I drink You will meet us at journey’s end The air I breathe As Pallas Athene The clothes I wear Locks curling down to Your waist Nothing is mine Ruffled by sea breezes. All that is Slow airs will be played for You And all that I touch In the pubs at night Is Yours alone, is You Uilleann pipes and accordion, Bodhrán and fiddle The maggot deep in my grave Jigs and reels Is You Someone will sing “I Lie Awake” for You And Your stars will stand in the sky To lead us home

184 185 Midnight One poem

Midnight in the heart of June Every poem written for You This great dark silence of birds Is the one poem That cannot be known, only praised. One breath Out there in their thousands they are, beakshut One word, one syllable Honeycombing Your energy Until dawn break. One star I will awake before them Among all heavenly bodies And let them sing my poem for You In a limitless sky They know what sweetness I wish to convey. One fragrance Let me imitate them in a while Among all Mindless gentle trilling A warble of destiny Since it is You Settling softly in Your nature That gives fragrance to the word That surpasses meaning Beyond the stars Beyond the word That shines in me

186 187 Slow death of summer The caveman knew You

The slow death of summer now The caveman knew of You surely On every bough; You do not die. You nurtured him, inspired him To change is Your delight, to repose Recognising mountains and seas To metamorphose. Naming them I never heard that You were a lake Before words came from the void And did not make a fish of me, watching You Proto-syllables forming in volcanoes Or again, a desert Carried by glaciers Was I not a grain stirring in You? Spoken by the wind Below zero by many degrees I gather them all for You now Your pulse does not freeze

188 189 Ozymandias Irish

You it was who kissed him, You are every tongue Ozymandias, King of Kings, In its death throes Who shattered him, defeated him And in its revival To be with You, in You Irish will live forever A tiny grain from his monument Your limbs May still be stirring Are all its verbs and nouns Somewhere in the waste – Adjectives, adverbs, And in the hope of the world Pronouns, every syllable And riddle Every consonant and vowel, lenition, eclipsis. In You the half-said thing is known In perfect clarity Through You every proverb is made new

You the grammar of the universe Which we must learn

190 191 Whortleberry juice Take me to Your drains

Whortleberry Juice I cannot hear the rain above the traffic Makes you visible again But I see Your ripples everexpanding I used to pick these berries as a child Take me to Your drains Not knowing they were from You Let’s go beneath the city My mind not knowing Where rats clean their whiskers My understanding not knowing In homage to You But my fingers knew – Your darkness reigns You had trained them to fondle You

192 193 Send Your snow soon Advaita

Send Your snow soon before the eagle was Gently destroy the world before the sea Fall in flakes numberless before the oak was You are Let us taste Your grace before the lake was on our tongue and the cloud before Ireland Be kind on mountainsides You are Gentle in nests before this poem was Sit a while on statues and monuments it pulsed in You before the sun and moon Let children catch You, play with You We are light nothing else Let your brightness shine in the widow’s heart the orphan the refugee

Wipe out all shadows

194 195 Prologue The sasquatch looks at himself

A sasquatch drowned last night The sasquatch looks at himself none of his ilk survive in the water to weep for him does not know what he sees or who he is never saw himself as anything – anything in particular

196 197 Bird in flight When he looked in the window

The sasquatch sees a bird in flight when it disappears The sasquatch saw a creature something inside him says seated on a chair you too will disappear feet up reading a newspaper how smoke coming out of his mouth when why a glass of blood beside him he knows not

198 199 Once by the coast Flowers

The sasquatch dreamed When he first he had found another: plucked a flower one with whom the sasquatch wanted his race would continue more than anything else to give it away he awoke but to whom?

rocks they were in the sea bare reefs

200 201 The smoothness of stones Stars

When the sasquatch saw them Nothing but his own desires all those smooth stones taught him how to read he wondered what could have done it the stars wind sea he followed them corrosive cry of gulls they, him

here I’ll lie, he thought, become like them

202 203 Cloud When snowy peaks call

The sasquatch followed a cloud The sasquatch obeys for three whole days he followed it through the night time for whiteness not knowing where it would lead him and cascades

on the fourth day time to look up the cloud merged with other clouds look back on all his days

perplexed, he retraced his steps

204 205 Mother Wolves

Once he saw the scent They hunted him for more than an hour of his mother but he knew places lingering in milky light they could never dream of

moon on ocean saw their dreams before they were formed

206 207 One morning Ferns

Bright and early Sometimes he bathes the sasquatch vanished his feet in a clear stream into the woods closely watching as ferns send messages shouting and hollering behind him swaying, becoming still one must be alert trees lined up quickly in his defence

208 209 Nothing Loggers

He awoke Loggers came and went looked around the sasquatch has lost count saw nothing of all the trees he once knew but a disappearing world the woods are not the same without them waited long his own species, until it conjured itself up once more trees, disappearing out of wisps from the face of the earth

210 211 Reeds Sasquatch among stars

The sasquatch What the sasquatch says to the stars wades among reeds what they in turn whisper in his ear the world is extraordinarily quiet let it remain between them he hears nothing but his heart slowing down A secret known only to fireflies dusk companions his breath polishes the lake from shore to shore

212 213 Rainbow Geese flying north

For a moment What is it they are saying the arc so urgently seemed to him with one voice like an eye what is it they seek an eye that was looking at him are they looking for a realm through which he saw beyond this world or did they find it long ago the real world is this the core of their great announcement

214 215 Offerings He

Leaves of autumn the last sasquatch red and yellow picked the last flowers lying on stones in the woods soon to be carried away by the river knowing they would come again offerings? foxgloves

the river chuckles

216 217 A dream, perhaps Eagle

Suddenly they appear One morning out of mist an eagle appeared in the sky what creatures are these spreading light everywhere it flew the sasquatch rubs his eyes spreading light scattering dark surely I dream them all over the mountains down into the valleys will they flee an eagle spreading the light if they see me

swans

218 219 Clouds are bleeding Bird flying into the moon

Clouds are bleeding For a second the earth grows dark the sasquatch thinks he is changing he is bleeding into a bird he stanches the wound with cobwebs a human who has taught him this? a god light leaving the sky faint as memory he looks down at his heavy feet

220 221 Fences Autumn

When he first saw them Autumn he didn’t know and the river turns to gold what they were the sasquatch has seen it all before the world is an illusion nothing lasts his footprints vanish his breath vanishes there will be no trace of him anywhere in this world the heron of a short while ago ripples have squirrled her shadow away

222 223 White owl Snowclad mountains

A cloud became a white owl They appear to him as ancestors the sasquatch longed to be something else towering snowclad peaks anything on a morning that would blind you – anything but this shadow on a bare mountain side sasquatches of old leaving no trace behind: the woods have sucked the marrow from their bones

224 225 Moon geese Fire

Have they come straight out of the moon? For three nights Are they returning now? he guarded it He longed to fly with them nursed it watched over it honking leaves a cavity in the heart: sang to it come, night, fill it. nodded off the fire went out

dawn heard his howl and the earth shuddered

226 227 Unbroken silence The sky

Could he but find words The precious sky how he would thank has come down the crows come down to embrace me whose voices filled smother me with its fragrance the air it was they who celebrated at his bidding all day long they who keened I lie in lavender they who remained in unbroken silence

228 229 Blue silences Did you hear the latest?

Clouds moving across clear blue waters Vishnu Khare is heading for the forest. drawing him away A leaf stirs above him, his mind greens. out of this world A waterfall purring away to itself out of himself A patch of blue sky, and he’s away again. And then away As he goes deeper and deeper into the forest into blue silences (He has discussed this with his wife and family silences stretching over silences bluer still And with celebrities and little people stretching to breaking point In Estonia, Latvia and Slovakia. An anonymous Gaelic poet gave him the nod, his spirit’s blue flame dancing in the waters Not that anyone or anything would stop him now). in the sky As he penetrates into the forest, farther and farther Beyond every bellow, every grunt, every whisper and shout To the place even lightning does not reach Vishnu returns to his Self In a slow current. Words disappear in a puff, A green parrot goes by. The chanting of the tribe, stars in a daze, Some of them in a trance; but still the firmament is safe. He has taken himself into the forest.

230 231 The silenced wind Inspired by Davitt

I give no credence to ghosts Some time before he died But there is a being at the bottom of the garden Michael Davitt This January morning Was reading Eckhart Tolle – Standing in the snow Trying to arrive at that “Now”. Now! Unmoving Without a wail or a gasp from the wind. Now?

I cannot tell if his back is towards me or not I was encouraging him: Because there are branches between us Now! That’s it! Cold, bare branches between me and that outline (There was a newspaper, Anois – Now, Anois, get it? Which is me I used to write the half of it A ghostly witness to the world. Week after week For peanuts. Neither a wail nor a gasp from the wind. Kerry Irish From an unspeaking unknowing unpitying world Broke our hearts. Snow will fall again without remorse. Anyway, this has nothing to do with the particular The sky will be a grey, frostbound slate. Now That Michael was after). A magpie arrives Investigates the ice in the birdbath: He died then, on the threshold of Now. Too solid; he’d never break it with his beak. Now! He disappears. Why would I not break it for him? He let a megalithic roar out of him But how? That held every Now that ever was I am too long looking into myself. And he died. I wasn’t there but I’m there Now, I am not inside I am. His last breath is in me.

Nor am I he, that one outside.

232 233 I knew it was only a tree ScnØd: an explanation (for Ko Un)

My name is Sklog. I knew it was only a tree I have lived almost ninety years. but it was transformed with lights Trillish is my mother tongue. with decorations I am speaking into a machine. and with artificial snow I cannot write the language. and at the beginning of the 21 st century We never had the letters for Trillish. we tendered it something like homage. My death will be Soon we will have to throw it out The death of Trillish. and offer it up to a recycling machine Not another living soul knows it. up there on Killiney Hill But these few words and it will scream Will be there for those to come just as it screamed last year If they wish to hear. and the year before – We have words in Trillish all the needles – That I make out others don’t have. ScnØd, for example, what do they amount to? ScnØd means . . . well, it’s complicated . . . There’s a tree called the ko-eewa . and what do we amount to? It blossoms only once every twenty years – Beautiful red flowers. It blossoms and then the flowers fall that same evening. You can make a kind of tea from the leaves That cures purple clouds in the mind. Now, the meaning of ScnØd is this: Imagine the sunrise blazing up on the horizon. You look out and the ko-eewa is in blossom! You begin to dance a few steps. Stop! Look again!

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