CYCLE: POEMS ÉIREANN by Mathew Ryan Shelton

"A traveller's thoughts in the night
Wander in a thousand miles of dreams."
- Wang Wei (17th Century)

[Island]

Night lies thick in the eves, latches done
against the crawl of dark. The stout reek
of peatsmoke creeping up the hearthstone
and the hush of blacked windows.

Shrouded shadows in the dim, the sea
strong and stark in the cold past Croagh Patrick,
the slumbering giant's craggy curled
shoulders slumped in the sky. The ashen

ridge of his back runs up from low rock walls
scattered in lumbering strands, pale like clouds.
Tide-song and the cry of gulls shimmers thru
the stillness of a strange and beautiful beach.

(14.vi.05; Louisburgh, Co. Mayo)

[View from Drumcliffe]

The shade of the stream-bed rumors thru the hush
and gloaming gathered in the rock-nave of the slope,
an evening breeze thru coarse summer
grass in the coming dark.

Cowled in fallen cloud, the boot
of Benbulben, sloped and sunken,
tiered to the cloud-scattered sky
to a shadow pale and fixed.

The sea is whispering in the distance
in the dark whispering the mountain's crooked back -
the voice of the ancient, of a terrible beauty.

As the land retreats into obscurity,
mist pooled in furrows and inlets rough-cut like rivers,
still westward looms the mountain to the moon.

(16.vi.05; Drumcliffe, Co. Sligo)

[The Barrow]

Beneath the heavy-lidded sky enthroned
in stone, the witch's eyes the east divine,
rising full the morning-star;

the grassgrown barrow, the rockwalled womb
filled with ash and ancient scars;
the sunshaft grasping over the rim

of the dim wet channel to the cairn
illumined; tattered shadows mired in morning
cast across the frigid clay -

tangled rooted shapes of dust,
from out the muddy twilight of the tomb
born again upon hibernal fields.

(24.vi.05; Loughcrew, Co. Meath)

[At Kilmainham]

We were born in the poet's eyes
at Liffey-side, the stonebank tide
carving a canal thru city rubble.

We were midnight hanging on the water
mist-thick in the shallows growing dim -
nocturne whispers struck on copper cords -

dreams in the morning calm.
We were Maeve's legions buried standing,
eyes cast to the cloud-cover,

pale-faced warriors streaked with fog -
sunlight thru dusty shambles
sprawling in the street alive.

Dead in the dawnlight we were
the bulletholes and tangled teeth of Easter
blind and blackened,

tortured alleys stained
with memory and sunken souls
fractured by the fault-line.

(27.vi.05; Kilmainham, Co. Dublin)

[By way of Marrion Row]
for L

"Twilight dreams of your clear eyes."

- Hsü Fei

By way of Marrion Row,
past statue's shade and rail
I wandered, into Stephen's Green;
past pond-side murmur, flighting
fugitive pigeons (children playing tag
with tail-feathers) and benches
cast in overhanging shadow. Happening

upon the populated urban lawn
strewn with summer faces flush with sun,
I found a tree alone beneath a cirrus sky. And there
your coat, the corduroy one, was
gray on someone else's shoulders.
Looking up, clouds mirrored
in your clear eyes, closer.

The pigeons scatter, startled skyward.
On the water a budded branch-tip touched
with a moment's wind leans in
to meet the surface of the pool.
Shoulders bent against the bark,
I scuff the ground with a boot and wonder
what you're having for breakfast.

(30.vi.05; S. Stephen's Green, Dublin)

[Amhrán]

Rough rock of shell-corpse
flush in the break,
aflame the sea-fronds black & violet -
sunset sunken in the swell.

Mananaan O'Daly arise vein the vision,
cuisle mo chroí the flow-tide, bronzen
bowl of the sky. Blushing shadow
frames neck & collarbone -

a breath in the waves -
mo mhuirnín moon-child sleek-speckled
risen from shored sea-foam,

horizon-born shadow of the shoal -
omphalos & mandalam. Heart nine times wreathed
where pale clouds pall a thousand leagues.

(8.vii.05; Sandycove, Dublin)

[Outside Leenane]
for Forrest Crumpley

A skeleton house in Connemara, a memory
fashioned from pale Éireann stone
anchored by shadows in the sea-stained turf.
Below the slope of broken eves, windows
hollowed of their panes gaze across
the wall-webbed hills cast in twilight -
a face scarred by cloud, skull thatched with sky.

Creepers tug at loose mortar, running
slender fingers through fissures slivered up
the sunken sides, like surfaced veins. The toothless
threshold grins vacantly, a dusken shade at eventide.
Ripples in the rusting stream fan down
through heavy air. Evening come, and rain;
the hungry grass risen at the wall.

(7.viii.05; Leenane, Co. Galway)

[Odysseus]

I am nursing a pint in the pub
on the hill. The sky has succumbed
to the distance, the sea gone dark. The narrow road
outside is streaked with rain and dust,
and the door shutters open with the wind.

Early this evening I ate oysters
at Pier House. Thin and metallic,
sunken in their half-shells. I
bought bread at a corner shop
and a map of the islands. A necklace.

(12.viii.05; Inis Mór, Oileáin Árann)

[Nostos]

i. The Wanderer

We saw him we did, my brother Jimmy and me
down by Ciarán's Well. Seven times round he made
the turas deiseal, like the sun.
I had seen him once before
by way of Dún Aonghasa on a rusty bike,

watching the walls. When he let slip from his fingers
the last stone he went to the lip of the well.
Dipped his hand he did in clear cool water and drank.
Jimmy palmed a rock but I shook my head.
He pocketed it with a word to himself.

The man took water to his face then
and the back of his neck. His lips
were moving. Straightening he turned seaward
and I wondered why he stood so long. Reading
the waves he seemed, his face gaunt and wind-flush.

But Jimmy was scuffing rocks with his good shoes
so I told him —C'mon, making for Poll an Bhradáin
where Éanna hooked the salmon, Jimmy close behind.
But I stopped, turned once more to sea I did,
and the strange man, before I kept on.

ii. Ogygia

The cabmen speak in a language he does not
understand, looking out to sea and motioning
with two joined fingers, pointing. Dawntide

after a heavy rain, the cloudshoal banked
on the horizon. Someone has carved a circle
in the sand of the bay, down from the quay-wall.

The night before, he dreamt of a moonlit hall,
a fount and golden pillars. A palace built
on rocky shores. —Bád fartha, they say again.

He thanks them, smiling, and makes for the pier
to the ferry that will take him to the mainland,
and thence a ship westbound for Phaeacia.

(17.viii.05; Louisburgh, Co. Mayo)