A New Year

Of course, every day is the start of a new year
That ends the next time that day rolls around
There’s nothing special about January 1st.
It’s not even a solstice.  Just a day.

Still, as I teeter up to the far edge of December
And peer down at the white new calendar page,
I do feel a little of the acrobat’s fear –
The fear that turns to exultation
 

When you jump.

The Invincibles

Plundered, conquered, colonized,

Their language outlawed, culture flayed;

Their own land rented back to them

At back-and-spirit-breaking rates;

Made to endure war, hunger, Protestants;

Driven into the rocky West;

Failed by the one crop they needed;

Scattered to the four winds,

The Irish have persisted – even smiled –

As if acknowledging a handsome joke 

They can't believe you haven't twigged to yet.

Nor have they only smiled. Listen, now.

If you hear fiddle music on the wind,

As mournful as a wolf, or merry as May,

The odds are good you have some Irishman,

Long dead or gaily living on, to thank.

The Irish and the Sea

God, how the sea pounds in upon the West!

It comes in roaring, like a beast unchained,

To bash itself to pieces on the rocks,

Again, again, again, and then again.

The whole Atlantic in its fury breaks

Its teeth against the battlements of Clare

And wears deep gouges in her fabled cliffs,

As if it meant to dig the island up

And carry her across to Germany,

Or Poland, or the marches of the East,

Depositing the Irish in some strange,

Undreamed-of land, where they, no doubt, would shrug,

And go about their business, as they do.

It takes more than an elemental god

To shake the Celtic temper; after all,

They’ve had the ocean pounding on their door

For more than six millennia, and they

Still haven’t stirred from field and fireside

To let the poor damn soggy bastard in.

A Blessing After Rain

When the sun comes out on Ireland,

It's God's own Grace at play;

When the sun comes out on Ireland,

All weariness melts away;

There's twittering in the boughs then,

And fragrance on the breeze,

And glistening in the hedges,

And music among the trees;

You may even see a rainbow 

As the old rain scatters light;

You may hear a fairy singing;

You may see a dream take flight.

Be wise, and seize the moment,

And join in the general song;

When the sun comes out on Ireland,

It's never for very long.

Lament for Old Things

The beautiful old buildings 

Are only for the cows –

And maybe the occasional ghost 

Who howls at the broken walls.

The living Irish make their homes 

In blank tan boxes, without history –

A bit like the faces of Irish girls,

So makeup-caked they all but disappear.

Prosperity has its dangers. This is one:

That you might lose that rugged detailing

That makes a house a house, a face a face.

Of course, it's not my business.

I'm a tourist here.

The houses weren't put there to please my eye,

And neither were the faces. Even so,

I see how wild the tameless landscape is,

And then how bland the village, and I sigh,

Lamenting a sad beauty that was never mine.

Plastic Horses

Some people, you drop a word in them like a coin,

And they whir into life like a plastic horse,

Surging and tinkling, bright with festive joy.

Other people are collection boxes.

No matter how many coins you cram in there,

You never get a song out of them,

Or anything but a begrudging clank.

You never know which is which, of course,

Until your coin is already spent.

You have to be resigned to lose a few

Or even a few thousand, in the hope

That it will all be worth it when the horse 

Springs into motion; and, of course, it will.

Yeats's Grave

He lies where he determined to,

Rescued from the hospitable French 

Who would have gladly kept his bones –

Those long white poet's bones of his –

And claimed him, as their wine-warm shores

Have claimed so many Irish men.

This one came home, though –

To the home of his child's heart,

Where fairies whispered from the mountaintop

And came by night to kindle him in dreams.

This one came home, to say a few last words,

In the form of a carving on a plain stone.

"Horseman," says the stone, "pass by,"

And speaks of the virtue of a cold eye –

But what stone-graven heart could be 

Cold in the grip of the reverie

That comes when facing a hero's tomb?

And what fool horse would dare presume 

To pass this dear and sainted place

With no pause of thanks to the human race?

The Named World

Every place has a name here.

They have names for the places between places

And the places between those.

When you've been on the same small island

For six thousand years or whatever,

You get around to naming almost everything

Like an overachieving Adam.

Thus, every hill and stream and mossy pond

Carries the ancestral burden of a name,

And some dark memory to go with it,

However faded by the feckless years.

There's something pagan about all of this

(Since having a name is like having a soul),

But that need not surprise us; after all,

This is the land where Patrick - wily man! -

Instead of screaming "All your gods are lies!"

Said "All your gods are my god, and this place

That you call holy, I hold holy too."

Connemara

They have it all in Connemara –

Bogs and ocean and stacks of turf;

The wind sweeping over the headland;

The howl of the ancient surf.

They've got the best in Connemara:

The best of the ruined barns,

The best of the pitted landscape

And the bone-chilling fireside yarns.

They live a dream in Connemara –

A dream that holds them in thrall.

What they don't have in Connemara

Is not worth having at all.

At Joe Watty's

The ticket-taker from the ferry

Bellied up to the rail of the stage

And sang, without preamble,

Songs of yearning and the sea.

His beard bristled; he was very still.

The whole bar went quiet to hear him

Except for one loud mother

Who didn't catch the hint.

But he sang on, the old sailor,

Stoic and debonair,

While behind him the official entertainment

Smiled like the face of God.

Scratch an Irishman and he'll bleed music –

Ancient and sad, and full of much-tilled earth,

Or full of the rolling of the unsatisfied sea

Which tosses the lonely ferry like a child's toy.

Fairy Song

The fairies are good

The fairies are kind

The fairies are friends

To all mankind

The fairies are great

The fairies are grand

Theirs is the power

Theirs is the land

I love the fairies

I truly do

The fairies love me

The fairies love you

The fairies are keeping me

Safe from pain

The fairies are driving me

Insane

Honeycomb

A million miles of stone walls
Ramble and streak from hill to hill;
Wherever sun or shadow falls
They rise, obedient and still.

The country is a honeycomb,
With cells of stone and sheep for bees;
The walls look down on seething foam,
On ragged bog and prospering trees.

The men who built them long are gone;
Their work is done, their time is fled;
They rest, unseeing of the dawn,
Numbered with the unnumbered dead.

Wherever stone is piled on stone,
There stands a nameless monument
To nameless men who toiled alone;
And God alone knows where they went.

The Old-Timer’s Lament

O, they pass away, the old ways;
O, the old ways pass away.
I remember the first rock
That was tied to a shaven stick.
That was the end of handfighting;
All the handfighters were brained
By stick-tied rocks with no regard
For training, strength, or skill;
O, they pass away, the old ways,
O, the old ways pass away.

After that the rock-men ruled
Till someone invented bronze,
And bronze was light, and hunger-sharp,
And cut the stone men down.
Bronze was it for a while, till iron came along;
Then some fool invented writing,
And all the stories died.

I remember we used to gather
Breathless around a fire
And listen to the tale-teller
Give us our ancestors' lives.
Now everyone reads a different book,
Men's voices are gone faint,
And no one remembers anything;
Our thoughts are paper-slaves.
O, they pass away, the old ways,
O, the old ways pass away.

After that, things happened quickly:
Great knights and greater navies,
And the conquest of the world.
The spoils went to the merchants,
Who never raised a sword,
And merchants made the black machines
That swallowed honest work.
Now machines do even the thinking,
While men stand idle by,
Gone pale and going paler,
Too entertained to care.
When the stone was tied to the handle,
It was all over that day;
O, they pass away, the old ways;
O, the old ways pass away.

Hag's Head

 

The hag looks over the ocean,

Her face a graft of stone;

The hag looks over the ocean,

Intransigent, alone.

The hag looks over the ocean 

For a glimpse of brighter days.

The hag looks over the ocean 

Into a sunset blaze;

The hag looks over the ocean 

When mist has claimed the world;

The hag looks over the ocean 

When star-maps lie unfurled;

The hag looks over the ocean

For a thousand thousand years;

The sea replies with motion,

And the hag replies with tears.

The Last Word on Poetry

A poem is a game you play with words.

But words, of course, have meaning,

So a poem is also 

A game you play with meaning.

Coole Park

Coole Park is a melancholy place,

Especially in the autumn, in the gloaming.

Shaw took tea there, and Yeats ran wild,

Prophesying like an apostate lion, until

He also took his tea.

In this place the stories of a nation, 

Culled from every corner, squabbled and flew,

While under the large brows of large, big-minded men,

Thoughts hunted each other through houses

Like a thousand cats and rats.

It's all gone now. Lady Gregory died,

And the house was torn down

For no particular reason.

Even the ghosts have abandoned it –

For the most part, anyway.

There's still a tree on the grounds there

Where geniuses hacked out their names,

And it's a melancholy place in the twilight,

And maybe that's tribute enough.

Jack Carney, Sheep Farmer

The minute the lamb drops,

There you are on your four-wheeler;

You've got to scoop it up

Before the foxes come.

Them foxes are bastards.

They'll kill as soon as they'll blink.

And you can't even fuckin' shoot em;

They're protected now.

There's a fella comes up from Dingle –

At night, you know, on the quiet –

With a rifle and a big spotlight

And he pumps off a few.

Without that, there'd be no sheep farms.

The government don't give a shit.

We're up all night through March and April –

Me, the brother, and me two boys –

Out in the dark with our four-wheelers,

Keeping the lambs from Mister Fox,

And we can't even shoot the fuckers.

How's that for a policy?

Irish Winter

The trees are bare, but cloaked with ivy,
And ivy is green - as green as God.
Ireland is a moss, a vine, a weed,
Forever bent on swallowing herself.

She creeps up over centuries; when cropped,
She sulks a little, and she creeps again.
Look closely at those hedges; are they not
Stone walls made hedgelike by a verdant fist?

Violently fertile, this country blooms
Even in winter, when blooms are cold.
Her vines are as tight as the wool on the loom,
And even her weeds are lovely and old.

Hibernia

This is the end of the world.

Even Rome and Caesar stopped 

Short of our emerald shoulder -

Prudently turned and fled.

This is the Land of Winter;

Summer's a trick we play,

Pulling you gently onward

Until it's far too late.

Time has not wholly tamed us,

Or blunted our ancient edge.

Plunder us at your peril;

Come on, if you crave to die.

And here is a lonely pathway,

Where gods are known to tread.

Nod their way politely;

Don't look them in the eye.

The Trouble

Life passes by like a dream.
The human mind is at war with this.
The human mind craves order and control,
And dreams are made of something like thin sand,
Forever slipping between fingers, and
On through the hourglass of the human soul.

It's quite a problem.  How can we make sense
Of something so ephemerally soft?
Life's not an anvil that we beat against;
It's not a lighthouse, or a farmer's croft;
It's something slight, like pollen on the breeze,
Half-lost already in the darkling trees.

The Show

Spheres of gas,
Unthinkably vast,
Burn and rage
A trillion miles away,

Consume themselves
In fiery hells,
And spend their light
On the indifferent night -

All so that we
Can pause to see
A twinkling sky
And smile or sigh.

The Thorn Bush

There is a thorn bush, deep in a glade,

Where none have seen it, living or dead;

And over it a gown is spread:

A gown of red, with gilt brocade.

They say the gown is made of blood;

They say the gilt is angels’ hair;

They say its gleam has lingered there,

Undimming, since before the Flood.

But look! A maid approaches now,

Where never mortal came before;

Not dreaming of what lies in store,

She wanders where the woods allow;

And now she stops, and mutely stares,

The red gown filling up her sight –

A thing to fill her with delight

And banish all her earthly cares.

She takes a step, and then two more,

And then her fingers graze the hem,

Which sends a tremor into them

That thrills her to the very core.

The gown fills up, as if with air,

And lifts upon a ghostly breeze;

It hovers there, amid the trees,

Then lowers towards her shining hair;

With fairy slowness, inch by inch,

It covers her from neck to toe,

By what strange power she does not know;

She hears no sound, and feels no pinch;

And when at last the thing is done,

The maid stands all in gold and red –

Resplendent, she, from heel to head,

And glowing like the morning sun.

Then, only then, she hears a voice,

Which seems to come from earth and stone,

And speaks to her as one well-known:

“ ’Tis time, my dear, you made your choice.

“Will you live here, and be my queen,

And rule this forest by my side?

You’d make a most enchanting bride,

And I a bridegroom fond and keen.

“Will you forsake your mortal life,

And live eternally with me?

Your lot on earth is misery;

But say the word, and end all strife.”

And at this last, a man appeared,

As perfect as was ever made,

Making a splendor in the glade –

A splendor she both loved and feared.

“O, fairy man,” the poor maid cried,

“How gladly I would be your wife!

How soon give up my drearful life

And live eternal by your side!

“But I am promised to a man –

A good man, though I love him not –

And since my dam no liar begot,

I’ll marry him, if ever I can.”

These words once said, the spell was broke;

The man was gone, the dress gone too;

The maid was bathed in morning dew;

As if from slumber, she awoke.

The sturdy groom was beaming-glad

The day their marriage vow was blessed,

And never knew – but partly guessed –

How true a wife he truly had.

The Good Folk

This world is not your world alone,

But others walk it too,

Exclaiming, as they do,

In voices ever-new;

Your house is not a place you own,

But borrowed from the men

Who whisper in the glen

“When comes our time again?”

Queer men they are, and strangely small,

And all antiquely clad

In clothes you never had,

And seldom are they sad –

For time is theirs, their bonded thrall,

Their servant and their fool;

Dark woods are theirs to rule,

Where leaves are lush and cool;

And well they know the way to wait,

Until the coming hour

When all their storied power

Shall rise again, and flower,

And those they love and those they hate

Will writhe in joy and pain,

And marvel and complain:

“The Good Folk live again!”

My Father

I walk in my father’s sunlight;

I stand in my father’s breeze;

I lie in the dappled shadows

Under my father’s trees;

I carry my father’s wisdom,

His love, and his beaming pride;

I live in the world of my father,

Although my father has died.

The dead are not dead to the living;

We feel them and see them smile;

My father was gracious and giving,

And lived for too short a while.

So today I remember my father –

Tomorrow and yesterday, too;

And some nights I dream of my father,

And always am glad when I do.

Too large are my father’s footsteps

For any one foot to fill,

But a thousand are walking with me

Who remember my father still.

I know he can never see me –

The grave is too dark for sight –

But his blood and his heart are in me,

And I live in my father’s light.