Donegal Tarantella E-Book

Moya Cannon

• Herausgeber: Carcanet Poetry
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 38

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

This sixth collection by one of Carcanet's most celebrated Irish poets gathers together lyric poems musing on history, on archaeology, geology and on the deep need of the human spirit to find expression in music and song.

Leseprobe

DONEGAL TARANTELLA

MOYA CANNON

for Máiréad and Tim Robinson

CONTENTS

Title PageDedicationAcknowledgements Island CorrieAt Three Castles Head We Catch Our BreathFour Herds of DeerFlowers Know Nothing of Our GriefMal’ta Boy, 22,000 BCThe IdiotExileOne of the most foolish questions…BreadGraffiti Makes Nothing HappenSand Martins at ShanganaghA Three-Seal MorningAt Shankill BeachWinter Morning, the Irish SeaReturnsAilsa CraigNeighbourDonegal TarantellaThe Boy who Swapped a Bog for a GramophoneGlencomcille Soundtrack‘Songs last the longest…’Where is Music StoredThe RecordsA Sentimental EducationThe Countermanding Order, 1916October 1945Hard LessonsAll the LivingSt Patrick’s Well, OrvietoThe Coimbra LibrariansSpoonsCorribNo PulseAt Dog’s BayIn Derryclare WoodsThe Ring-FortsDefence SystemFrom the PlaneFrom Above the English ChannelStarry, Starry Night in the National LibraryRelativity – The Iveagh GardensPost-Box in Wall at RosbrinAnother Great Man DownAt DuskClowanstown Fish Traps, 5,000 BCGoldIn MemoriamThe Twelve Bens…The Song of the BooksClimb NotesAbout the AuthorCopyright

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Acknowledgements are due to the editors and publishers of Irish Pages, Poetry Ireland Review, New Hibernia Review, PN Review, Cyphers, IASIL Journal of Irish Studies, Blood Orange Review, Japanese Journal of Irish Studies, Windharp, Connemara and Aran, The Strokestown Anthology, Reading the Future and Fermata.

The author wishes to thank Aosdána and the Arts Council of Ireland for their continued, invaluable support.

ISLAND CORRIE

Curving back by the northern cliffs,

where a pale scar shows

that another slice of mountain

has succumbed

to this century’s

hard seas

and grey storms,

we halt at a rim,

and, far below us,

in June sunlight,

blows the big, elongated O

of Lough Bunnafreva,

ringed, in this summer’s long drought,

with a necklace of bleached schist.

Cupped palm of Croaghaun,

gift of a glacier,

silver doubloon of Achill.

AT THREE CASTLES HEAD WE CATCH OUR BREATH

We come from a hidden ocean and go to an unknown ocean.

– Antonio Machado

A flat, faulted slab of cliff soars

and shimmers far above us

then slants far below,

into a young ocean

we call the Atlantic.

Bedded sandstones

have been tilted on edge here –

dust of disappeared mountains,

compressed beneath the weight

of disappeared oceans.

What cosmic accident engendered

this relentless complexity of being –

the hot metal core, the mantle heavily swirling

under new hills, thin-floored oceans, fragile cities,

and under the flowering bank of earth behind us,

which responds again to the nearing of a star,

each unfolding primrose an inch of yellow velvet,

each heavy violet teetering on its slim stem,

and us, latecomers,

balanced between cliff and flowers,

trying to comprehend both,

trying to catch our breath.

FOUR HERDS OF DEER

at the back of Djouce mountain,

blent into the heather, hardly visible –

they stared at us, whistled

and sprang away,

white rumps in the air,

light, light, as deer on cave walls.

FLOWERS KNOW NOTHING OF OUR GRIEF

for Eivlin, Kieran and Patrick

The dog creeps out of her bed at night,

pads towards the bedroom door,

bumps against it as she turns to lie down,

whimpers, stays close

and licks her paw.

But the roses, pink and delicate,

unfurl their buds in the sunshine,

scent the steps up to the front door.

Their indifference should break us,

instead, they shore up a dyke

against despair;

they play a tune in a minor key;

they whisper among themselves

in an old Esperanto;

they intimate

that hope is never dead

until this bewildered earth stops

throwing up roses.

 11.06.2016

MAL’TA BOY, 22,000 BC

The palaces of the tsars rise up again

newly gilded and painted, along the Neva.

Curled up in a dusty display case

in a corner of their great palace

is the rickle of a four-year-old child’s bones,

found under a stone slab

by a lake in eastern Siberia.

Half of his skull painted red,

he was buried with his necklet and bracelet,

his arrowheads and swan amulet.

Small nomad, buried as your people

moved on their circuits, tracking herds

of reindeer and mammoth,

flocks of waterbirds,

a slice of your arm bone is pored over

by tribes of scientists in laboratories.

On bright screens,