Filíocht Nua:New Poetry Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin The Litany As every new day waking finds its pitchSelecting a fresh angle, so the sunHangs down its veils, so the ancient verbsChange their invocation and their mood. Steady through the long gap in the storyA stiff breeze whistles up off the oceanChoosing a pair of notes, the same key. A tidal drag sucks back down as deepAs it rode high; the foamy-crested wave(Astonished at numbers, the white gannets,In their salt generations) arrivesTo listen for that same voice and stays,Arching smoothly, waiting for the response. The soaking tears of centuries drill downLow passages in between the stones,Keeping to the calendar made out In columns of names, a single stiff skinCoiled up and stowed away in the high slitAbove the stone corbel that once had human features. The wave can pause no longer, called back to Brazil. [End Page 34] The Nave Learning at last to see, beginning to draw,I cast abroad the lineThat noses under stones, presses around an instep,Threads off into distance and forward againAs it pierces and drags. Like a daft graph it shootsUp, like a weed falls and rises. I am led, I find itLooped on every hooked corbel. Drowned in deep shadowsI catch myself in a tangle of rickety laneways,Part of a procession. The streetsAre full of innocence, a stumbling,Cobbled bazaar of shining bargain treasures,Their shimmer resisting the eye.Remotely the four-four beat of the carnival marchPulls me aside, adrift on the stepped descent—A fresh smell from the lemonade stall announcesThe square transformed. The trinkets dangle,Ribbons wrap round and round the coloured poles.The air darkens, fairy lights burst out on wires;The line calls me upwards, curving bannisters,Their metal studs too nearly worn away,Come to a point where a little troop,All brightly masked, wait for more companionsBefore the steeper climb. It is cooler here:Darkish stone, slate, a marble well, a rampWith a squashed feather stuck to one side, then old,Clean tiles. I am drawn, staggering—It feels like lifting a tall, swaying shipWith wind-filling streamers—Across the threshold. And indeed the naveHums like a ship, the corded masts and sparsAre tugged by wind, and the uppermost gallerySwings and revolves. The hanging censerVibrates like a spider on his thread. In the rigging clingsA saint whose cure is personal as a songPerformed aloud at a wake by a special call,Or softly to a patient in her hospital ward. [End Page 35] Brother Felix Fabri The squared interior is tiledWith names, crowded with bannersAll bearing devices, twinnedInitials, chequered, quartered. He feels inside his loose sleeveFor the old bone-handled knifeHis grand-aunt kept and usedTo pare her afternoon apples; He trims the square of paper—He has written all the namesFor those at home, forgettingNobody who wanted prayers— And lays it on the tombstone.He stands upright, harbouringSuch clear thoughts about the roadsHe travelled, he might just fall Asleep. He shivers, picks upThe paper square from underThe crowding feet. And withoutStirring at all from his place He probes the sleeve again, findsFlint and steel, and the heads turnWatching the paper's abruptFlame, the names that he carried By all the harsh paths, returnedHome in a flourish of ash. [End Page 36] A Bridge Between Two Counties The long bridgestretched between two countiesso they could never agreehow it should be kept standing at all(in the mist in the darknessneither bank could be seenwhen the three-day rain the flood waterswere rising below).On that day I lookedwhere the couple walked a woman a small childthe child well wrappedbecoming less visibleas they dodged left then right, weavingbetween the barrels and the planksplaced there to slow the trafficand something came a brown human shapeand the woman paused and passedthe child's...
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Dec 31, 2023
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