POETRY IRELAND
by Blake Steele
March through June, 2003
INDEX
AÉ
A CRY, HALF DRUNK, ON THE SEA ROAD
UNDER A FULL MOON
GÉ
GATHERING MEMORIES
SÉ
ST. PADDYÕS POETRY NIGHT IN INNISMORE
STONES
TÉ
TUATHA DE DANAN
WÉ
WALKING ONÉ
LAST POEM: STONES
ST. PADDYÕS POETRY NIGHT IN INNISMORE
It was St. PaddyÕs day and all the tourist left the island
to celebrate in Galway.
I stayed on the island of Innismoore and wandered down
to a local pub by the quay.
It was packed with families and thick with smoke.
A lady said, the fishermen are in from the sea
to celebrate. You'll never see it more authentic than this.
One huge man leaned his back against the wall.
I wore my headdress and feathers.
He eyed me and said, ÒYou look like you have something to share.Ó
I said, ÒI can share a poem,Ó and he nodded
for me to take the floor.
I stood up, but the place was buzzing with noise,
so the fisherman shouted, ÒThe man has a poem to share,Ó
and the place went stone silent.
I shared one, and the people listened with their hearts,
you could tell, their eyes closed,
a hand hovering over the heart.
Not a noise, nothing to disturb
the flow of words, the sharing of soul.
I thought, only in Ireland could this happen
where any boy you meet might have
a poem in his pocket, one he was learning by heart.
TUATHA DE DANAN
1. The First Mythic Meeting of the Day:
I walk towards the seal colony and they lazily slip off
the rocks into the sea. Then, they all arise to gaze at
me,
in a semi-circle of curios eyes.
Suddenly, in the exact center a white seal arises
high up, staring straight at me.
An innocent, mysterious queen
surrounded by her counselors.
White like snow with huge doleful eyes,
she looks like she knows me,
and is longing for me
to take off my man clothes,
or for her to drop her seal-skin
and for our spirits to meet
in some other world.
2. The Second Mythic Meeting
Late, the crowds gone,
I walk the bare stone path
to Dun Angus, that holy
Celtic shrine that stands
between two worlds.
I think I have just come around a corner,
but there is no corner,
my eyes are blinded until I am almost
at the stone bridge
on which a long-haired sheep stands
with the low sun splashing golden light
over it. Next to it sits a huge, black crow.
They stare at me, and then the black crow caws,
lifts its huge wings
and flies off to the right.
The sheep continues to watch me
boldly, unwavering.
We gaze at each other:
like we are each a manifestation
of the otherÕs dream of mystery.
3. The Third Meeting
As I approach the main entrance of the sacred fort
the setting sun streams through the door.
It is just the perfect time of year for it.
I donÕt know if it is a trick of my eyes
or the carefully crafted work of ancient architects,
but the light shines through in such a way
that it creates a brilliant, soft radiance of white light
that shifts and opens in its center
to a hazy door of infinite blue.
I feel like I am gazing through a door
opened for a moment into paradise.
I lean against the stone portal and cry for the love for
God.
4. The Holy of Holies
The holy of holies of Dun Angus is open and spacious,
surrounded by three stone walls
with the fourth side, to the south,
an open space of sky,
and its floor a sheer 300 foot drop to the sea.
A raised stone area stands in the center
My guess is that they built the fort around it
so it could be used as a natural altar.
On its face is a finger of stone jutting out from the
cliff,
pointing towards the mist of the sea
and the mythical Island of the Ever Young
they say appears when the light is right.
I carefully sit out on the finger of stone,
my feet dangling in the sky, and pray,
drinking in the freshness, the naked exhilaration
as the sea thunders rhythmically in caves far below.
I call on Eshoo, (perhaps I am the first person here
in over 3,000 years to use his Aramaic name),
and watch the sun sink to a cool,
a red mass settling over the distant bank of fog.
5. The Road Home.
As I come around a bend of the sea road,
a huge, shimmering, blood-red moon
has just risen above the eastern sea
and hangs low over a dark labyrinth of stone walls
like a shining broach upon the gray cloak
of some distant god.
A CRY, HALF DRUNK, ON THE SEA ROAD
UNDER A FULL MOON
I want to be one voice,
amongst millions of voices,
singing, shouting, crying,
Freedom!
I just got these lines
under a full-moon-lit sky
as two wild swans flew by.
To dance the wild dance,
to complete the holy circle naked,
to open every door without fear,
and find the primal beauty unmasked
in the wild freedom of Love.
Love, Love, Love
is the one law of Life,
Love the path
of the soulÕs liberation.
I want to be one voice,
amongst millions of voices,
singing, shouting, crying,
Freedom!
April 1, 2003
WALKING ONÉ
I walked on a strand
beaten by the blue waves and bright foam,
and swept by a wind that howled its lonely howl
in the rattling stones.
On my right hand seals watched me
from the cold, blue-gray sea,
and on my left sailed swans in sweet water.
And before me the gulls and terns road the sea swells
and arose with quick flaps of their wings
over the fast moving foam.
While behind me stretched my whole life:
a mysterious weaving of the soul
like a jumble of seaweed
thick and slick and shining on cold stones.
GATHERING MEMORIES ON INNIS MOR
Here, in this shed on grey sheets of stone
overlooking the seal-filled sea,
amidst fat geese waddling on stones,
chickens scratching in briars,
ducks casually raping each otherÕs docile mates,
I write to gather a handful of impressions
from the vast river of images
that have flooded through my nights and days.
Below me, the sea roars and moves in the motions
of slow, monstrous tides.
The little hut creeks like a ship riding
oceans of wind.
From high, sheer cliffs I have watched
sea-birds soar far below me,
riding the rising currents of air,
seemingly, silently ecstatic,
shooting up over the lips of stones
with wild, triumphant cries.
There I opened my heart, teetering
on the edge between two worlds:
one of grass and stones
and one of sheets of sky.
And I longed to leap into the air
and fall and fall into the dark sea
to meet old pirates in their lairs,
and Viking raiders, and hardy women
who watched their fires and warmed cold children
while their husbands fought the tides
and prayed they would return from the oceanÕs
dangerous bosom with a basket of fish
and more than stories to tell.
And I walked stone paths between stonewalls,
skirting primordial forts of stacked stone
and tiptoeing on the top of razor rocks
worn into weapons by centuries of relentless winds.
And I knelt in the grass to read the epitaphs of children cursed
out of heaven by the beliefs of Love-starved souls,
all the while their little spirits rocked in the arms
of limitless Love.
And IÕve huddled behind walls of ancient ruins
to feel the sun on my skin while the cold wind
howled overhead.
And IÕve touched mysteries beyond telling:
secrets muttered by seals and animals and birds
and glimpsed through doors as old as mountains.
And here I'll pause, for the story is too long,
the impressions too rich, the moment too telling.
STONES
Everywhere stretch stonewalls,
like a vast spiderÕs web spun by the weathered hands
of island people.
The beaches are a mass of round sea-stones.
StonesÉ
Rough stones, old stones,
worn and weathered stones,
standing stones, olgam stones,
sleeping stones dreaming a long history,
leaning stones sheltering prehistoric bones.
Stone Celtic crosses broken by CromwellÕs violent men
jut up in carpets of thick grass.
A mound hides a Viking king.
Horses clop down the lower, sea road between
walls of ivy-covered stones.
Near the ruined church of the Four Beautiful Saints
I drop a yellow shell into an ancient
holy well. The stones here are polished black
from thousands of knees, bare feet and tears.
The sweet waters have not failed
for hundreds of generations.
On a hill old stones cover the graves
of many children and bear the inscriptions of tears:
"Little Tirza Lies Here."
*
This island is a monument to stones.