Evensong The way evening comes in (or on or down) brings the word closer than it’s ever been: the blue levelling deeper, evening to a fade that seems to make the colour brighter, the best possible way to age. I keep watching its beauty as if I could learn it, shaking a month’s dust…
Fable When I look back I seem to remember singing. Yet it was always silent in that long warm room. Impenetrable, those walls , we thought, Dark with ancient shields. The light Shone on the head of a girl or young limbs Spread carelessly. And the low voices Rose in the silence and were…
Entering the Mare (The inauguration of an Irish chieftain, as observed by Gerald of Wales in the 12th century) She stamps and shivers, her white coat vainly shrugging, as the would-be chieftain plunges in, burying deep his puny, acrid man’s seed, between her fragrant haunches. The Goddess lives in her fine…
Now I am a Tower of Darkness As a Child I knew How, beyond the lamp’s circuit, Lay the shadow of the shadow Of this darkness, Waiting with an arctic kiss In the well of the staircase, Ready to drape the bed with visions No eyelids can vanquish. Now I am a…
Solinus, on the authority of Camden, incontrovertibly declares that there are no bees in Ireland. Keating impugns both Camden and Solinus stating Such is the quantity of bees, that they are found not only in hives, but even in the trunks of trees, and in holes in the ground. Modomnoc the beekeeper, who was…
