by Terry McDonagh

There were druids, ascetics and
abbesses long before our day.
Some moved on, heard light
and became saints. Most lived
in routines of matins, vespers,
fine wines and herb gardens.
They had honey and garlic in
their bones and could be seen
in purple fields smiling alone.
They didn’t need to screw up
their eyes looking for playmates
or lie on their backs to tarnish
their faces in July heat. They’d
amble to and from toil when
bells tolled and speak when
spoken to. Hills and valleys
joined with them in worship.
There was no panic in the fields.

If, for once, we could be quiet,
down tools and listen, we might
hear them — silent as ever — in cells.
      It has to do with love. It’s no secret.

by Terry McDonagh

I might as well begin by saying
life has been good to me in
almost four decades of living
in Hamburg — now we’re leaving,

I’d found it hard to knock on doors
back then. It was all new and
I didn’t have the right words
nor did I have the laws of the sun
to put my kind of smile on faces
as I stood there with little to say.

The doors often closed and I’d
turn back into my fog
to go on searching for rich berries
at pedestrian crossings where
people stood in silent clusters
waiting for lights to guide them.

I’d peer into colourless dictionaries
and found that sounds like broetchen
got me bread–rolls on request.
In dreams I loitered round
strange ways of saying I will,
I won’t or how do you say that.
Back then, I’d needed a dream
and landed on an extravaganza
of street life and colourful boats
on a bulging river. And there were
dogs, unruffled people and a home
for Johannes Brahms and The Beatles.

For a time I lived close to dusk
and twilight, chewing furiously
on tiny grains of sweetness.
I sidled through day times and
night times aching for the sighs
I’d left behind. It was all too clean
and silent but it must have been
that silence that got me wanting
to begin again — to plant a spring
that stayed on into seasons — to
listen to the songs of the great Elbe.

And believe me, there were voices
telling me: you are turning your back
on your past. You have no right
to enjoy yourself, but Mondays
wove into Fridays in Hamburg.
Saturdays wove into Sundays
in Hamburg and I walked about
as free of guilt as a summer wisp
taking in everything I could while
remembering Irish sun and stars
trying to strobe through clouds
and men with big sticks lashing
at every form of light that might
have guided me to a safer place.

That new day has become decades.
If you stay on the road too long
you miss the turn, I’m told and
homeward bound and home are
only divided by dreary geography.

After all, I have put in full and
golden years, spoken my lines
without prompt and had my say
so it’s back to my place of birth
to the birthplace of the bard Raifteirí
to hopes swimming like water
to cows and sheep that stare you
in the face without blinking.

Joanna, Matthew and I close one door
to open another. Sean, Brit and Emma
remain in my outstretched arms.
Without plans nothing is terrifying.
Even in white smoke, knowledge
takes its time to work on the heart.
Another silence waits. We’re leaving.

by Ian Stephen

These clouds look steady enough.
Their sky anchors must be out
though I can’t see the traces
of the cables
but the plough is on the move,
fair sweeping along.

You join up the dots
to get a bit of the action.
That whole picture,
even the one in one window,
doesn’t bother to wait.
Those clouds shove themselves
out of the skylight.

The iron up there
is now tight on aluminum.
Polaris is that bit
out of the fram

by Ian Stephen

An ailing wind

will carry the last straw

from a croft in summer

to break the back of the seasons

and test our fences,

make a bunch

of a fleet

of creels

and so provide

materials,

lines and wires,

stiffening and ties

for our repairs,

always running,

to hold the island down.