SHOp 33 (Summer 2010)
The issue begins with a new translation (abridged) by Seán MacMathúna of 'The Lament for Art O'Leary,' the greatest of the surviving secular keens. It was delivered by O'Leary's widow Eileen (Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill). O'Leary had a fine white mare, which in 1773 beat a horse belonging to the High Sheriff of Cork at Macroom races. The Protestant High Sheriff offered him £5 for the mare. Under the Penal Laws, O'Leary could not refuse the derisory offer, but he did. He became a fugitive and was shot dead in Carraig an Ime. His horse galloped home. Eileen leaped astride her and rushed to O'Leary's corpse to drink his blood and begin her lament
Other contributors to this issue are Eva Bourke, Alison Brackenbury, Moya Cannon, Moyra Donaldson, Michael Longley, Michael Mackmin, the late Peter Porter, William Wall(MORE?) and many others, some never previously published. There is a poem by Elka Schmitter in her German, in English (translated by Hans-Christian Oeser) and in Irish (translated by Gabriel Rosenstock). Also two poems by Matthias Politycki, translated from the German by Oeser and Rosenstock. Also a poem by Zhang Jiu-Ling (678-740), translated from the Chinese by Kevin Maynard. Also a poem by Paul Casey in Zulu and English.
Paula Meehan's fine poem 'Mysteries of the Craft' was published in SHOp 32 with three lines unaccountably missing. Our apologies. The poem appears below, complete.
PAULA MEEHAN Mysteries of the Craft
after Anna Akhmatova
for Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill
Before starting find the lines — broken
and whole — arranged as a hexagram;
the crescent moon waxing, a token
in the night sky of beginnings. Palms
open to the grace of what might fall
like snow to the snow-white page. How calm
I am, and cool, when I hear the call.
She has found me out, in my silence,
come with rumours of heaven, of hell.
* * *
In my garden — teasel, nettle, thistle,
taken hold since I lifted my hand;
with thorn, sting, clawed hooks they do battle
bristling towards the ruin of my house.
Like poetry — territorial
and patient. Humble only to bees;
flowering to them, opening to them,
and how, against winter's unleaved trees,
they scribe gracenote, quaver, minim.
* * *
I watch a she wolf treading thin ice
beyond the birches. I hold my breath—
muffled river music. Lost balance
and the wolf stumbles, skirts death,
jumps to the bank just as the ice cracks,
her shadow snagged by water. Beneath
the trees, snowdrops measure the exact
shift in light that ends the long winter—
and out there on the snowfield her tracks.
* * *
What cracked the ice, what broke the silence?
Groans of prisoners. After thunder,
church bells pealing. Out of the violence
her voice clear above mocking laughter.
Flute music then and her frantic dance;
on the east wind news of fresh torture.
Drumbeat. Heartbeat. Edge of edge of chance.
She moves through me: mother and daughter,
ancient lover. She works me to trance.
* * *
I find the line. I lose it. I find
the line again. I turn it over
and feel it move through ear, heart, mind,
tracking the prints back to the den's mouth
beside a frozen lake, beneath trees
where again I'm fated to give birth.
Blood on my tongue, its pelt licked and eased
from nose to tip of tail. The black earth
under snow yearning for tender green.
* * *
After love we sleep curled together.
I am dreaming her old dreams; she dreams
pines freighted with snow, ice storm weather.
Her mouth's rimed with my milk, her hair streams
in curls and rivulets down her back.
She is spelling out the new regime—
its ins, its outs, my place in the pack;
where she keeps the names of the lost things,
how to bear the pain, the sweats, the rack.
* * *
Strung out again I stumble through nights
without her. Cold grey street. Hot grey sheet.
Body drab as lead I shun the light.
She has shown me what it's like to die.
Bereft, out of favour, I won't write
one syllable of truth, one good lie.
I crave her cool comfort, her deep shade.
She's busy elsewhere despite how I try
to lure her back with this song I've made.
* * *
And thus I turn what she has given.
I offer it up to them in hope,
in despair, part wasted, part shriven,
I have twisted my own hempen rope
with those sad listeners as witness.
Though I know nothing of how they cope
in their real, their secret lives, I bless
them in their every generation
in their devotions, in their duress.
* * *
From the fret of insomnia some
bright lines on a page; a candle
gutters on the windowsill; oh come
morning bells, call me back to myself,
call sinner and saint to watch snow fall
on the city, the forest, the wolf
tracking her cub the length of the lake.
Before this moon clears the horizon
I'll give whatever she needs to take.