The falling notes rose,
My spirits,
A jig of Irish tunes,
Danced
And I walked on down the road.
I told my lass
That I must leave.
Ireland was a callin'
And I couldn't wait no more
So I walked on down the road
while the Germans shouted
and the French wept
and the Italians ate
and drank to my health
The grass rose before me
and the wind dwindled
and the moss papered the rocks
and the trees cheered
and the sky wept
on my route
down the road.
A quiet hold in her notes
Rises smoke soft
From earthen fairy mounds
And bogs and rivers
To raise our spirit.
She hides her red blaze
In mists on lakes
Of Partholon and Nemed,
In myths, the truths
Of druid and fine',
In months, endless.
She is ever green
Beneath a brimming moon
Ablaze with life.
Field yellow, full of flower
I glow for her and grow
Under sky and stars
With a moon-night of love.
I thank Brighid
For her gift of love.
May she enjoy it through me,
As she has enjoined me with it.
What of the original eleven?
Ten riders lost in the swells of intemperate sea
Only one remains:
I stand
cliff sided and steep.
A boatsman edging close,
to the cleaving line.
Crashing upward echoes
from crags below
which wait in a dim swish of hushed defiance.
Guards at the gate
to the vastness beyond,
marked
with torrent and calm.
I stand in awe
of wind and sea
encircling me with power
the raw throb and thud of ocean.
I feel as one, despite
the palpable forces
pulsing in my veins
I waiver
and fall
to the waiting rocks below.
There remains an antique land of polished green dreams beneath a mist,
thick and clean, where great blue flutes in waves of wind sweep a waltz of Irish rain across a rocky plain, to plunder dreams in greens:
It seems-
There came a lull from seven days of Irish rain
and though my boots still wet from journey’s gain,
this antique land yet plundered my dreams and on and on
I rambled down and round to where few had gone.
Around the quiet depths, a lake in mid July,
there did I meet a sight that drew me nigh
to it: a stone whose granite face quietly crept
from shadowed greens, then wan and white it wept.
I touched the worn words as I read their soft depths:
“He has out soared the shadow of all our night.”
I stood by its naked face as the shadows stretched out
to embrace the swift setting sun and I sat in the slim light
while the past wept in silent remembrance and forever etched doubt
upon my mind. Left only were the character and coldness of his fate
And in white stone the date: 1888.
The darkened waters spread out and the shadows crept all around.
The shadows crept all around crowned in sound.