from The Splinters

By Greg Delanty

(Skellig Michael) does not belong to any world that you and I have lived and worked in: it is part of our dream world…then (heading back) we were pursued by terrors, ghost from Michael…

                                               George Bernard Shaw

     I
 
The ferry furrows
the foam,
leaving a wake
that quickly settles
and forgets us,
as it has forgotten
all those
who’ve opened these waters:
fisherman, monk, pilgrim and pagan,
some foundering here.
Our mainland
world diminishes.
There is respite.
A cloud engulfs us
out of nowhere
as if the miraculous
were about to appear.
The veil lifts
to reveal the small Skellig
and Skellig Michael
rising like chapel and cathedral.
 
                      II
 
We forget speech, hypnotized by the climb,
concentrating on narrow, rock-hewn steps
that spiral up like the gyres
of the Book of Kells, whirling in labyrinths
of knowledge, turmoil and eternity.
They lead to the beehive huts and oratories
packed with a congregation of sightseers
who whisper in disbelief and reverence
at how those sometime monks lived
in this wind-tugged cloister of shells.
 
We browse in each dome’s live absence
and picnic above the graveyard
that’s no bigger than a currach
with a crucifix for helmsman
navigating his crew to the island of the dead.
We’re eyed by the staunch, monkish puffins.
Our tongues loosen, but, in keeping
with the somberness of this sun-haloed place,
we chat about the world with an earnestness
that would embarrass us on the mainland.
 
You tell of medieval monks charting world maps
with countries drawn as humans gorging upon
each other’s entangled bodies. We go on to
the lands and demons of the world of poetry.
I’m flummoxed when you ask what poetry is.
I recall how the earliest musical instruments
were hewn out of bones, and that poets
carve their words out of those gone before.
They are the primitive musicians who beat
and blow words back to life. More than that I don’t know.
 
                      III
 
[…]
 
That dusk at Dún an Óir we slaughtered even
the pregnant, whimpering women methodically
while a bloodstained sun drowned in the ocean.
Each fetus struggled in the belly
of each slain mother as desperately
as a lobster dropped in a boiling pot.
Had shed blood been ink, I could still be
quilling The Faerie Queene, but I did not
allow a drop to blot a mere sonnet
that you, trapped in complicity, can never
quite break free of. Admit it, hypocrite!
In your time few are not guilty of slaughter.
Even the page you’ll pen this upon is of pine
that Amazonians were shot for. I could go on.

                                                                                   (Edmund Spenser)
I lifted the pitch of my grief
    above the storm-lashing waves
for my world breaking on the reefs
    of foreign, land-grabbing knaves,
 
who ignore dependence upon
    the lowliest plants and creatures
as the hermit crab and cloak anemone
    depend on one another.
 
But no matter what, you must
    keen for the world’s theft
as I keened mine, despite knowing
    soon no one may be left.
 
                                                                                   (Aodhagán Ó Rathaille)

Lend an ear to one of your own kind
   and do not let yourself be caught
by the winds of lust, like Dante’s starlings
   blown this way and that by every gust.
 
I myself was borne on this wind
   as I rode across country,
always wary that around the next bend
   my life would catch up with me.

My rakish ways squandered energy
   that I should have instilled in song,
more worthy of the muse-gift given to me
   than my odd aisling,
 
Pay particular heed to me, especially
   since your word-talent is less than mine.
I’m still too bushed to eke out a last line.
                                                                                    (Eoghan Rua Ó Súilleabháin)

Sing up front,
cold-shouldering
the fashionable
low key of your time,
closed, cautious and crabbit
as a farmer.
 
Sing as open-throated
as my curlew keen.
I supped the red wine
of Art’s blood
as he lay slain,
already becoming Cork mud.
 
Sing as full-throated
as my unmatched plaint;
matching my words
to his cold body
that would never again
rouse to my touch.
My hands wept
that day’s icy rain
as I swore to undo
that kowtowing
dribble of a man
who slew my Art
of the winged white horse.
 
The spirit of that mare
I rode fleeter than any hare,
fleeter than any deer,
fleeter than the wind
through Munster’s open country.
 
Sing your provenance,
our elder province.
                                                                                     (Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill)

I sang not for my own or for beauty's sake
as much as to keep our spirits fired, 
knowing as long as we sang we'd not break, 
refusing to allow the country be shired.
But it was too much when even our lands
turned hostile and drove us like lapwings
in the hard winter, together in dying bands,
our swollen bellies pregnant with nothing. 
Even the birds seemed to give up singing. 
So I lay down and relinquished song.
But I should have kept up my amhrán-ing, 
adapting and transmuting their tongue. 
Transform the spirit of where you belong, 
make something right out of what's wrong. 

                                                                                     (Tomás Rua Ó Súilleabháin)

Tell of those weather-sketched
    Attic islanders
who half-tamed their school
    of rocky Blaskets,
water spouting from the blowholes
    of cliffs. 

Tell how they were forced
    from their Ithaca,
still dreaming in the surf-rush 
    of Irish,
the inland longing for the lilt
    of the sea.

In them uncover the destiny
   of everyone,
for all are exiled and in search 
    of a home,
as you settle the eroding 
    island of each poem. 

                                                                                        (Robin Flower)

[…]

The islands' standing army
of gannets fiercely snap,
stab and peck one another.
Few could match
the spite I unleashed 
on any who encroached 
into my territory. I spat 
with petrel accuracy. 
I should have had the wisdom 
of the sad-eyed puffins 
who let everyone come close,
sensing few mean hurt, 
though when forced to tussle
they'll show their worth. 
So learn from me. 
When I come to mind
don't recall how, feisty, 
I knocked nests of words
over the edge,
splattering on the rocks 
the crude squwaks of other 
ravaging, wing-elbowing birds; 
rather think of the winged poems 
I hatched, seen, 
regardless of time and place, 
gliding and gyring 
with their own grace. 
                                                                                          (Patrick Kavanagh)

Life when it is gone is like a woman
you were glad to be quit of only to find
yourself years later longing for her,
catching her scent on a crowded street. 
Tell us of the seagull plundering your picnic 
before it wakes you. Tell us of the rain
tapping a pane while you're ensconced
by the fire cradling a pregnant brandy glass. 

                                                                                            (Louis MacNeice)

Can you still hear a distant train whistle blow? 
Wet my whistle with a slug of Guinness.
What is the texture of fresh-fallen snow?
Do girls still wear their hair in braid?
What's tea? What's the smell of the sea?
Tell me. Tell me. I am beginning to fade.
          
                                                                                             (Dylan Thomas)

                      IV

The alarming, silhouetted bird
has a preternatural quality 
as it flutters about
my head, drawing me
from sleep's underworld. 
I resist its pull. 
Everything turns
into dream's usual montage. 
Another figure emerges 
but says nothing, 
as if that's what he came to say. 
His face merges into
one of a gagged female. 
She shimmers and vanishes. 
Dolphins break
beyond Blind Man's Cove,
returning the dead
to Bull Island, transmitting
their encrypted, underwater Morse. 
The savant local ferryman
informs us that Skellig Michael
was once a druidic site. 
His oil-wrinkled hands tug
the engine cord,
coaxing our boat
out of the cliff-shaded cove.
We withdraw
into the distance, 
leaving a disgruntling sense
that we've only touched the tip
of these dark icebergs. 

 
Copyright Credit: Greg Delanty, "From The Splinters" from Selected Delanty.  Copyright © 2017 by Greg Delanty.  Reprinted by permission of Un-Gyve Press.