On Achill Island

By Turlough
- 122 reads
On Achill Island
From the pile of turf where the cock crows
Daily to remind us we’re alive
I see an emerald land painted in oils
Preserved since High Kings ruled
Like the body in the bog
She’s a pagan who trusted in God
And prayed to His mother
Did she live all the days she was due
And die in good spirit
With the hounds of Finn at her heel
Or was she filched in the night by Fear Doirich?
My heart for so long as black as the soil
Stained by blood and blight
Is eased since you rose from your sick bed
After eight hundred years
Your houses still carcasses broken apart
Ransacked by bailiffs, dark men of their Crown
While hillsides bled with flame
And crows grew fat
On pickings from bodies grown thin
I’d wept eight hundred tears
For the pitiful children of the Gael
That clung to the edge of the world
Beyond Achill’s lonely dunes
Slievemore girls float by like clouds
Their clothes the grey of Mayo skies
Each a ballad waiting to be sung
Each a field rose waiting to be picked
At a crossroads dance on a summer night
Each the child of one mother with ten
Each scrutinised by Kelly the priest
With his worn-out rosary
And his stained-glass eyes
My Granda played the penny whistle
Where Micky Patten’s blaze warmed
And crackled to bring in the crowd
Echoes of jigs and reels linger still
On the salty breath of Atlantic winds
The silent people talked all night
While poitín sang, his tired eyes danced
Until his calloused peat-brown hands
Stretched down to the empty hearth
And those winds sighed softly
And the door swung closed
My fingers now as black as the soil
Stained by blood and blight
As they cling to Ériu
On the shore of Lough Keel
There I’ll die in good spirit
With the hounds of Finn at my heel
Image: I don’t have a photograph of Lough Keel on Achill Island, but here’s one I took of the lough at Glanmore in West Cork.
- Log in to post comments
Comments
"Echoes of jigs and reels
"Echoes of jigs and reels linger still
On the salty breath of Atlantic winds.."
I might describe a vast, sprawling poem like this one as an epic.
Many lines to admire and written with authority and skill.
My kinda poem.
Superb.
- Log in to post comments
brilliant imagery in this
brilliant imagery in this Turlough - a good way to see in the new month!
- Log in to post comments
Atmospheric and haunting. I
Atmospheric and haunting. I can imagine Sinéad O'Connor singing this.
- Log in to post comments
This is our social media Pick
This is our social media Pick of the Day!
Please share if you enjoyed it too
- Log in to post comments


