On Achill Island

 

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

 

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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.