The earth is
round all
right, but here
earth ends, thick
tongues of mist
licking the ledge.
A hiss- the
sea breathing?
That crying is not birds…..
Thrown up screaming,
a chough, its claws
and beak blazing-
it grabs at light,
then topples shrieking
down out of the world.
Moher by Richard Ryan, from Ravenswood by Richard Ryan, Dolmen Press , 1973 Distributed outside of Ireland by OUP
Sweet hay, raw grass, the hot udder, wild strawberries
a green corridor, pine pitch, the cathedral.
From time to time an apple drops –
A baptism.
Through the art gallery, the girl walks by in mauve.
You skate on a frozen tear.
Da Capo.
This poem is from Selected Poems by Liliana Ursu The Sky Behind the Forest .Trans, Liliana Ursu, Adam J Sorkin and Tess Gallagher.
(Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation). Bloodaxe 1997.
Mention has been made before on the Poethead blog of The Poet’s Circuits, Collected Poems of Ireland
But I will mention them again anyway, for those readers who have an interest in Medieval Ireland, the Guild System, and in Colum’s editing of this beautiful book.
Here are the Poet’s Circuits :
I suppose it was incredibly disappointing to me and many others to realise, with all their high falutin’ that our government between 2001-2006, in their rush to manipulate the property bubble did not understand the cultural heritage of our natural and built environment. The Circuits indicate a closed Canton and Guild system that tied together a people with words and songs . Not the type of people who would drive a huge motorway through Tara for the fun of it.
This is Colum’s dedication to his wife and to the book. The other circuit (8) is searchable through the search engine at the top right of this blog page.
Mary Catherine Maguire Colum, by Padraic Colum
They come to it and take
Their cupfuls and palmfuls out of it ,
The well that’s marked for use and gossiping.
Who know
Whence come the waters? Through what passages
Beneath? From what high tors
Where forests are? Forests dripping rain,
Branches pouring to the ground, trunk, bark, roots
Letting their streamlets down? Through the earth’s dark
The water flows and finds a secret hollow.
Stones are around it and a thorn bush
And so the well is made familiar ,
Marked , used , resorted to day after day.
No users, gossipers, the half-moon above !
Come to the well, my own, my bright-haired one,
And let me hear
The rapture of your voice with some great line
Of verse your memory holds, the while your look
Ecstatic is your spirit is your spirit in your face,
And maybe in a depth below the depth
Touched by a pail, something desired will stir .
by Padraig Colum
In attempting to find some important documents and thus turning a large room’s worth of paper and books inside and out, and consequently not finding the documents… I did, however, refresh some bookshelves !
Small volumes of Poetry by Liliana Ursu and Celia de Fréine are now moved forward in shelves where they are more accessible. I am very aware that I have written a lot on both women and Irish language poetry in recent weeks , so today, it’s a book recommendation for people who like poetry and things poetic, in Old English !
The Book Poems and Prose from the Old English , was gotten from my favourite Galway bookshop, the treasure-trove that is Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop (in 1998) .
I will look out an Amazon or essay link to add in here at the end of this post; but at this time I only have the actual book before me, which is marked within with an NGI (National Gallery of Ireland) Postcard of a painting by Sir William Orpen – ‘Harvest 1918’. The Poetry part is divided into four main sections :
1. Elegies
2. Heroic Poetry
3. Religious Poetry
4. Wisdom Poetry.
The Prose section, which I haven’t read yet , is similarly divided into sections but contains both a legal/testamentary section and a ‘Medical and Magical section’. I have used parts of the book on Poethead before in an elegy excerpt. The only one in the book being ascribed to a woman being a Lament . Though I highly recommend the riddles and elegies for readers who enjoy Old and Middle English.
Riddle 47
A worm ate words. I thought that wonderfully
Strange – a miracle – when they told me a crawling
Insect had swallowed noble songs,
A nighttime thief had stolen writing
So famous, so weighty. But the prowler was foolish
Still, though its belly was full of thought.
Riddle 45
I’ve heard of a something that grows by itself,
Thicker and fatter till it lifts up the covers,
And the girl grabs that boneless what-is-it
In her high-minded hands and shoves that swelling
thing up her innocent dress.
(page 225 gives the proposed solutions to the riddles )
Poems and Prose from the Old English, Trans Burton Raffel Yale University Press. 1998.
Re-blogging this poem, I think its about time there was a bit more Edith Sitwell on the site. it was transcribed from *Facade*, so I have to find my notes to add in the Publication date etcetera.
‘The Octogenarian Leaned from his window, To the Valerian Growing below Said, ‘My Nightcap is the only gap in the trembling thorn where the mild unicorn with the little infanta danced the Lavolta (Clapping hands: Molto Lent Eleganta). The Man with the Lantern Peers high and low; No more than a snore as he walks to and fro… Il Dottore the stoic culls silver herb beneath the superb vast moon azoic.” From: Facade, by Edith Sitwell. … Read More
via poethead
and I couldn’t find a summer flower poem, so it will have to be a spring flower poem. The earliest blossom in our neighbourhood tends to scatter as soon as a wind rises up, leaving minute wee flowers , scattered all over the ground. They have the virtue of shining milk-white and incandescently in the blue mornings of February before sunrise , looking neatly stitched unto the silhouettes of the trees…..
If you are reading Joyce today, I always recommend the Ithaca Section (17) , as it is beautiful :
“At sea, septentrional, by night the polestar, located at the point of intersection of the right line from beta to alpha in Ursa Major produced and divided externally at omega and the hypotenuse of the rightangled triangle formed by the line alpha omega so produced and the line alpha delta of Ursa Major. On land, meridional, a bispherical moon, revealed in imperfect varying phases of lunation through the posterior interstice of the imperfectly occluded skirt of a carnose negligent perambulating female, a pillar of the cloud by day. “
The next post is the promised blooming blossom pome,
Lilies of the Field
Plump nipple blossoms more like,
Neatly sewn onto a blue bodice.
Virgin surprise! one wink and
They’re blown confetti on wet ground
© C Murray
Lilies of the Field by C Murray is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
| Mhotaigh an scamallán an teas trína chlúmh scáinte, is scáil gréine is scáth faoi seach sa duilliúr seimh, is siosarnach ghaoithe sa ghiolcach, is ceol srutháin faoi. Rith driuch fionnadh tríd -bhí rud deoranta sa nead leis ! Thar dhuibheagán an spáis is dhiamhair na gcianta thainig an treoir. Trí dhamhna na réaltaí tríd aigéad dí- ocsairibeanúicléasach, ó aigne an Dúilimh, scairt an dúchas. Dhronn se a dhroim íogair, cigilteach gur ardaigh an rud deoranta that bhéal neide arnach. Plab! ón gcoill chraobhach thainig guth a Mháthar mar a bheadh sí ag sclogáil gháire, agus glao na gcuach fireann ina diaidh. Shoiprigh se é féin sa nead. Is chonaic an Dúileamh corp an ghealbhain ag imeacht le sruth. An tÉan Cuaiche le Máire Nic Mhaoláin A brief note on the Introductory to this book, which though published in 1986 had some interesting figures on the inclusion of Ulster Irish Poems in Publications and school curricula (1986) . “Ni théann líon os chionn 10% de líon iomlán na bhfilí i gcas ar bith a phleann an nuafhilíocht. is Lú ná 3% de na filí gus de na dánta atá i gceist i Díolaim Filíochta don Ardtestiméireacht, eagrán oifigiúil DR C. Uí Ghóilidhe, 10% de na filí i Nuabhéarsaíocht 1939-1949 Uí Thuama, meán de 8% i dtrí imleabhar Nuafhilí 1942-1978 Uí Chéileachair agus 6% ag O Brien ina Dhuanaire Nuafhiliochta . Is mo ná 35% de dhaonra na tíre agus de dhaonra na Gaelteachta atá sa chuige. Níl staidreamh ann do chumas ná d’úsaid na teanga.” Réamhrá : Filíocht Uladh 1960-1985, Ó Dúill. (I put in the comments because they are related to the post ” An Duanaire, Poems of the Dispossessed, 1600-1900″.) I misplaced my copy of *CIC Cathal O Searcaigh today, meaning it worked its way to the back of some bookcase, so I decided to read his poems in the Filíocht Uladh , along with some Máire Nic Mhaoláin. So , after a longish day, in which some amount of fruit preserving and cookery classes occurred in lieu of an afternoon nap- I decided to put the Nic Mhaoláin onsite and save the Ó Searcaigh Dídean for another occasion (like when we get the summer electric storms!) My translation skills btw are appalling, I can read Ó Searcaigh as if it was in English but have trouble with the nuts and bolts of Nic Mhaoláin, especially this word dí-oscairibeanúicleasach .
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Its probably best for those who admire the writing of Paul Celan to get the books, there are a number of translations from ‘Fathosums and Benighted’. Carcanet 2001, Trans, Ian fairley.
The below is a re-blog of ‘Irish’ which is stunning. The Paul Celan files are embedded somewhat within the translations sections, which include the Ethnopoetics/UBUWEB and Homad links.
*Re-blog of ‘Irish’ by Paul Celan is below this note, at link.. *
Irish, by Paul Celan
“Grant me the right of way
over the cornstair to your sleep,
right of way
over the path of sleep,
the right to cut turf
on the shelf of the heart,
come morning”.
Irish, by Paul Celan. from ‘Fathomsuns and Benighted’, trans Ian Fairley. Carcanet Books, 2001.
Someone just hit this post and I decided to reblog it, though its been a while since I transcribed it . The blog is over two years old now , I sometimes forget how much is here.
How many Windows Does a Person Need “How many windows does a person need to open himself, so he won’t be like Captain Nemo, trapped in the webs of length and width coordinates hunted by his world. Among navigation instruments, ” moving within the moveable base”. Closed in, as if saying let the world come through my porthole, let it accustom itself to me. And on his eyes he put patches made of glass to keep tears from pouring to the light. He too … Read More
via poethead
“The Western Writers’ Centre – Ionad Scribhneoirí Chaitlín Maude – Galway deplores the illegal blockade of Gaza by Israel and the recent boarding of the relief vessels m.v. Rachel Corrie and the m.v. Marmara by Israeli forces. Further, we express our condolences to the families of the nine relief activists killed by Is…raeli commandos on the m.v. Marmara.”
Fred Johnston
Richard Tillinghast
Brian Mooney
Sylvia Crawford
Aoife NicFhearghusa
Chris Murray 