Longley - A Hundred Doors

We are sitting beneath stained-glass windowsIn our snug in The Crown, sipping our pints, Taking confession from our reflectionsAmong flowers painted on the mirrors. Alone at Carrigskeewaun for the millennium My friend sits at the hearth keeping the cottage warm. Is it too late to phone him? Is it midnight yet? That could be me, a meadow pipit calling out. Otters are crossing from Dooaghtry to Corragaun. There are mallards and widgeon and teal for him to count. Three dolphins are passing the Carricknashinnagh shoal.

He has kept for this evening firewood that is very old. Bog deals five thousand years make the room too hot. How snugly the meadow pipit fits the merlins foot.

Unanticipated here In this Mayo boreen, It brings back her long Hair and her laughter As she shares the Irish For flowers, for the chough Closing its red toes Above our heads twenty Years ago in windy Macha na B, marsh Cinquefoil, the purple Sultry out-of-the-way Entangled bog-berry, Her favourite flower. I find a rusty horseshoe where skylarks Rise from the sheepshitty path, God-sparks, Sound-glints for bridle and bridle hand. As I listened to their gasps and sneezes, They reappeared in memory out there Among the reeds, and at my feet milkworts Sapphire glimmers seemed retina-born. Sitting up in bed with binoculars I scan My final resting place at Dooaghtry Through the new window, soul-space For my promontory, high and dry, Fairy Fort the children called it, rising above Otter-rumours and, now, the swans nest Among yellow flags, a blur of bog cotton, Afterfeathers from a thousand preenings. Wakened from a grandfatherly nightmare I sleepwalked around the cottage at dawn, Checking windows and wind-rattled gates. Wakened from a grandfatherly nightmare I sleepwalked around the cottage at dawn, Checking windows and wind-rattled gates.

The westerly blew me wren-song, then Wing-music. Five swans creaking towards Corragaun Lake would have been enough. I have to imagine the sixth swan That was definitely there at the zenith.

This is your first night in Carrigskeewaun. The Owennadornaun is so full of rain You arrived in Paddy Morrisons tractor, A bumpy approach in your fathers arms To the cottage where, all of one year ago, You were conceived, a fire-seed in the hearth. Did you hear the wind in the fluffy chimney? Do you hear the wind tonight, and the rain And a shore bird calling from the mussel reefs? Tomorrow Ill introduce you to the sea, Little hoplite.

Have you been missing it? Ill park your chariot by the otters rock And carry you over seaweed to the sea. Theres a tufted duck on Davids lake With her sootfall of hatchlings, pompoms A day old and already learning to dive. We may meet the stoat near the erratic Boulder, a shrew in his mouth, or the merlin Meadow-pipit-hunting. But dont be afraid. The leveret breakfasts under the fuchsia Every morning, and we shall be watching. I have picked wild flowers for you, scabious And centaury in a jam-jar of water That will bend and magnify the daylight.

This is your first night in Carrigskeewaun.

You are my second grandson, Christmas-born. I put on specs to read your face. Whispering Sweet nothings to your glistening eyelids, Am I outspoken compared with you? You sleep While I carry you to our elderly beech. Your forefinger twitches inside its mitten. Do you feel at home in my aching crook? There will be room beneath your fontanel For this branchy diagram of winter.

I take you back indoors to the Christmas tree. Dangling for you among the fairy lights Are the zodiacs animals and people.

I am writing too much about Carrigskeewaun, I think, until you two come along, my grandsons, And we generalise at once about cows and sheep. A day here represents a life-time, birds-foot trefoil Among wild thyme, dawn and dusk muddled on the ground, The crescent moon fading above Mweelreas shoulder As hares sip brackish water at the stepping stones And the innovative raven flips upside down As though for you. I burble under your siesta Like a contrapuntal runnel, and the heather Stand that shelters the lesser twayblade shelters you. We sleepwalk around a townland whooper swans From the tundra remember, and the Saharan Wheatear.

I want you both to remember me And what the wind-tousled wren has been saying All day long from fence posts and the fuchsia depths, A brain-rattling bramble-song inside a knothole.

The vixen will hear you cry, and the swans On their eggless experimental nest, And the insomniac curlew, and the leveret That leaves a dew-path across the lawn. Cocooning us in their whisper of contact Calls as I carry you into the house, seven Or six long-tailed tits flitter out of the hedge. How can there be enough love to go round, Conor Michael, grandson number four? The tits build a dome with wool and moss and Spiders webs and feathers, then camouflage With many lichen fragments their hedge-jug, Feather-poke that grows as the fledglings grow. Ive been thinking about you for a long time In faraway places like Piso Livadi Where on May Day they festoon with wild Flowers the masts of their fishing smacks. The morning you were born I wrote a poem About the Shetlands.

After four grandsons I was half-expecting you, Catherine: The oystercatchers peep, the harbour seal.

Why would the ewes and their lambs Assemble as though hypnotised Around the cottage? Do they sense A storm on its way? Or a fox? Darkness and quiet are folding All the sheep of Carrigskeewaun, Their fleeces lustrous, long wool For a babys comfort-blanket, For Catherine asleep in her crib This midnight, our lambing-time. You are the sixth swan, Maisie: The other five have flown To the vanishing lake And wait beyond the ridge For you: but stay a while In my mind, dawn-memory, Little zenith-lingerer. Handling this century-old Alabaster emptiness, I shadow the nest robber Who blew the white and yolk Of a cygnet waiting before The Great War to follow cob And pen across Glen Lough; Who wrote around the black hole Collectors particulars That sit in a cabinet Brimming with bird silences, Feathery non-existences, A swans egg among wren Pearls and kingfisher pearls. On the Shetlands we dont know anyone, So we gossip about the animals Or we contact home on the mobile. As we wait at Toft for the Yell ferry You walk up and down the little beach Too deep in conversation and sad news To notice an otters kelp-flashes.

Look! Im trying not to frighten him away. You climb alone to where witches burned And disturb a white hare. Albino Or snowy-coated still? Ive no idea. Shy behind his streaming forelock, he Approaches us, one dishevelled pony, A grandchilds mount. Shall I comb his mane? His hoof-prints fill with rain and inspire me, My hobbling, diminutive Pegasus.

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