ODonohue - Echoes of Memory

Not on my lips look for your mouth,

not in front of the gate for the stranger,

not in the eye for the tear.

P AUL C ELAN

They are to be admired those survivors
of solitude who have gone with no maps
into the room without features,
where no wilderness awaits a footstep trace,
no path of danger to a cold summit
to look back on and feel exuberant,
no clarity of territories yet untouched
that tremble near the human breath,
no thickets of undergrowth with deep pores
to nest the litanies of wind addicted birds,
no friendship of other explorers
drawn into the dream of the unknown.

No. They do not belong to the outside worship
of the earth, but risk themselves in the interior
space where the senses have nothing to celebrate,
where the air intensifies the intrusion of the human
and a poultice of silence pulls every sound
out of circulation down into the ground,
where in the panic of being each breath unravels
an ever deeper strand in the web of weaving mind,
shawls of thought fall off, empty and lost,
where only the red scream of the blood continues unheard
without anonymous skin, and the end of all exploring
is the relentless arrival at an ever novel nowhere.

i.m. my father, Paddy ODonohue,
died June 21st 1979

What did you see
when you went out
into the cold region,

where no name is
spoken or known,
where no one is
welcomed or lost,
where soon the face is
closed and erased?

Could you touch
the black hearts
of rocks hanging
outside their shells?

Were you able
to sense the loss
of colours, the yellows
and cobalt blue that you loved,
the honey scent of seasoned hay
you carried through the winter
to cattle on the mountain?

Could you hear no more
the shoals of wind swell wild
within the walls of Fermoyle,
or be glad to sense the raw rhyme
as those rosaries of intense limestone
claim the countenance
of every amber field
from weather and time?

Or was everything dream
framents stored somewhere
in a delicate glass
on which a dead hand landed?

Did you plod through
the heavy charcoal shadow
to a sizzling white bush,
stop and repeat
each of our names
over and over,
a terrified last thought
before all thought died?

As it leaves
the sea inscribes
the sand
with a zen riddle
written in Japanese
characters of seaweed.

Above
the white selves
of seagulls
mesh in repetitions
of desire.

You caught him out,
the one form
fierce enough
to sustain you
in pallid days,
at the black well
before the dawn
inking himself.

for Josie, my mother

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.

And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.

And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

i.m. my uncle, Pete ODonohue,
died 18th October, 1978

Where did you go
when your eyes closed
and you were cloaked
in the ancient cold?

How did we seem,
huddled around
the hospital bed?
Did we loom as
figures do in dream?

As your skin drained,
became vellum,
a splinter of whitethorn
from your battle with a bush
in the Seangharra
stood out in your thumb.

Did your new feet
take you beyond
to fields of Elysia
or did you come back
along Caherbeanna mountain
where every rock
knows your step?

Did you have to go
to a place unknown?
Were there friendly faces
to welcome you,
help you settle in?

Did you recognize anyone?

Did it take long
to lose
the web of scent,
the honey smell of old hay,
the whiff of wild mint
and the wet odour of the earth
you turned every spring?

Did sounds become
unlinked,
the bellow of cows
let into fresh winterage,
the purr of a stray breeze
over the Coilln,
the ring of the galvanized bucket
that fed the hens,
the clink of limestone
loose over a scailp
in the Ciorcn?

Did you miss
the delight of your gaze
at the end of a days work
over a black garden,
a new wall
or a field cleared of rock?

Have you someone there
that you can talk to,
someone who is drawn
to the life you carry?

With your new eyes
can you see from within?
Is it we who seem
outside?

Not
the blue light of his eyes
opening the net of history,

the courage of his hands
making ways of light
to the skulls of the blind,

the stories that never got in
to the testament, how they came
upon him in the lonely places,

his body kneeling to the ground
his voice poised to let antiphons
through to the soundless waste,

how her hunger invaded
until the stone of deity broke
and a fresh well sprung up,

nor why unknown to himself
he wept when he slept
a red furrow from each eye,