Stephen Connolly

In September 1607 the village of Fianaise Bhréagach was hit by an unidentified disease, taking the lives of all the villagers. The village was razed and official records expunged. In 2007 an account written by the local undertaker was found buried in the roots of a tree in the quarantined village’s square which unearthed details of this disaster. They sent a horse along the roads to say our town had been closed in, its bloodied hooves had been unshod. The shoes were kept to save the iron or bless the fate of those who stayed across the glens or down the coast. This horse’s message came our way while sentries occupied their posts, the note was tied around its neck declaring death was soon to reach where all would feel its fevered knock: the butcher’s shop, the mill, the church. The hardest village men played tough until the store of ale ran dry; the women stopped their mouths with cloth and held their husbands as they died. Disease took hold with sudden force. We thought that we could hush the moans so skinned and burned the flagging horse and let the fire consume its bones. My children’s skin turned cold and flushed. Acquainted as I was with death I saw their end and held their trust so cut their throats and sucked their breath. I dug their graves and then some more.

i.m. And then the sun came slicing sideways, clear water reflecting it, giving it slant. A gloss of rain so quick and light that day hardly made a sound. The thought of sheets hung out and drying on the line, of seeds in soil and soil itself, the glutting ends of stems of leaves that will them to let fall up and out and through the trees, the shape that shoots could take, of you and this moment as it happens: our echoing hush as we try to hold the close music of the blackbird in the bush. • And then the sun continued on. Lough Neagh cooled under the firm keels of fishing boats on the water’s taut skin, their painted hulls in pointed arcs an emblem of balance so finely wrought that they could tell the weight of light or air. Each night we walk along the shore, expecting still to find your sturdy figure waist-deep in waders, plumbing darkness, hauling it in, but never again your grip on the reel and never again the deft music of the blackbird nesting in your hand.