The Ruins of Timoleague Abbey

I am gut sad. I am flirting with the green waves, wandering the sand, feeding reflection into the seaweed foam. That Shaker’s moon is up. Crested by corn-colored stars and traced by those witchy scribblers who read the bone-smoke. No wind at all — no flutter for foxglove or elm. There is a church door. In the time when the people of  my hut lived, there was eating and thinking dished out to the poor and the soul-sick in this place. I am in my remembering. By the frame of  the door is a crooked black bench. It is oily with history of the rumps of sages, and the foot-sore who lingered in the storm. I am bent with weeping. This blue dream chucks the salt from me. I remember the walls god-bright with the king’s theology, the slow chorus of  the low bell, the full hymn of  the byre and field. Pathetic hut. Rain-cracked and wind-straddled. Your walls bare-nubbed by chill flagons of ocean spit. The saints are scattered. The high gable is an ivy tangle. The stink of fox is the only swinging incense. There is no stew for this arriving prodigal, no candled bed. My kin lie under the ground of this place. My shape is sloughed with grief. No more red tree between my thighs. My eyes are milk. Rage my pony. My face has earnt the grim mask. My heart a husky gore. But my hand. My hand reaches through this sour air and touches the splendid darkness of my deliverer. Translated from the Irish