Launch reading by Polly Clark, Cathy Galvin and Penelope Shuttle
Join Bloodaxe for this online launch event for new February titles by Polly Clark, Cathy Galvin and Penelope Shuttle. Live on YouTube and available to watch afterwards.
Smelling of earth and ethanol,
the scholar with soft leather gloves
lifted my head from a box
lined with velvet, unpacked
my skull on a polished desk,
took the measure of me,
this other species,
when are bones no longer our own?
Could not bring himself to touch
the shreds of flesh on my nose.
I had waited for the moon
to rise over rocks
where I searched for seals, their singing
making me pause
at Trinity
wait for letters written to the Provost
that may yet bring me home
to turf, stones, lines of tourists.
When there was flesh
on my childhood I walked
the cow road to the cliff edge,
lifted blue eggs where they rested
on the ground, warm in my hands.
Placed them in a box
as treasure. Knowing they were where they would not crack
into flight.
*
Walls
There’s no anvil, brooch, harrow-pin.
The currach’s broken, walls stand without a roof.
All that’s left: a bureau containing bills,
cards, scarves, a Will.
You’re not in view but I can hear a breath
– the well-made dress and phrase.
My made things broke long ago.
They had little purchase on this world.
The creed, letters I do not read.
Solid seem the things that slip away.
Leaving us bone.
We stake a claim, lay foundations,
build and watch it fall.
Within, the comforts that ease survival.
We cut back wilderness, tame, contain
sycamore, birch, bramble, willow, grass.
All return.
Our walls come down, consolations go.
We do not come back. Take away it all
and what is left is who we are.
Our homes are built to go.
*
fromRough Translation
Child. Listen. Once, I rowed you towards the island. I pulled the boat up onto the beach. You took my hand as we made our way along a track towards the crossroads. Where the path rises up from the harbour, we looked down over slabs of granite, across fields to mountains. We saw grasses dotted with wild flowers and the hidden eggs of seabirds, a shallow lake, a seashore of oystercatchers.
Are there ghosts on the island? you asked.
I said: You go your way. And they go theirs.
You will never speak my words for earth, sea or wind and I can no longer taste them. Your song won’t hold my tune, only theirs. My dreams are in English. Words for something better than a tongue dipped in salt and earth. They will want you to succeed but never more than them.
put your shoulders back
Between your finger and your thumb, there’s no skill for knitting. My needles, in your right hand, have been digging me out of the grave for fifty years. The squat pen rests in your left. When you use these tools, are you a traitor, a fraud or a fool?
stop skulking behind
I thought of you today, the way our narrow bones begin to flex and crack with all that time drags to the floor. The pull of bags, children, body. The ball bearing down on neck, spine.
like an orphan.
*
Belly of the House
Crossing your threshold, time after time,
I believed your buried mouth,
its falling walls and gaping hearth, had lost its tongue.
That your soft language was too hard to learn,
though a little application proved me wrong,
crossing your threshold, time after time.
Through the door I saw abandoned ships,
a blackbird in the ash, a spinning-wheel unspun.
I believed your buried mouth
had been opened by the enemy, in not-so-secret ways,
to force-feed you silence, hunger and isolation,
crossing your threshold, time after time.
That you had sent me back to them, in the belly of a horse,
to surprise them at their game, learn their imperial ways.
I believed your buried mouth; I speak with foreign words.
From the belly of the house, feel a breath
of singing in the eyes of empty windows.
Contents List
9 Introduction
11 Preface: Title Deed
Book One: Specimens
15 Island Road
16 Blunt Needles
17 I Collect
18 Boat People
19 Physiography: 1
20 Dusk
21 Women Come to Find Me
22 Hawk
23 Physiography: 2
24 Snow
25 Na Ceachtanna: Lessons
30 Adúirt mo Mhamó
31 An Ghaeltacht
32 Place Names
33 Starlings
35 From the Kitchen on the Edge
36 Back Tonight to a Deserted House: 1
37 Back Tonight to a Deserted House: 2
38 Back Tonight to a Deserted House: 3
39 Saint’s Toolkit
40 Warming the Bones
41 Adúirt mo Mhamó Arís
43 Walls
44 Ethnology
Book Two: Mother
47 Waters Break
48 Rough Translation
51 What They Say to a Child
52 Guy’s Hospital, London
53 Straight Lines
54 Source
55 Bríd
56 Caoineadh
58 Swell
59 Credo
Book Three: Love Songs of Connacht
63 Mythology
68 Crow
69 Body of the Boat
70 Anraith
72 Man at Rosroe
73 At the Michael Hartnett Festival
74 Folklore Collector
76 Belly of the House
77 Joe
78 The Singer’s Centenary: Carna
80 Coventry Carol
81 Shells
82 Playwrights
83 Cromwellian
84 Turn to the Wall
Book Four: Son
87 Before
88 Samhain
89 After
97 Old Woman
