The Penguin Book of Irish Poetry Page 9

  Against drowning, against wounding,

  So that there may come to me abundance of reward.

  Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,

  Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,

  Christ on my right, Christ on my left,

  Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise,

  Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,

  Christ in the mouth of every one who speaks of me,

  Christ in every eye that sees me,

  Christ in every ear that hears me.

  I arise today

  Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,

  Through belief in the threeness,

  Through confession of the oneness

  Of the Creator of Creation.

  Kuno Meyer

  from The Calendar of Oengus

  The Downfall of Heathendom

  Ailill the king is vanished,

  Vanished Croghan’s fort,

  Kings to Clonmacnois

  Come to pay their court.

  In quiet Clonmacnois

  About Saint Kieran’s feet

  Everlasting quires

  Raise a concert sweet.

  Allen and its lords

  Both are overthrown,

  Brigid’s house is full,

  Far her fame has flown.

  Navan town is shattered,

  Ruins everywhere;

  Glendalough remains,

  Half a world is there.

  Ferns is a blazing torch,

  Ferns is great and good,

  But Beg, son of Owen,

  And his proud hosts are dead.

  Old haunts of the heathen

  Filled from ancient days

  Are but deserts now

  Where no pilgrim prays.

  Little places taken

  First by twos and threes

  Are like Rome reborn,

  Peopled sanctuaries.

  Heathendom has gone down

  Though it was everywhere;

  God the Father’s kingdom

  Fills heaven and earth and air.

  Sing the kings defeated!

  Sing the Donals down!

  Clonmacnois triumphant,

  Cronan with the crown.

  All the hills of evil,

  Level now they lie;

  All the quiet valleys

  Tossed up to the sky.

  Frank O’Connor

  Patrick’s Blessing on Munster

  God’s blessing upon Munster,

  Men, women, children!

  A blessing on the land

  Which gives them fruit!

  A blessing on every wealth

  Which is brought forth on their marches!

  No one to be in want of help:

  God’s blessing upon Munster!

  A blessing on their peaks,

  On their bare flagstones,

  A blessing on their glens,

  A blessing on their ridges!

  Like sand of sea under ships

  Be the number of their hearths:

  On slopes, on plains,

  On mountainsides, on peaks.

  Kuno Meyer

  Writing Out of Doors

  A wall of forest looms above

  and sweetly the blackbird sings;

  all the birds make melody

  over me and my books and things.

  There sings to me the cuckoo

  from bush-citadels in grey hood.

  God’s doom! May the Lord protect me

  writing well, under the great wood.

  James Carney

  Monasticism

  ANONYMOUS

  The Hermit’s Song (Marbán to Guaire)

  A hiding tuft, a green-barked yew-tree

  Is my roof,

  While nearby a great oak keeps me

  Tempest-proof.

  I can pick my fruit from an apple

  Like an inn,

  Or can fill my fist where hazels

  Shut me in.

  A clear well beside me offers

  Best of drink,

  And there grows a bed of cresses

  Near its brink.

  Pigs and goats, the friendliest neighbours,

  Nestle near,

  Wild swine come, or broods of badgers,

  Grazing deer.

  All the gentry of the county

  Come to call!

  And the foxes come behind them,

  Best of all.

  To what meals the woods invite me

  All about!

  There are water, herbs and cresses,

  Salmon, trout.

  A clutch of eggs, sweet mast and honey

  Are my meat,

  Heathberries and whortleberries

  For a sweet.

  All that one could ask for comfort

  Round me grows,

  There are hips and haws and strawberries,

  Nuts and sloes.

  And when summer spreads its mantle

  What a sight!

  Marjoram and leeks and pignuts,

  Juicy, bright.

  Dainty redbreasts briskly forage

  Every bush,

  Round and round my hut there flutter

  Swallow, thrush.

  Bees and beetles, music-makers,

  Croon and strum;

  Geese pass over, duck in autumn,

  Dark streams hum.

  Angry wren, officious linnet

  And black-cap,

  All industrious, and the woodpeckers’

  Sturdy tap.

  From the sea the gulls and herons

  Flutter in,

  While in upland heather rises

  The grey hen.

  In the year’s most brilliant weather

  Heifers low

  Through green fields, not driven nor beaten,

  Tranquil, slow.

  In wreathed boughs the wind is whispering,

  Skies are blue,

  Swans call, river water falling

  Is calling too.

  Frank O’Connor

  The Priest Rediscovers His Psalm-Book

  How good to hear your voice again,

  Old love, no longer young, but true,

  As when in Ulster I grew up

  And we were bedmates, I and you.

  When first they put us twain to bed,

  My love who speaks the tongue of Heaven,

  I was a boy with no bad thoughts,

  A modest youth, and barely seven.

  We wandered Ireland over then,

  Our souls and bodies free of blame,

  My foolish face aglow with love,

  An idiot without fear of blame.

  Yours was the counsel that I sought

  Wherever we went wandering;

  Better I found your subtle thought

  Than idle converse with some king.

  You slept with four men after that,

  Yet never sinned in leaving me,

  And now a virgin you return –

  I say but what all men can see.

  For safe within my arms again,

  Weary of wandering many ways,

  The face I love is shadowed now

  Though lust attends not its last days.

  Faultless my old love seeks me out;

  I welcome her with joyous heart –

  My dear, you would not have me lost,

  With you I’ll learn that holy art.

  Since all the world your praises sings,

  And all acclaim your wanderings past

  I have but to heed your counsel sweet

  To find myself with God at last.

  You are a token and a sign

  To men of what all men must heed;

  Each day your lovers learn anew

  God’s praise is all the skill they need.

  So may He grant me by your grace

  A quiet end, an easy mind,

  And light my pathway
with His face

  When the dead flesh is left behind.

  Frank O’Connor

  Straying Thoughts

  Shame on these thoughts of mine

  that dart every way

  they are piling up trouble

  for Judgement Day

  At Psalms they dander

  down unapproved roads

  run riot in the face

  of all-seeing God

  Through bustling crowds

  through gaggles of girls

  through woods through cities

  they swagger and swirl

  Along paved highways

  they strut in their pride

  down desert tracks

  insidiously sidle

  Without need of a ship

  they sail the salt seas

  with no springboard in sight

  vault to the skies

  They follow paths of folly

  to east and west

  and when tired stravaiging

  drop home for a rest

  Where I try to restrain them

  and hobble their feet

  but they run from their shackles

  into the street

  There knifeblade and horsewhip

  can’t bring them to heel

  and they slip through stretched fingers

  like slithering eels

  No firmvaulted dungeon

  or lock of hard iron

  no fosse or thick fortress

  hampers their run

  O dear Christ, my darling

  forgiver of the weak

  send your sevenfold spirit

  render them meek

  Take over my mind

  dear Lord God of All

  til my thoughts serve you duly

  obeying your call

  Your love is perfection

  and that is what I seek,

  to be like you, not like me –

  straying, fickle, weak.

  PC

  Myself and Pangur

  Myself and Pangur, my white cat,

  have much the same calling, in that

  much as Pangur goes after mice

  I go hunting for the precise

  word. He and I are much the same

  in that I’m gladly ‘lost to fame’

  when on the Georgics, say, I’m bent

  while he seems perfectly content

  with his lot. Life in the cloister

  can’t possibly lose its lustre

  so long as there’s some crucial point

  with which we might by leaps and bounds

  yet grapple, into which yet sink

  our teeth. The bold Pangur will think

  through mouse-snagging much as I muse

  on something naggingly abstruse,

  then fix his clear, unflinching eye

  on our lime-white cell wall, while I

  focus, in so far as I can,

  on the limits of what a man

  may know. Something of his rapture

  at his most recent mouse-capture

  I share when I, too, get to grips

  with what has given me the slip.

  And so we while away our whiles,

  never cramping each other’s styles

  but practising the noble arts

  that so lift and lighten our hearts,

  Pangur going in for the kill

  with all his customary skill

  while I, sharp-witted, swift and sure,

  shed light on what had seemed obscure.

  Paul Muldoon

  Celibacy

  Little bell,

  clinking through the gusty night,

  sweeter your call

  than a wanton girl’s moan of delight.

  PC

  EARL ROGNVALD OF ORKNEY

  (d.1158)

  Irish Monks on a Rocky Island

  Sixteen women tripping on the shore –

  I’ve seen them: forelocks hanging down,

  each chin a field shorn

  of stubble, smoother than a grey dragon’s.

  We’ll chance a claim

  that these insular dames

  out west, butt-up to the storm,

  are mostly bald as babies’ bums.

  Kit Fryatt (Old Norse)

  Devotional Poems

  ANONYMOUS

  Eve

  I am Eve, great Adam’s wife,

  I that wrought my children’s loss,

  I that wronged Jesus of life,

  Mine by right had been the cross.

  I a kingly house forsook,

  Ill my choice and my disgrace,

  Ill the counsel that I took

  Withering me and all my race.

  I that brought winter in

  And the windy glistening sky,

  I that brought sorrow and sin,

  Hell and pain and terror, I.

  Thomas MacDonagh

  The Massacre of the Innocents

  FIRST WOMAN

  Why do you tear me from my love,

  my body’s fruit,

  me who brought him into the world?

  mine were the breasts he sucked

  mine the womb that carried him

  mine the bowels that sheltered him

  mine the heart he satisfied

  mine the life he glorified

  mine the death to lose him

  mine the strength that faltered

  mine the speech that failed

  mine the sight blinded with crying.

  SECOND WOMAN

  You take my son

  who did no wrong –

  please slaughter me

  and not him;

  my breasts run dry

  my eyes overflow

  my hands tremble

  my body crumples

  my husband heirless

  myself senseless

  my life my death

  my only son (dear God!)

  my work unpaid

  my travail without issue

  unavenged forever

  my breasts crushed

  my heart tattered.

  THIRD WOMAN

  Looking for one

  you kill all

  you slaughter the children

  you maim the fathers

  you ruin the mothers

  you’ve opened hell

  closed heaven

  and spilled the blood of the godly without cause.

  FOURTH WOMAN

  Come to me, Christ

  take my life quickly

  along with my son’s

  and come great Mary

  mother of God’s Son

  tell me what

  I can do

  without a son.

  For your Son

  my soul and mind have been destroyed;

  I am astray in the head

  surviving my son;

  my heart will stiffen

  a drying bloodclot

  from the killings today

  to the end of all.

  PC

  BLATHMAC, SON OF CÚ BRETTAN (fl.750)

  from To Mary and Her Son

  May I have from you my three petitions,

  beautiful Mary, little white-necked one;

  get them, sun amongst women,

  from your son who has them in his power.

  That I may be in the world till old

  serving the Lord who rules starry heaven,

  and that then there be a welcome for me

  into the eternal, ever-enduring kingdom.

  That everyone who uses this as a vigil prayer

  at lying down and at rising,

  that it may protect him from blemish in the other world

  like a breastplate and helmet.

  Everyone of any sort who shall recite it

  fasting on Friday night,

  provided only that it be with full-flowing tears,

  Mary, may he not be for hell.

  When your son comes in anger

  with hi
s cross on his reddened back,

  that then you will save

  any friend who shall have keened him.

  For you, beautiful Mary,

  I shall go as guarantor:

  anyone who says the full keen,

  he shall have his reward.

  I call you with true words,

  Mary, beautiful queen,

  that we may have talk together

  to pity your heart’s darling.

  So that I may keen the bright Christ

  with you in the most heartfelt way,

  shining precious jewel,

  mother of the great Lord.

  Were I rich and honoured

  ruling the people of the world to every sea,

  they would all come with you and me

  to keen your royal son.

  There would be beating of hands

  by women, children and men,

  that they might keen on every hill-top

  the king who made every star.

  James Carney

  ANONYMOUS

  from The Metrical Translation of the Gospel of St Thomas

  Jesus and the Sparrows

  The little lad, five years of age

  – Son of the living God –

  Twelve puddles blessed he had just coaxed

  From water and from mud.

  Twelve statuettes he made then;

  ‘ “Sparrows” shall you be named’

  He whispered to those perfect shapes

  That Sabbath in his game.

  ‘Who plays with toys on the Sabbath Day?’

  Spoke out an angry Jew

  And marched the boy to Joseph,

  His foster-father true.

  ‘What sort of brat have you brought up

  That wastes his sacred time

  Scrabbling in mud on the Sabbath Day

  To make bird-dolls from slime?’

  At that the lad clapped two small hands

  And with sweet piping words

  Called on the dolls before their eyes

  To rise as living birds.

  No music heard was ever sweeter

  Than the music from his mouth

  When he told those birds ‘Fly to your homes

  To east and west and south.’

  The story spread throughout the land

  And is heard down to this day

  And all who hear it still can hear

  The sparrows’ voices pray.

  PC

  St Ite’s Song

  Jesukin

  stays with me day out, day in;

  no loutish priest-spawned lodger he

  but my own dear Jesukin.