Three poems, commissioned by the Dept of Foreign Affairs and the Museum of Literature, to honour St Brigid’s Day.
Old Biddy Talk
By Paula Meehan
Have you no home to go to…
The young mostly on one another’s screens
– but these two rapt in each other
at the boundary wall: that genetic imperative,
the force that through the pandemic
drives their flowering, is my spring rain,
is my restorer from the deep delved wells,
hauled to the healing light of this world
pure water tasting of gemstone & iron,
quartzite & gold:
starlight & planets,
the sun & the comets, the moon herself,
she sacred to Brigit, mirrored in my bucket.
My own breath, old spirit, stirring in the cowled
reflection of the earth geologic, old seas,
old forests wherein once we swung from tree
to waterlogged tree become shale, become coal,
underground tributaries to rivers of oil –
breath lit fuel in their veins. They are fire –
vestal and flame. They are immortal.
At Bridget’s Well
By Doireann Ní Ghríofa
When rain fell on a path of stone,
one by one, we appeared alone.
Each of us wore a different face,
but we were all the same –
drawn by ache to lift green latches,
drawn by want to walk the dark
passage. Past paper stares, we knelt
and wept, we who fed the well in rivulets,
whose plunged wrists trembled
with vessels of blue violets.
We each spoke a spell of stone
and in her gloom heard prayers turn poems.
Ask her, Bríd, what will be
come of us?
Listen. Liquid, the syllables;
the echo, luminous.
i mbolc
an invocation
By Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe
guardian of the fawn
brightest of the flame
awaken us at dawn o
exalted! hear your name
come glinting in the hearth
kohl lashes lined with soot
steel flint omega arches
fleet mare so light of foot
milk flecked o’er the mouth
skin tight sweet lipped foam
suckled at the reddening
ears, corners of your cloak
glistening by a winch above
the veiled amnion of well
hold us, head neath water,
that we might breathe again
stay winter: light the torch
in dark where life is forged
in the belly; draw breath —
draw rein