1
The sheepdogs flash, close in and disappear
In the rearview mirror. No, there is nothing here –
Or so they tell you, in the incestuous fug
Of Bellacorrick bar – from Nephin Beg
To the Belderg fields. Nothing for miles and miles.
So switch your engine off, be lost for a while,
Tune in to the skylark’s high, unearthly stations,
Teach yourself humility and patience
That a day might pass, beneath Atlantic skies
And apperceptive light, through half-closed eyes –
The bog-cotton infinite, shimmering like a sea,
The gulls blown in on the wind, off Blacksod Bay,
The power station shut, the stock derailed
On rusty tracks. The obsolete, epic scale.
2
The mountain ash is lonely for the mountain.
Where there is no-one, let yourself be haunted.
Father, tapping Atacama wells,
Alone on a dried-up sea, with fossilised shells –
You in the Niger naked, decades later
Drunk on vastness, solitude, one lone bather –
Up the road, the unsung engineer
Of Bellacorrick, lonely, drunk out here –
Crowding in, the alcoholic ghosts,
Home to original homelessness, glad to be lost,
To find the empty space on the Mayo map,
To park the car in a blind spot, or a gap
In knowledge – exiled souls, self-haunted,
Mountain ash-trees, lonely for the mountain.
3
Only so far, they tell you. Here, the track
Fades out, and the river is a switchback
Of shallows, glides, and salmon spawning-redds
To the back of beyond. Pure watershed –
The arguments, the human cries torn off
In a crosswind, the tree grown through the roof
Of an abandoned house, where the cattle winter.
No-one comes through the door, they break and enter –
Long lost years . . . And now, sweet smells of hay
On the other side of suffering, after a wet May
In a car already rusted, the tyres all blown,
Coming, on shattered fragments, into your own,
Crashed out, under travelling Irish skies,
Wondering is it here the waters rise.
Felon
It was deep in a small wood,
Autumn, when I came upon him
Out of my own late life.
He was weighing his prospects
As I had done – a fowling-piece
Under arm, a pocketful of bird-shot,
A litter of spent cartridges
At his feet. A changeling
At the dangerous age
Of felony, transportation,
Draped in a camouflage jacket,
Mottled in light and shadow.
Already, there would be women,
Drink, unlicensed cars
And trespass at all hours.
I would deliver him, at a stroke,
From October, local skies,
The old life of instinct.
Trials would follow. Redemption
In the punishing light
Of the tropics. I saw it all
Already, through a glassy screen
Of dripping haws, as he lowered his gun –
My real, my illegitimate son.
Harry Clifton
From The Winter Sleep of Captain Lemass, which is due to be published next month by Wake Forest and Bloodaxe Books
