A Miracle of Music

 

I

 

I watch him still, their Celt and comrade,

standing on the stage, the light dulling like sunset,

his concert in a tavern in the heart of Galway,

two hundred miles from Temple Bar.

He imagined those fabled ghosts silent in the darkness,

shadows inked into mud and horsehair walls.

 

His tongue loosed by those sacred syllables,

Gaelic, his former language; the guttural sounds,

a quern’s rasp in the half-light. The crowd thronged,

his foot roved on to the rhythm of his song,

his legs liberating others in dance.

I’d followed him, even then, across a nation.

 

II

 

Months later, he sang again in An Gorta Mor, Gaillimh,–

white with the spectre of ghosts, suppressed a string,

like a sorrow, his every word their requiem.

He’d been the boy who trod on hidden skulls,

ignored the barefoot ghosts who would dig the earth

forever frantic for roots, but now he returned

 

to sing their old laments. Other ghosts haunted him too,

those who rose in Derry to march again,

undefeated, the H-Block phantoms, the slain

of the Shortstrand. The pint glass shivered

at his lips. The guitar strings threaded tight

against his fingers were the wires of the long war.

Reviews

[Ed Hart]

there have been so many fine poets who have lent their voices to this too long time...when all the pages have been turned, your songs will still be sung