for Michael Hartnett <br /> <br /> <br />We always knew there was no Orpheus in Ireland. <br />No music stored at the doors of hell. <br />No god to make it. <br />No wild beasts to weep and lie down to it. <br /> <br />But I remember an evening when the sky <br />was underworld-dark at four, <br />when ice had seized every part of the city <br />and we sat talking – <br />the air making a wreath for our cups of tea. <br /> <br />And you began to speak of our own gods. <br />Our heartbroken pantheon. <br /> <br />No Attic light for them and no Herodotus. <br />But thin rain and dogfish and the stopgap <br />of the sharp cliffs <br />they spent their winters on. <br /> <br />And the pitch-black Atlantic night. <br />How the sound <br />of a bird’s wing in a lost language sounded. <br /> <br />You made the noise for me. <br />Made it again. <br />Until I could see the flight of it: suddenly <br /> <br />the silvery lithe rivers of the south-west <br />lay down in silence <br />and the savage acres no one could predict <br />were all at ease, soothed and quiet and <br /> <br />listening to you, as I was. As if to music, as if to peace. <br /> <br /> <br />Eavan Boland<br /><br />Eavan Aisling Boland<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/irish-poetry/
