Mise Aisling
By Anne Casey
After Eavan Boland’s ‘Mise Éire’
I lost my tongue
long ago in exile,
refound it in a ghost child
calling for her mother.
Elizabeth O’Brien casting off
to the deep: Bíonn súil le muir
ach ní bhíonn súil le tír
(hope in the sea,
no hope in the land)
as she clutches
her grizzling Eliza,
slipping away.
I am the girl who left,
the woman who returns
always to this wild coast,
to these deep-rooted cliffs,
Atlantic swells dashing against
our haunted history,
to these bonefed boglands,
this patchwork street
whose gaptoothed roofline
recalls my grandfather’s flight:
a child running
through the frost-lit night―
the only home
he’d ever known
ablaze in his wake,
the dark cracking
over and over
as neighbours fell
to the Black and Tans’ guns.
A chuisle, Elizabeth answers,
a breath on the wind
and there is Granda
hoisting me high in his arms:
A chuisle (my pulse)
into my hair―
whispered always
whispered―welts
still felt a lifetime later
for uttering our outlawed
mother tongue.
Imeacht agus teacht:
going and coming
from these cliffs, this sea,
these streets, these potter’s fields,
this history that made us.
This is my story,
as it was yours,
but not hers―
slipping away
through the fog
filling the Shannon
river’s gaping mouth,
clutching her sleeping Eliza,
bound for Australia―
away from their grasping
landlord,
away from the famine’s ravaging
aftermath,
a hundred and nine days
on the unrelenting sea,
a voyage
they would not
both survive.
Imeacht gan teacht:
to leave but never arrive,
that long-feared Irish curse.
Is mise Aisling, is tusa Aisling, is Aisling í:
I am Aisling, you are Aisling, she is Aisling.
Notes:
- Aisling refers to a political poem in which Ireland is personified as a woman who appears in a vision; it is also the middle name of the late, celebrated Irish feminist poet, Eavan Boland.
- This poem derives from detailed research into the life of Eliza O’Brien who arrived in Australia as an infant with her family in 1853. Natives of Shanagolden, Co Limerick, the family of nine were fleeing the aftermath of the Great Irish Famine. Eliza’s mother died shortly before their ship docked in Sydney.
- This poem also references political violence experienced by the poet’s family in 1921 as reprisal against a local rebellion in which they had no part.
First published in Soak anthology (Brio Books and University of Technology Sydney, 2023).
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Beathaithe ag Caisín
by/le Julie Breathnach-Banwait
Cur in aghaidh na hanacra
Ab éigean do mo dhaoine a dhéanamh,
An chloch a chloí, is an chré
Chrosanta a thabhairt chun míne
Gleic mo Dhaoine
Máirtín Ó Direáin
I scailp, i dteannta faoi charraig chreagach, ina gcnap ar chosán na muirbhigh, atá taibhsí mo dhaoine i dtaisce, ar an bhfoscadh, i mboilg shliogáin snasta na mara. I dtráthnónta fada an tsamhraidh, is an spéir thiar gearrtha is ag guairneán le dearg, tharraingeodh mé féin agus mo dheirfiúr siar géaga móra raithní go roinnfidís a gcomhrá siógach linn faoin ocras mór. An t-ocras mór úd. Déarfadh mo mháthair gur orainn an bhí an t-ádh, ag seanmóireacht léi, gur aithin Caisín triomach ár bpíobán is folúntas ár ngoile is gur mhúisc sí aníos a cuid chun ár mboilg fholmha a shásamh, is í ag sciúradh soithí poircealláin sa doirteal, á scrúdú i solas na gréine tríd an bhfuinneog. ‘Duileasc na gcloch, cocaí cluaisíní, ruacain is diúilicíní dubha, méara sceana mara fada caola, feannta is faofa ag méar, snáthaidí is ingne díograiseacha chun an stiúgadh úd a phlúchadh,’ a lean sí go haontonach, leathshúil aici ar Chaisín sínte mar pluid ghorm thríd an bhfuinneog. Ar na laethanta dathannach úd, dhéanfadh na hanamacha scrúdta úd snagaíocht ó bhun na carraige chun a sliocht a bheannú, ramhraithe is beathaithe ag swiss rolls, líomanáid bhán is toirtíní úll. Tógaim glúin i mbá thráite Chaisín. Sloigeann a láib go glúin mé. Caochann sí súil orm.
° Caisín: Bá Chaisín, Leitir Mealláin, Co. na Gaillimhe, Éire.
When Caisín fed us
Cur in aghaidh na hanacra
Ab éigean do mo dhaoine a dhéanamh,
An chloch a chloí, is an chré
Chrosanta a thabhairt chun míne
What they must do my people
was to oppose the difficult,
tame rocks, make unruly
earth amenable
Gleic mo Dhaoine
The Struggle of my People
Máirtín Ó Direáin
Translated by Micheál Ó hUanacháin
Wedged beneath the craggy carrick, slumped on the sandy stretch to the sea, are stored my people’s ghosts, snug and sheltered in the bellies of glossless cockle shells. On evenings, when scarlet swirled and sliced summer skies, my sister and I would peel back the frilly fronds of ferns to hear the haunting tales of their hunger. The hunger. My mother told us we were the lucky ones as she washed the porcelain cups in the sink. ‘Caisín saw us’, she preached, scrubbing off stale tea rings, leaning in to examine her progress. ‘She heard our ravenous rasping, churned up for us her innards and filled our hollowed bellies,’ she continued, holding the cup up to the light, squinting. ‘Dilisk,’ she droned, monotoned, ‘cockles and razor clams, periwinkles, mussels, shucked and scraped by the feeble fingers of my famished people, with pins, nails and needles,’ acknowledging Caisín’s blanket of blue meeting red skies through the kitchen window. Those hungry souls, on stretches of summer evenings, crept from under the rock to greet their lineage of great-grandchildren, plump and satiated by picnics of swiss rolls, apple tarts and white lemonade. I kneel in Caisín’s ebbed basin, her mire absorbs my grateful body, she winks at my gratitude.
° Caisín: Caisín Bay, Leitir Mealláin, Co. Galway, Ireland.
This prose poem and its translation, is taken from Julie’s upcoming collection of prose poetry – hypnagogia: hiopnagóige, due for release by Pierian Springs Press in 2025.
The translation of Beathaithe ag Caisín has been previously published in The Mackinaw: A Journal of prose poetry (2024) https://www.themackinaw.net/julie-breathnach-banwait.html
The Decision
By Daragh Byrne
When she thought of her history as a bell-curve
with a narrow standard deviation, the day itself
was a tall spike that sundered the expanses
of prior and since, on an otherwise placid lifeline.
That morning, the breeze blew from its bad side,
and flattened her hair with a first intimation
that the sense of herself she had long been so sure of
could be ripped from the mast of her being
and flap in a gale of dissemblance.
In the days immediately afterwards,
she was relieved that there were few witnesses.
She mended herself invisibly, stitching her tears,
wearing her conscience like a favourite undershirt.
As the long years ushered her through,
she sometimes gave thanks that those who felt
a nameless narrowing on their path—
at times when they expected smoother progress—
would never have known to condemn her.
In her later years, when she walked past churches,
she’d sense the tug of a faith that was no longer hers.
Those holy men who milk the instinct to confess,
to the same ends they lid our more urgent instincts,
would goad her to share her act beyond herself.
She held less tightly to their notion of sin,
so she clasped her decision to the hub of her breastbone,
and coddled it like a taciturn child,
until they put her in the coffin and buried them both.
‘The Decision’ was runner up in the Allingham Poetry Prize.
Daragh Byrne is a Sydney-based Irish poet. His work has appeared in Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal, Southword, Poetry Wales, Crannóg, Howl New Irish Writing, The Waxed Lemon, The Four Faced Liar, Stony Thursday Book and elsewhere. He has been shortlisted or commended in the Patrick Kavanagh award, Fool for Poetry International Chapbook Competition, Poetry London competitions (pamphlet and single poem) and the Listowel Writer’s Week Collection Competition. He is founding editor of The Marrow, a journal of international poetry. http://www.themarrowpoetry.com
Tinteán 