Tinteán

Love Poem

By Mary Howlett

It’s not easy to be in love with
a place that has changed so much.

I left when my world of possibility                                                                                                                     was young. Promises of new experiences,

dreams to chase. I don’t know to feel                                                                                                              when I return, sense of longing or disappointment?

There is no word in my treasury, in my verse to explain
the sadness for someplace once loved but no longer.

I am at home in Ballysally, kneeling
by graves, where ancestral bones rest

The church steeple, rose window, constant, 
when all around is built on shifting sand.

How much of this is real, is it a mirage to trick me
into a false sense of security, false promise to lure me back?                                                                 

You would have had to change too much                                                                                                        for me to stay.

Mary Howlett is a poet living in Waterford. She was born in Charleville, where generations of her family lived before her. Her work has been published in The Waxed Lemon, Comhnasc, Drawn to the Light Press, Bangor Literary Journal, Poem Alone, Shamrock Leaf, Canada, Wexford Women Writing Undercover, Poetry As Commemoration UCD, The Ireland Collection UK, A New Ulster, and elsewhere.

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An Ghéag Theasctha

Le Colm Breathnach

Cad é an gá seo agam le filíocht a scríobh
i dteanga a chaith mo shin-seana-mhuintir i dtraipisí?

Cad é ach
tochas i ngéag a baineadh díom.

The Severed Limb

Why this need to write poems
in a language my great-grandparents discarded?

What is it
but an itch in an amputated arm.

Translated by the author

Is file agus úrscéalaí é Colm Breathnach. Tá seacht gcinn de chnuasaigh filíochta móide rogha dánta, agus rogha dánta agus dánta nua, foilsithe aige chomh maith leis an úrscéal Con Trick “An Bhalla Bháin” (Cló Iar-Chonnacht, 2009). Tá tréimhsí caite aige ina scríbhneoir cónaithe sa tSín agus sa tSlóivéin agus tá dánta leis aistrithe go seacht gcinn de theangacha.

Colm Breathnach is a poet and novelist. He has published seven collections of poetry along with a selected edition and a selected and new poems and the novel Con Trick “An Bhalla Bháin” (Cló Iar-Chonnacht, 2009). He has been awarded writer’s residencies in China and Slovenia and poems of his have been translated into seven languages.

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Permission to Leave the Workhouse 

By Ray Givans                

To relieve overcrowding, Mr. Hawke of Kingston
decides, with the master, John Ynyr Burges,
to release 196 women. We are provided with a ticket
for the ship Militades, due to sail from Belfast Harbour
to New York, in ten days time. Unschooled,
and never beyond the reach of The Sperrins,
I pair with Peggy O’Neill from Tyrone.

We travel by foot,
keep close to the rickety Belfast Road,
but always near to tree and field,
out-of-sight, quiet as field mice.
At dusk we seek shelter in hedgerow
if abandoned house or barn are unavailable.
Restless nights. A squall of wrens might start up.
Never close to water, since a water rat
with swishing tail scurried across my bare feet.
One morning I woke to find a harvest mouse                      
tangled in my hair …. but the greatest burden
was handing over the cloth wrapped body
of my only child. At night her loss is worse
than having to lie on a bed of a thousand stinging nettles.

Escape, 1847

Mary and I must have cut a rare sight,
scrambling after father’s prized pig,
Daisy grunting and snorting, steam
rising from off her broad back,
six piglets tumbling after their mother.
Eventually, between whins and track,
in sheugh water, father cornered her,
held her hind legs and placed his free hand
below the chin. Mary and I rounded up the piglets,
the lower door of the half-door bolted this time.

Daisy must have smelt something rotten
for just before the arrival of the landowner’s lackeys
she trumpeted such squeals that haven’t been heard
since our mother’s keening over our brother, Thomas.

Our father, inclined to be the heartiest of welcomers,
would have given short shrift to these men on horseback,
two pulling a rickety wagon, into which the pigs were tossed.
Of course, our father was offered a fraction of the pigs’ worth
on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. Shame. Before they had rounded
the corner, father spat, scrunched his boot in the mud.

Thus began our father’s search for any half-open door
that might secure the funds to send Mary and I
across the seas. To that end there was much talk
of skulduggery behind ditches, debts and favours
called in from neighbours with the loss of good-will.
Our father at the blunt end of such exchanges.

Then there were our weekly jaunts to the parish priest,
as every day Father Healy received remittances
from family overseas. He, seen as an honest broker
when a sea of cheats would readily rob the unwary.
God bless our Uncle Patrick in Australia for sending
much of the money for my sister and I to afford the tickets.

Ray Givans was brought up in the village of Castlecaulfield, County Tyrone. He has been published in five poetry pamphlets. His first full poetry collection, Tolstoy in Love was published in 2009 by Dedalus Press, and was shortlisted for the Strong Award for best first collection by an Irish poet for that year. His most recent collection, The Innermost Room, was published by Salzburg Press, at the University of Salzburg.

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Diane Fahey’s sixteenth poetry collection is Sanctuaries (Puncher & Wattmann, 2024). She has received various awards and fellowships for her poetry, has been published widely in Australia and internationally, and is represented in over 80 anthologies. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing. dianefaheypoet.com 

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THE NIGHT THE FIDDLER PLAYED

by Patrick O Sullivan

I remember that little thatched house by the river.
The walls white as hawthorn blossom, the windows small enough for fairytales, 
the green half door, the turf, already home, in the neatest of ricks nearby. 
One of the few houses in the place not ‘ to take the electricity.’
The lamplight yellow as the kingcups that bloomed on the strand in May, 
yellow as the sheaves bound in the favour of the autumn sun.
The old people and the children gathered, waiting for the fiddler to come and play,  
the flames in the hearth dancing in anticipation, 
the firelight swimming in the soft coppery glow of the lustre jugs on the dresser. 
And when the fiddler came, the stir of excitement, the whispered exchanges.
The old people dancing and laughing, as if they were young again in the moment. 
The children laughing as if they could hardly fathom the zest of the dancers, 
the rhythmic clatter of their shoes on the floor,
like a kind of knocking on a door, a magic door that only the music and dance could open.
And then the interval, some of the women drinking sherry,
more drinking tea, because ‘the sherry went to their heads.’
Some of the men with frothy moustaches from their pints of porter, 
and everyone saying the fiddler was a genius the way he could make the fiddle talk. 
Then more music, more dancing, 
the bow skimming the strings like a butterfly skimming the pools of noon.
And the moon, looking down from on high, 
tapping her feet in the sky, her silver beams lying in the arms of the river.
What age was I then? Was I nine? Was I ten, the night the fiddler played?
Was it real? Was it all that it seemed?
One thing is certain. It wasn’t a dream.
And then going home. I remember that night.
The salmon all dancing in silver delight,
And I was the boy, the happiest boy:
The moon like a bird  on my shoulder.

Patrick O Sullivan lives in County Kerry. I heard the Wild Birds Sing; A Kerry Childhood, and A Country Diary: The Year in Kerry are books of his published by Anvil Books. His children’s Books include A Girl and a Dolphin by Wolfhound Press. His Poetry has appeared in Stony Thursday Book, The Caterpillar, Chasing Shadows, Trasna, Stripes (America) etc. and also in the limited-edition art book The Little Book of Brigid.

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