The Habit of Leaving
by Robyn Rowland
Commissioned by John Carty for his slow air/jig ‘Seanamhac Tube Station’
In the 1970–80s the Irish were the largest immigrant community in Britain. John grew up there and played in the pub, ‘The Good Mixer’. Multi-awarded Irish traditional musician on fiddle, banjo, flute and tenor guitar, he wanted a poem to accompany the idea of sadness at leaving, excitement in the journey, as well as the returning. There is a story told that when the Irish scholar Sedulius Scottus arrived at a monastery on the continent in the 9th century, the abbot Strabo asked why he had left his native land. Was it because of the ‘unsettled state of the country or the Irish habit of going away?’
Reared on the water from deep western wells
flowing off faces of ageless rock down
through turf twining history of trees in its threads, they left.
From autumn lochs slate-slick and sometimes so still
they could almost dance sean nós there clacking their heels,
they went out to cities, plains, roads and rails,
to countries quite close or unforeseen bays
taking always with them the music of their own.
Others knew them only by their poverty and song
their language a strange tongue where secrets were stored.
Hearts would cry out for yellow windows of home
and the Bens in their folded blue-velvet haze,
while the bodhrán beat out its pulse at the quay
and waves there would drum on the ships’ salty planks,
feet jig on the boards tight as strings for the tunes
stamping loss underfoot in the dance of their own.
Trasna na dtonnta
dul siar dul siar
Places they drifted to, faraway, anyway,
had their own patterns and ways to their words,
strange in strange places they held one another
remaking village among concrete and smog.
Days hard at toiling, nights filled with drinking,
they sang the old songs and played the old tunes.
London was bursting with newness, excitement,
free paths opening, adventure and change.
Trasna na dtonnta
dul amach dul amach
They called it in London the Seanamhac Tube,
younger, the 80s brought less grief more food.
Unsettled state, custom of going away,
journeymen and women bred in our blood,
we still go out from hope or from need,
from longing for something other than home
where new risk can bring riches
the mind might fly free.
And the old wail regret while the young look away,
take to the air, silver wings flying high.
And Connemara swallows head out each year,
urgent for their first glimpse of Sahara sand,
African lions, spires of Paris, stones in Rome,
maps that are printed inside their blood.
A scrimshaw of homescape fine-carved in their
bones: returning as sure as departing again.
Trasna na dtonnta
dul siar dul siar
Sunburnt, surprised, or up Seanamhac tube,
our wanderers take with them the face of the land
their bodies have lain across in the dark,
the rhythm of bones, a drum in their blood,
the dance of the bow-lift strung through their veins,
They think they are travelling towards Tír na nÓg
horizons of gold, and forever young, but hidden
within call stories that never grow old,
and the pulse that drives them further,
brings them further back home.
Trasna na dtonnta
dul siar dul siar
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Pronunciation and meaning:
Seanamhac Pron: Shanawok
Meaning: An imagined meeting place in London for expats.
Trasna na dtonnta dul amach dul amach –
Pron. Trasna na donta, dull amuck dull amuck
Meaning: Over the waves, going out, going out
Trasna na dtonnta dul siar dul siar
Pron. transna na donta, dull sheer dull sheer –
Meaning: Over the waves, go back, go back
Tír na nÓg Pron. tear na nohg
Meaning: mythical land of the forever young.
from Mosaics from the Map (Doire Press, 2018)
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Robyn Rowland, an Irish-Australian citizen, lived between Ireland and Victoria for 40 years, working in Turkey since 2009. She now lives in regional Victoria. With 12 poetry books, including 2 bilingual in Turkish/English: Under This Saffron Sun – Safran Güneşin Altında, (Ireland 2019) and This Intimate War Gallipoli/Çanakkale 1915 – İçli Dışlı Bir Savaş: Gelibolu/Çanakkale 1915 (Australia & Türkiye), her most recent is Steep Curve, 5Islands Press, Australia, 2024. She has read in 11 countries. Her poetry appears in multiple national/international journals, over 50 anthologies, and in film with the Irish Poetry Reading Archive, James Joyce Library, UCD, available on YouTube.
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H5N1
Michael Patrick Moore
Far behind me the Sub Antarctic cold
And though warmth awaits on a distant shore,
In none of my crossings ever before
Have I felt so weary, so very old.
One small brown skua in a blue, blue realm
Now ominously empty, save for me
And a young petrel momentarily
Before the blue, it too, did overwhelm.
I carry within me unwittingly
A darkness steadily consuming me,
A burden for others, my passage done,
This curse I have carried unwillingly
With me to Esperance, in from the sea
Lulls me to sleep in the arms of the sun.
Michael Patrick Moore was born in Brisbane QLD, the fourth of six children to Irish Australian parents. Michael spent his childhood years in the beautiful Mary Valley just south of Gympie QLD. The majority of his working life has been spent in one form or another associated with the nursing profession. Michael was raised in a family deeply committed to music and storytelling and to the importance of family. His poetry profoundly influenced by his lifelong affinity with the natural world, service to community and the importance of being human and present with one foot in the past and one in the future. Michael is married, with three daughters, two granddaughters and still lives in South East QLD.
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Scéal ón mbroinn – an fanacht
Julie Breathnach-Banwait
Lá foscaidh le compord.
Lá codlata le suaimhneas
is aonarachas.
La beatha le beocht is teas.
Lá slándála le díomhaointeas.
Lá cruógach le fás.
Lá seadánach,
lá an tsúmadóra,
lá chiúin na mbrionglóid.
Lá fanacht le hionsaí,
go dtiocfaidh an lá,
go ndóirtfear mé ód bhroinn.
A tale from the womb – the waiting
A sheltering day for comfort.
A sleeping day for peace
and loneness.
A lively day with spirit and warmth.
Conserving with idleness.
A pressing day for growth.
A parasitic day,
a tadpole day,
a quiet day of dreaming.
A day waiting for an onslaught,
’til the day comes,
when I am spilled from your womb.
Is scríbhneoir agus amharc ealaíntóir Gael-Astrálach dátheangach i Julie Breathnach-Banwait. Tá sí lonnaithe ins na Goldfields, Iarthar na hAstráile. Tógadh an dán thuas óna cnuasach Ar Thóir Gach Ní, atá foilsithe ag Coiscéim (Baile Átha Cliath) i 2020.
Julie Breathnach-Banwait is an Irish-Australian bilingual poet and visual artist. She is based in the Goldfields, Western Australia. The above is poem is taken from her Irish language book Ar Thóir Gach Ní, (In Search of Everything) published by Coiscéim (Dublin) in 2020.
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Tinteán 