Miracle

Not the one who takes up his bed and walks

But the ones who have known him all along 

And carry him in — 

Their shoulders numb, the ache and stoop deeplocked 

In their backs, the stretcher handles 

Slippery with sweat. And no let-up 

Until he’s strapped on tight, made tiltable 

And raised to the tiled roof, then lowered for healing. 

Be mindful of them as they stand and wait 

For the burn of the paid-out ropes to cool, 

Their slight lightheadedness and incredulity 

To pass, those ones who had known him all along.

--Seamus Heaney (1939-2013), poet, translator, and playwright, Nobel Prize winner for Literature in 1995 along with a dozen other honors, one of the major poets of the 20th century, from 100 Poems.

Scripture reference: Matthew 9:1-8; Mark 2:1-12 (7th Sunday after the Epiphany B); Luke 5:18-20

Image: Healing the paralytic at Capernaum, Galway City Museum

Matins

1

Somewhere, out at the edges, the night
Is turning and the waves of darkness
Beging to brighten the shore of dawn.

The heavy dark falls back to earth
And the freed air goes wild with light,
The heart fills with fresh, bright breath
And thoughts stir to give birth to colour.

2
I arise today

In the name of Silence,
Womb of the Word,
In the name of Stillness,
Home of Belonging,
In the name of the Solitude
Of the Soul and the Earth.

I arise today

Blessed by all things,
Wings of breath,
Delight of eyes,
Wonder of whisper,
Intimacy of touch,
Eternity of soul,
Urgency of thought,
Miracle of health,
Embrace of God.

May I live this day

Compassionate of heart,
Clear in word,
Gracious in awareness,
Courageous in thought,
Generous in love.

- John O'Donohue (1956-2008) Irish poet, philosopher, author, environmental activitist, popularizer of Celtic Spirituality, and Roman Catholic priest (1979-2000).

From Crossings

On St. Brigid's Day the new life could be entered
By going through her girdle of straw rope
The proper way for men was right leg first
Then right arm and right shoulder, head, then left
Shoulder, arm and leg.
Women drew it down
Over the body and stepped out of it
The open they came into by these moves
Stood opener, hoops came off the world
They could feel the February air
Still soft above their heads and imagine
The limp rope fray and flare like wind-born gleanings
Or an unhindered goldfinch over ploughland.

--Seamus Heaney (1935-2013), Irish poet, translator, teacher, essayist and winner of the Noble Prize for Literature

St. Brigid's Day is February 2.

Pangur Bán

Pangur Bán and I at work,
Adepts, equals, cat and clerk:
His whole instinct is to hunt,
Mine to free the meaning pent.

More than loud acclaim, I love
Books, silence, thought, my alcove.
Happy for me, Pangur Bán
Child-plays round some mouse’s den.

Truth to tell, just being here,
Housed alone, housed together,
Adds up to its own reward:
Concentration, stealthy art.

Next thing an unwary mouse
Bares his flank: Pangur pounces.
Next thing lines that held and held
Meaning back begin to yield.

All the while, his round bright eye
Fixes on the wall, while I
Focus my less piercing gaze
On the challenge of the page.

With his unsheathed, perfect nails
Pangur springs, exults and kills.
When the longed-for, difficult
Answers come, I too exult.

So it goes. To each his own.
No vying. No vexation.
Taking pleasure, taking pains,
Kindred spirits, veterans.

Day and night, soft purr, soft pad,
Pangur Bán has learned his trade.
Day and night, my own hard work
Solves the cruxes, makes a mark.

-- Anonymous 9th century monk, written in Irish, found in the monastery of St. Paul in Carinthia, southern Austria, translated by Seamus Heaney, with comments on the translation here.

Night Feed

This is dawn. Believe me
This is your season, little daughter:
The moment daisies open,
The hour mercurial rainwater
Makes a mirror for sparrows.
It's time we drowned our sorrows.

I tiptoe in.
I lift you up
Wriggling
In your rosy, zipped sleeper.
Yes this is the hour
For the early bird and me
When finder is keeper.

I crook the bottle.
How you suckle!
This is the best I can be:
Housewife
To this nursery
Where you hold on,
Dear life.

A silt of milk.
The last suck.
And now your eyes are open
Birth-coloured and offended.
Earth wakes.
You go back to sleep.
The feed is ended.

Worms turn.
Stars go in.
Even the moon is losing face.
Poplars stilt for dawn
And we begin
The long fall from grace.
I tuck you in.

-- Eavan Boland (1944-2020) pre-eminent modern Irish poet and trailblazer, academic and professor at Stanford University.

Image: Breastfeeding mural (detail), Hyuro (female street artist), Barcelona, Spain 2016.

Inniskeen Road: July Evening

The bicycles go by in twos and threes -

There's a dance in Billy Brennan's barn tonight, 

And there's the half-talk code of mysteries 

And the wink-and-elbow language of delight. 

Half-past eight and there is not a spot 

Upon a mile of road, no shadow thrown 

That might turn out a man or woman, not 

A footfall tapping secrecies of stone. 

I have what every poet hates in spite 

Of all the solemn talk of contemplation. 

Oh, Alexander Selkirk knew the plight 

Of being king and government and nation. 

A road, a mile of kingdom. I am king 

Of banks and stones and every blooming thing.

-- Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967) Irish poet and novelist

Prayer for the Journey

Alone with none but thee, my God

I journey on my way.
What need I fear, when thou art near
O king of night and day?
More safe am I within thy hand
Than if an host didst round me stand.

-- St Columba (c.521-597) of Iona, whose feast day is today.

St. Kevin and the Blackbird

And then there was St Kevin and the blackbird.
The saint is kneeling, arms stretched out, inside
His cell, but the cell is narrow, so

One turned-up palm is out the window, stiff
As a crossbeam, when a blackbird lands
And lays in it and settles down to nest.

Kevin feels the warm eggs, the small breast, the tucked
Neat head and claws and, finding himself linked
Into the network of eternal life,

Is moved to pity: now he must hold his hand
Like a branch out in the sun and rain for weeks
Until the young are hatched and fledged and flown.

*

And since the whole thing’s imagined anyhow,
Imagine being Kevin. Which is he?
Self-forgetful or in agony all the time

From the neck on out down through his hurting forearms?
Are his fingers sleeping? Does he still feel his knees?
Or has the shut-eyed blank of underearth

Crept up through him? Is there distance in his head?
Alone and mirrored clear in love’s deep river,
‘To labour and not to seek reward,’ he prays,

A prayer his body makes entirely
For he has forgotten self, forgotten bird
And on the riverbank forgotten the river’s name.

--Seamus Heaney (1939-2013), Irish poet, professor, winner of the 1995 Novel prize in Literature.

St. Kevin of Glendalough's feast day is June 3.

Seamus Heaney reads the poem and explicates it below:

From "Glanmore Sonnets"

for Ann Saddlemyer
‘our heartiest welcomer’

Vowels ploughed into other: opened ground.
The mildest February for 20 years
Is mist bands over furrows, a deep no sound
Vulnerable to distant gargling tractors.
Our road is steaming, the turned-up acres breathe.
Now the good life could be to cross a field
And art a paradigm of earth knew from the lathe
Of plows. My lea is deeply tilled.
Old plough-socks gorge the subsoil of each sense
And I am quickened with a redolence
Of farmland as a dark unblown rose.
Wait then… Breasting the mist, in sowers’ aprons,
My ghosts come striding into their spring stations.
The dream grain whirls like freakish Easter snows.

--Seamus Heaney (1939-2013), from the “Glanmore Sonnets,” in Field Work, 1979

Lazarus Risen

Lumbering out into the hectic light
like some dishevelled beast, I found myself
notorious, and would have turned back
but that cool and candid gaze unstitched
my shroud till it fell in shreds about me
and I walked among my weeping, bewildered kin.

Now their houses fall silent when I enter,
whey-faced and hesitant. For miles around
kids run howling home at the sound of my name
and when I pass even the trees look askance.
Sustained by a miracle, like flowers in a vase
my astonishing life continues in parenthesis.

Daily, strangers beat on my door.
How should I expect them to understand
my need for darkened rooms and blankets?
I still remember
Barabbas, drunk, circling the cross as blood
issued like a parable no one understood.

When they buried him I hid and waited
and saw his ragged body bleach the stones
and vanish. My arms hung like questions in the air.
They say my wits disdained that brusque choir
and smile at the familiar idiocy
that drives me now to watch in the evenings

the unearthly procession of light
from the grey loaves of the cemetery.
I think of silences broken only
by flesh loosening, the dry applause of bones,
while with growing confidence the spiky stars
transmit their small, post-dated fires.

–Peter Sirr, from Selected Poems(2005)

Scripture reference: John 11:1-45, Lent 5A

To Wales Once More, Though Not On Holiday Now

To Wales once more, though not on holiday now;

Glued to my seat, whirled down a ruthless track
To Wales once more, grasping a golden bough,

Key to the misty west. I am wearing black
Shoes which I bought with Gwilym in Regent Street
To travel to Drumcliff in, five years back;

Drumcliff was wet, those new shoes cramped my feet
At Yeats's funeral; they are not so smart
Nor yet so tight for Gwilym's. From my seat

I see my night-bound double, slumped apart
On a conveyer belt that, decades high
In emptiness, can neither stop nor start

But just moves on for ever till we die.
It is too late for questions: on this belt
We cannot answer what we are or why . . .

Then on the Swansea for the night, benighted
In black and barren rain. But night must end,
And ending banishes the rain. Delighted

Morning erupts to bless all Wales and send
Us west once more our sad but sunlit way
Through hills of ruddy bracken where each bend

In the road is another smile on the face of day.
We stop at random for a morning drink
In a thatched inn; to find, as at a play,

The bar already loud with chatter and clink
Of glasses; not so random; no one here
But was a friend of Gwilym's. One could think

That all these shots of whisky, pints of beer,
Make one Pactolus turning words to gold
In honour of one golden mouth, in sheer

Rebuttal of the silence and the cold
Attached to death. The river rolls on west
As proud and clear as its best years have rolled

And lands us at the village, which is dressed
In one uncanny quiet and one kind
Blue sky, an attitude of host to guest

Saying: Come share my grief. We walk behind
The slow great heaps of flowers, the small austere
And single laurel wreath. But the numbed mind

Fails to accept such words as tempt the ear --
The Resurrection and the Life; it knows
Only that Gwilym once was living here

And here is now being buried. A repose
Of sunlight lies on the green sloping field
Which should hold goats or geese. My fingers close

On what green thoughts this acre still can yield
Before we leave that deep, that not green, grave,
That letter to be superscribed and sealed

Now that it has no contents; wind and wave
Retain far more of Gwilym. What he took
From this small corner of Wales survives what he gave.

The green field empties, with one tentative look
Backwards we move away, and then walk down
To where he lived on a cliff; an open book

Of sands and waters, silver and shining brown,
His estuary spreads before us and its birds
To which he gave renown reflect renown

On him, their cries resolve into his words
Just as, upon the right, Sir John's just hill
Looks now, and justly, Gwilym's. We leave the curds

And crimps of flats and channels and through the still
Evening rejoin the mourners. If a birth
Extends a family circle and glasses fill

Confirming its uniqueness and the worth
Of life, I think a death too does the same,
Confirming and extending. Earth to earth,

But to the whole of it. In Gwilym's name
We talk and even laugh, though now and then
Illusions (surely illusions?) rise, to shame

My reason. Three illusions. One: that when
We left that grassy field, we also left
Gwilym behind there, if not able to pen

One word, yet able perhaps to feel bereft
Or maybe to feel pleased that such a place
Remains to him. Then was it gift or theft,

This burial? More rational thoughts efface
Such whims, but the second illusion comes: perhaps
Gwilym has slipped off somewhere, into the grace

Of some afterlife where free from toils and traps
He revels for ever in words. These fancies too
Flicker like Will o' the Wistfuls, and collapse;

Since, even if an afterlife were true,
Gwilym without his body, his booming voice,
Would simply not be Gwilym. As I or you

Would not be I or you and, given the choice,
I, for one, would reject it. Last, the third
Illusion, which gives reason to rejoice

Or rather strong unreason: what we have heard
And seen today means nothing, this crowded bar
Was one of Gwilym's favourites, it is absurd

He should not join us here, it was always going too far
To expect him on the dot but, late or soon,
He will come jaunting in, especially as there are

So many of his friends her to buffoon
And sparkle with. However, if not tonight,
We need not wait for leap year or blue moon

Before we run across him. Moons are white
In London as in Wales and by tomorrow
We shall be back in London where the sight

And sound of him will be welcome, he may borrow
A pound or two of course or keep us waiting
But what about it? In those streets of sorrow

And even more of boredom, his elating
Elated presence brings a sluice of fresh
Water into dim ponds too long stagnating.

This is the third illusion, a fine mesh
Of probable impossibilities; of course,
Of course, we think, we shall meet him in the flesh

Tomorrow or the next day, in full force
Of flesh and wit and heart. We close the door
On Wales and backwards, eastwards, from the source

Of such clear water, leave that altered shore
Of gulls and psalms, of green and gold largesse.
November the Twenty-fifth. We are back once more

In London. And will he keep us waiting? . . . Yes.


--Louis MacNiece (1907-1963 ), Irish poet, author, children's book author, from Autumn Sequel, Canto XX

Reconciliation

Some may have blamed you that you took away
The verses that could move them on the day
When, the ears being deafened, the sight of the eyes blind
With lightning, you went from me, and I could find
Nothing to make a song about but kings,
Helmets, and swords, and half-forgotten things
That were like memories of you—but now
We'll out, for the world lives as long ago;
And while we're in our laughing, weeping fit,
Hurl helmets, crowns, and swords into the pit.
But, dear, cling close to me; since you were gone,
My barren thoughts have chilled me to the bone.

-- William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), Anglo-Irish poet, playwright, and mystic, widely considered one of the greatest poets of the 20th century.

Scripture reference: Matthew 5:21-37, 6th Sunday after Epiphany A

A Brigid's Girtle

Last time I wrote I wrote from a rustic table
Under magnolias in South Carolina
As blossoms fell on me, and a white gable
As clean-lined as the prow of a white liner

Bisected sunlight in the sunlit yard.
I was glad of the early heat and the first quiet
I'd had for weeks. I heard the mocking bird
And a delicious, articulate

Flight of small plinkings from a dulcimer
Like feminine rhymes migrating to the north
Where you faced the music and the ache of summer
And earth's foreknowledge gathered in the earth.

Now it's St Brigid's Day and the first snowdrop
In County Wicklow, and this a Brigid's Girdle
I'm plaiting for you, an airy fairy hoop
(Like one of those old crinolines they'd trindle),

Twisted straw that's lifted in a circle
To handsel and to heal, a rite of spring
As strange and lightsome and traditional
As the motions you go through going through the thing.

--Seamus Heaney (1939-2013 ) Irish poet, playwright, translator, and teacher, Nobel Prize Laureate in Literature, from The Spirit Level.

Today is the Feast of St. Brigid of Kildare.

Prayer of St. Columba

Let me bless Almighty God,
Whose power extends over sea and land,
Whose angels watch over all.
Let me study sacred books to calm my soul.
I pray for peace,
Kneeling at heaven’s gates.
Let me do my daily work,
Gathering seaweed, catching fish,
Giving food to the poor.
Let me say my daily prayers,
Sometimes chanting, sometime quiet,
Always thanking God.
Delightful it is to live
On a peaceful isle, in a quiet cell,
Serving the King of Kings.

--St. Columba of Iona (521-597), Irish monastic, abbot, and missionary to the Picts in Scotland

The beautiful image is from a card I received from the artist, Kreg Yingst, who makes amazing religious prints at his shop, wORKINGaRTS, found on Etsy.

On an Apple-Ripe September Morning

On an apple-ripe September morning 

Through the mist-chill fields I went
With a pitch-fork on my shoulder
Less for use than for devilment.

The threshing mill was set-up, I knew,
In Cassidy's haggard last night,
And we owed them a day at the threshing
Since last year. O it was delight

To be paying bills of laughter
And chaffy gossip in kind
With work thrown in to ballast
The fantasy-soaring mind.

As I crossed the wooden bridge I wondered
As I looked into the drain
If ever a summer morning should find me
Shovelling up eels again.

And I thought of the wasps' nest in the bank
And how I got chased one day
Leaving the drag and the scraw-knife behind,
How I covered my face with hay.

The wet leaves of the cocksfoot
Polished my boots as I
Went round by the glistening bog-holes
Lost in unthinking joy.

I'll be carrying bags to-day, I mused,
The best job at the mill
With plenty of time to talk of our loves
As we wait for the bags to fill.

Maybe Mary might call round...
And then I came to the haggard gate,
And I knew as I entered that I had come
Through fields that were part of no earthly estate.

-- Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967), Irish poet and novelist

Faith

I want to write about faith,
about the way the moon rises
over cold snow, night after night,
faithful even as it fades from fullness,
slowly becoming that last curving and impossible
sliver of light before the final darkness.
But I have no faith myself
I refuse it even the smallest entry.
Let this then, my small poem,
like a new moon, slender and barely open,
be the first prayer that opens me to faith.

-- David Whyte (1955- ), Anglo-Irish poet and writer

Scriptural connection: Luke 12:32-40, Proper 14C

Irish Blessing- Poor in Misfortune

May you be poor in misfortune,

Rich in blessings,
Slow to make enemies,
And quick to make friends.
But rich or poor, quick or slow,
May you know nothing but happiness
From this day forward.

-- Traditional Irish blessing

The Peninsula

When you have nothing more to say, just drive 

For a day all round the peninsula. 

The sky is tall as over a runway, 

The land without marks, so you will not arrive 

But pass through, though always skirting landfall. 

At dusk, horizons drink down sea and hill, 

The ploughed field swallows the whitewashed gable 

And you’re in the dark again. Now recall 

The glazed foreshore and silhouetted log, 

That rock where breakers shredded into rags, 

The leggy birds stilted on their own legs, 

Islands riding themselves out into the fog, 

And drive back home, still with nothing to say 

Except that now you will uncode all landscapes 

By this: things founded clean on their own shapes, 

Water and ground in their extremity.

– Seamus Heaney (1939- 2013) Northern Irish poet, Nobel Prize winner, Oxford Professor of Poetry, and one of the pre-eminent poets of the 20th century 

The Path I Walk

The path I walk, Christ walks it.
May the land in which I am in be without sorrow.
May the Trinity protect me wherever I stay, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Bright angels walk with me - dear presence - in every dealing.
In every dealing I pray them that no one's poison may reach me.
The ninefold people of heaven of holy cloud, the tenth force of the stout earth.
Favorable company, they come with me, so that the Lord may not be angry with me.
May I arrive at every place, may I return home; made the way in which I spend be a way without loss.
May every path before me be smooth, may woman and child welcome me.
A truly good journey! Well does the fair Lord show us a course, a path.


-- Attributed to Saint Columba (521-597 CE), Irish missionary and saint, founder of Iona Abbey

The Third Temptation: Image from the Book of Kells

 

Here is the commentary from Trinity College's website on the image from the Book of Kells:

"The third Temptation of Jesus (f. 202v) is currently on display in the Old Library. The episode is described later in the narrative, at Luke’s Gospel 4.9–13 (f. 204r), where Satan urges Jesus to throw himself from the roof of the temple in Jerusalem in order to demonstrate that the angels will save him:

‘And [the devil] brought him to Jerusalem and set him on a pinnacle of the temple and said to him: If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself from hence. For it is written that He hath given his angels charge over thee that they keep thee. And that in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest perhaps thou dash thy foot against a stone. And Jesus answering, said to him: It is said: Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.’

Jesus is represented on a shingle-roofed building which resembles an Irish shrine, with lions as finials. Protected by angels directly above him and in the top corners of the page, he holds out a slender glass vessel, possibly a chalice filled with Eucharistic wine, in response to the small, black winged figure of Satan on the right. Stylized peacocks, symbols of his Resurrection, are placed within the crosses on either side of Jesus.

The image presents many complexities and difficulties of interpretation. The haloed figure with crossed flabella at the centre of the temple may portray Christ as Judge in a Last Judgment scene. The temple and Jesus may represent, in an almost literal manner, the body of the church with Christ as its head, while the human figures – thirteen at the foot of the page and nine to Jesus’ right – seem to represent the faithful of the congregation. It is also possible to read the page as the ground plan of a church with four pillars, showing both side and front elevations. 

The figure of Satan has been disfigured by around twenty small stab marks to the neck, the arms and the torso. This controlled attack, not visible to the naked eye at first glance, seems to have been undertaken at a time when the book was bound, with the knife going through the vellum to previous leaves. The date of this intervention in the life of the Book of Kells is impossible to determine with accuracy, though it may be supposed to have occurred in the middle ages."