from The Naked Surgeon

V

In Hammer Glen there’s blood
in milk and a goose complains
on an empty hearth: a cat
swells in the churn, dead and full.
A flitch of bacon hangs itself
from rafters: a tongs stands like a bull.
My first trip to the house of thatch –

home of the Slaughter Lad
who condemned his own kind –
a hammer-vision showed him how
to escape the bird-lime.
I was called, no scalpel packed.
I threw a saddle on the dark
and galloped to the threshold of his mind.

Knots of briars slid from their nests,
each poisoned eye a blackberry.
I was pelted with a shower of fruit
from a bare blackthorn tree.
I heard the chick sing in the egg,
and the straw in the mattress grew,
the raspberry cried in the jam.

But I came safe from the shade
out of the battle-noise gales
until I reached Slaughter Lad’s
and saw there under the moon’s eye
a hedgehog milking a jack snipe,
a goat beating a drum in the sky –
I had crossed over the borders of the live.

I walked into his head –
no knife, no healing herb –
helix of a snail’s shell,
into a complex corridor.
Prayers of hate, echoes of roars
fell from the faceted walls –
his father’s face was carved on the floor.

“I hit him hit him hit him again –
the goose drank the juice of this brain,
I made a pigtrough from his skull
and put his eyes under a hen.
One did not hatch at all
the other shook and cracked.
Out walked a chicken’s claw.”

“The claw still sticks in me –
it tortures and exhausts:
contrition runs from my nose,
surgeon, give me peace.”
I refused. And left the place.
I threw away all style and craft,
my heart was ash and chaff,
my soul was a gravel bed –
a naked surgeon and my patient dead.

as An Lia Nocht

as An Lia Nocht

V

I nGleann an Chasúir tá fuil
sa bhainne is goileann gé
ar theallach folamh: tá cat
a d’at sa chuinneog, marbh.
(Do chroch leataobh muice é féin
ó rachta) is seasann tlú mar tharbh:
seo mo chéad chuairt go teach na tuí tréin’.

Seo áitreabh gharsún an áir
a dhaor chun báis fáth a shaoil:
fís chasúir a nocht dó
conas éaló ón nglae glas.
Cuireadh glaoch orm, an lia gan scian :
chaith mé diallait ar an dorchadas
is lean mé liom go tairseach a chinn.

Snámh snaidhm drise as teas a nid –
gach súil nimhneach mar sméar dubh:
crústáladh mé le cith caor
ó dhraighean maol na ndealg ndocht.
Chuala gearrcach ag cantain in ubh
chuala mé an tuí ag fás i dtocht
is síol sú craobh ag borradh i subh.

Ach tháinig mé slán ón scáth
slán amach as síon an ghleo.
Shrois mé clós gharsún an áir
agus b’iúd ann faoi shúil na ré
gráinneog ag crú an ghabhairín reo
druma á bhualadh ag gabhar sa spéir:
chuaigh mé amú thar theora na mbeo.

Shiúil mé isteach ina cheann
gan lansa ná luibh im láimh
(blaosc seilmide le lúb is cúb
fite fuaite mar dhorchla cúng).
Bhí macalla béice is guí gráin’
ag titim go tuibh ón bhfalla gruach
is samhail a athar ’na leac urláir.

“Bhuaileas, bhuaileas is bhuaileas é
is d’ól an ghé sú a chinn:
dá chloigeann dhein mé mias mhuc
’s chuireas a shúile faoi chirc.
An chéad cheann ina ghliogar bhí –
ach briseadh an tarna ceann la crith
agus phreab aisti gríobh shicín.”

“Tá an ghríobh fós im bhlaosc
am thraochadh agus am chrá –
cith doilís óm shrón anuas –
och, a lia, tabhair don síth!”
Dhiúltaíos é is thréig mé an áit.
chaitheas uaim mo chierd is mo stíl –
ní raibh im chroí ach smúr agus cáith,
bhí lár m’uchta ina ghrinneall garbh,
mé im lia nocht is mo othar marbh.