11.05.2020

Sharon BlackieThere are three poems I live by. Or try to. This is the one I discovered first, many decades ago now, living in a semi-derelict Connemara cottage, and it has even more resonance today. even more resonance with every year of my life that passes. One of these days, I'll live up to it in all the ways I'd like to. Meanwhile, a swing beckons.THE MAYO TAOI have abandoned the dream kitchens for a low fireand a prescriptive literature of the spirit;a storm snores on the desolate sea.The nearest shop is four miles away –when I walk there through shamblesof the morning for tea and firelightersthe mountain paces me in a snow-lit silence.My days are spent in conversationwith deer and blackbirds;at night fox and badger gather at my door.I have stood for hourswatching a salmon doze in the tea-gold dark,for months listening to the sob storyof a stone in the road, the best,most monotonous sob story I have ever heard.I am an expert on frost crystalsand the silence of crickets, a confidantof the stinking shore, the stars in the mud –there is an immanence in these thingswhich drives me, despite my scepticism,almost to the point of speech,like the sunlight cleaving the lake mist at morningor when tepid waterruns cold at last from the tap.I have been working for yearson a four-line poemabout the life of a leaf;I think it might come out right this winter.– Derek Mahon