Connemara

This poem, also taken from my latest collection Letting in the Light, published last month by SPCK in London, was inspired by my second visit to the Clifden Arts Festival in the west of Ireland. The poem should be dedicated to the wonderful Brendan Flynn who has been at the helm of this festival for many, many years. I wrote the piece partly in memory of Seamus Heaney (with whom I corresponded but never had the privilege of meeting). There is somehow a homage to Heaney in the final lines of the poem, for he knew well enough this sense of the wonderful melding of the marvellous and the utterly ordinary in rural Ireland. It's true here in my native Scotland too - especially in the kind of glen where my mother grew up in the Highlands. And long may it live.


CONNEMARA

From out of greyness and the months of storm -
wonderful landings of stories, shipwrecks of things,
to be handed down from mother to son,
their frayed edges mended, and sometimes new pieces
woven in from moor and mire.

All are kept safe in the drawers of everyday,
between the stone floor and the low roof,
then brought out when least expected:
lights on moorland, songs of blind harpers,
journeys to the other world, caves of gold,
stories of those with the gift of the second sight.

And then the ordinary again,
the bringing in of turf for the fire,
in among and tucked beside
the everything else that always must be done.



Kenneth Steven
www.kennethsteven.co.uk