Three Sisters

[Guest guest]

THE THREE SISTERS: Dingle

I am over by the Three Sisters:

the standing stones by Clogher Strand

pretending, mind you, to be blind

not to be seeing the dun cows grazing

or the German tourists I have met

now swimming in the cold green waters below

I close my eyes to let the thunder in

I put out my hands:

blind is touch

touch is hard

hard is time here

freckled by rain

my fingers could bleed

but for kinship:

we have stood

waited here

before -

we will stand

waiting here

after

the swelling of the flesh

and the spoken promise

perish -

only love made at the bone

and raised in stone

endures

we are wheeling

whiddershins to what is mortal

scarring the sky itself

hour by hour now

with your petition

the father, the mother, the flaxen Saxon maid

their hair flat bronze

come out of the waves and climb peacefully

to their pale Volkswagen bus

laughing and shaking the water out of their ears -

they wave to me and dry themselves

with heraldic towels

but the Three Sisters have witnessed

blood under the beachtowels: Viking, Irish crimson sands -

better to wish

upon us blind

before grief

or after joy

press the torque thus, they tell me

hard on the neck of the god

for visions of a different radiance!

I did not go down to the empty emerald

of Clogher Strand

but left believing this

under the heavy udders of the clouds

history will milk.

a.o.howell