I didn't have a clue about Ireland. Nothing. On my very first visit I innocently set out on a second hand gent's bicycle and one of those tourist maps adorned with shamrocks and leprechauns. Imagine my surprise when the road got steeper and more desolate with every mile. Well, I was really young and headstrong. And ignorant.
Anyway, it so happened that it was one of the hottest summers in history and clearly, there was no place more stunning than the coast of Cork and Kerry.
And the people were charming, lively, all the cliches. Incl. another one: Ireland has been good to me, welcoming, soothing, supportive, family. It has been my home for longer than any other place and still is every time again, like when I pick up the car at the airport and the guy handing me the papers says, well now Sabine, I better show you the detours, too man road works into the city. And his use of my first name is not some selling technique, and no, he has never seen me before.
But Ireland is also the place where I was told by a pompous school board that it was only good and proper for my non-catholic child to experience what it is like to be part of a minority from day one. Where I almost hit a young nurse/nun at the hospital A&E because she could see no way of admitting my feverish non-baptised baby.
Another cliche: the Irish are a compassionate people. I know, I have experienced heartfelt compassion and generosity in so many unexpected places.
And now another death.
Another young woman.
But also again, the compassion.
The church will have none of this. Get back into the kitchen, you hussies.
This is Paula Meehan's poem in full, she reads the last part on the video:
The Statue of the Virgin at Granard Speaks.
By Paula Meehan. 1991.
It can be bitter here at times like this,
November wind sweeping across the border.
Its seeds of ice would cut you to the quick.
The whole town tucked up safe and dreaming,
even wild things gone to earth, and I
stuck up here in this grotto, without as much as
star or planet to ease my vigil.
The howling won’t let up. Trees
cavort in agony as if they would be free
and take off - ghost voyagers
on the wind that carries intimations
of garrison towns, walled cities, ghetto lanes
where men hunt each other and invoke
the various names of God as blessing
on their death tactics, their night manoeuvres.
Closer to home the wind sails
over dying lakes. I hear fish drowning.
I taste the stagnant water mingled
with turf smoke from outlying farms.
They call me Mary - Blessed, Holy, Virgin.
They fit me to a myth of a man crucified:
the scourging and the falling, and the falling again,
the thorny crown, the hammer blow of iron
into wrist and ankle, the sacred bleeding heart.
They name me Mother of all this grief
Though mated to no mortal man.
They kneel before me and their prayers
fly up like sparks from a bonfire
that blaze a moment, then wink out.
It can be lovely here at times. Springtime,
early summer. Girls in Communion frocks
pale rivals to the riot in the hedgerows
of cow parsley and haw blossom, the perfume
from every rushy acre that’s left for hay
when the light swings longer with the sun’s push north.
Or the grace of a midsummer wedding
when the earth herself calls out for coupling
and I would break loose of my stony robes,
pure blue, pure white, as if they had robbed
a child’s sky for their colour. My being
cries out to be incarnate, incarnate,
maculate and tousled in a honeyed bed.
Even an autumn burial can work its own pageantry.
The hedges heavy with the burden of fruiting
crab, sloe, berry, hip; clouds scud east,
pear scented, windfalls secret in long
orchard grasses, and some old soul is lowered
to his kin. Death is just another harvest
scripted to the season’s play.
But on this All Soul’s Night there is
no respite from the keening of the wind.
I would not be amazed if every corpse came risen
From the graveyard to join in exaltation with the gale,
A cacophony of bone imploring sky for judgement
And release from being the conscience of the town.
On a night like this I remember the child
who came with fifteen summers to her name,
and she lay down alone at my feet
without midwife or doctor or friend to hold her hand
and she pushed her secret out into the night,
far from the town tucked up in little scandals,
bargains struck, words broken, prayers, promises,
and though she cried out to me in extremis
I did not move,
I didn’t lift a finger to help her,
I didn’t intercede with heaven,
nor whisper the charmed word in God’s ear.
On a night like this, I number the days to the solstice
and the turn back to the
light.
O sun,
center of our foolish dance,
burning heart of stone,
molten mother of us all,
hear me and have pity.
This is Paula Meehan's poem in full, she reads the last part on the video:
The Statue of the Virgin at Granard Speaks.
By Paula Meehan. 1991.
It can be bitter here at times like this,
November wind sweeping across the border.
Its seeds of ice would cut you to the quick.
The whole town tucked up safe and dreaming,
even wild things gone to earth, and I
stuck up here in this grotto, without as much as
star or planet to ease my vigil.
The howling won’t let up. Trees
cavort in agony as if they would be free
and take off - ghost voyagers
on the wind that carries intimations
of garrison towns, walled cities, ghetto lanes
where men hunt each other and invoke
the various names of God as blessing
on their death tactics, their night manoeuvres.
Closer to home the wind sails
over dying lakes. I hear fish drowning.
I taste the stagnant water mingled
with turf smoke from outlying farms.
They call me Mary - Blessed, Holy, Virgin.
They fit me to a myth of a man crucified:
the scourging and the falling, and the falling again,
the thorny crown, the hammer blow of iron
into wrist and ankle, the sacred bleeding heart.
They name me Mother of all this grief
Though mated to no mortal man.
They kneel before me and their prayers
fly up like sparks from a bonfire
that blaze a moment, then wink out.
It can be lovely here at times. Springtime,
early summer. Girls in Communion frocks
pale rivals to the riot in the hedgerows
of cow parsley and haw blossom, the perfume
from every rushy acre that’s left for hay
when the light swings longer with the sun’s push north.
Or the grace of a midsummer wedding
when the earth herself calls out for coupling
and I would break loose of my stony robes,
pure blue, pure white, as if they had robbed
a child’s sky for their colour. My being
cries out to be incarnate, incarnate,
maculate and tousled in a honeyed bed.
Even an autumn burial can work its own pageantry.
The hedges heavy with the burden of fruiting
crab, sloe, berry, hip; clouds scud east,
pear scented, windfalls secret in long
orchard grasses, and some old soul is lowered
to his kin. Death is just another harvest
scripted to the season’s play.
But on this All Soul’s Night there is
no respite from the keening of the wind.
I would not be amazed if every corpse came risen
From the graveyard to join in exaltation with the gale,
A cacophony of bone imploring sky for judgement
And release from being the conscience of the town.
On a night like this I remember the child
who came with fifteen summers to her name,
and she lay down alone at my feet
without midwife or doctor or friend to hold her hand
and she pushed her secret out into the night,
far from the town tucked up in little scandals,
bargains struck, words broken, prayers, promises,
and though she cried out to me in extremis
I did not move,
I didn’t lift a finger to help her,
I didn’t intercede with heaven,
nor whisper the charmed word in God’s ear.
On a night like this, I number the days to the solstice
and the turn back to the
light.
O sun,
center of our foolish dance,
burning heart of stone,
molten mother of us all,
hear me and have pity.
3 comments:
Thank you for posting this astonishing poem:
"Or the grace of a midsummer wedding
when the earth herself calls out for coupling
and I would break loose of my stony robes,
pure blue, pure white, as if they had robbed
a child’s sky for their colour. My being
cries out to be incarnate, incarnate,
maculate and tousled in a honeyed bed."
"On a night like this, I number the days to the solstice
and the turn back to the
light.
O sun,
center of our foolish dance,
burning heart of stone,
molten mother of us all,
hear me and have pity."
When will the leaders of the Catholic Church wake up and be restored to sanity? How could they not know what they do?
Bob Dylan could have been writing about the leaders of the Catholic Church when he wrote the words:
"Even Jesus would never forgive what you do."
Thank you for your post with links this morning -- especially Paula Meehan's reading of the end of her haunting poem from 1991.
The groundswell of the Irish people in the video is heartening. Savita lives in the hearts of all compassionate people.
Province of Quebec was extremely catholic. Now, chapels and churches are sold and have become art studio/dwelling, exhibition halls, concert halls, you name it...and schoolchildren play Mom and Dad.
Expo 1967 opened eyes.
Stunning poem. A dreadful shame, this refusal of choice for women. Such cold disrespect. And this travesty is also one we face, increasingly often, here in the U.S. as well, even though choice has been the law of the land for many years. If we're not vigilant, we'll lose it.
This is all so sad.
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