Mairéad Donnellan is a poet from Cavan. Her work has appeared in various publications, including Crannóg, The Moth, Poetry Ireland Review, and Hennessy New Irish Writing. She has been shortlisted for the Cúirt New Irish Writing Prize and and the Doire Press Chapbook Competition, among others. In 2021, she was appointed poet laureate for Bailieborough, Cavan, as part of the all-Ireland Poetry Town initiative.

 

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Wild Orchids

 

I knew nothing of the root,

the origin of those blooms below ground,

saw a shyness tucked amongst the rushes,

a girl on the brink of wisdom kept these 

between herself and the wild bees –

a sin to pluck such intricacies of lip and lobe, 

deep pink, flecked and speckled.

 

I watched what happened

in the hours of daylight, 

the intimacy of winged things, 

clumsy, all in a rush,

they stepped onto the threshold, 

steadied themselves on a purple spur,

a brief coupling of sorts kept me fixed and fearful.

 

I did not have words 

for the urgency of summer I had seen 

in the soaking field behind the house

and in all those summers to come 

when I would venture to look again 

through that little window of July,

still surprised to find them in flower.

 

 

What about the Cathedrals?

 

What about the draughtsman’s miracle,

dark arches hidden in crypts,

the mason’s mark on granite,

slabs of sandstone, weeping green,

pillars illuminated by leaded windows,

blast-shattered limbs of saints, rearranged in panes

martyrs, flayed and arrow struck,

praying for deliverance,

chiselled kings, chaste in the bed of heaven.

What about the Christs, hung above the altar,

all the true crosses, iron nails and linen,

reliquaries filled with eye teeth and tibias,

 

the tombs and tomes, bones of the unknown soldiers,

vestries with a surplus of chasubles, chalices,

sacramental bread and wine.

What about the heraldry, the ancient Credo fading,

knee worn prie-dieus, votive lamps that drip with suffering,

the chasm between bowed heads and forests of pitch pine trusses,

snuffed out tapers, incense lingering with the great Amen.

What about the brazen bells, housed in their towers,

the shoulders of those who hung them there,

the grains of sand, the keystones keeping the weight of faith,

the holy all of it, does it stand for anything?

 

 

Oзеро

(Lake)

 

My own tongue

kept it hemmed

in among drumlins,

idyll of the familiar –

soft water, rim of trees,

mirrored, dipping in,

grebes in the distance,

a simplicity of picnics,

perch fishing, water-mint.

 

Your translation named

the chaos of it, split

into three syllables,

 

on a day when it was

      white-headed, 

                              ferocious,

                                              stillness all at sea

with a foreign god

lowering his oars,

spitting snow.

 

 

Broella 

 

Take the candlestick from your beside,

run a knife around the rim,

as he would have done with an oyster,

shuck out the remains of a taper 

that lit the last of your lovemaking.

Tap them onto the kitchen table,

shreds, fine as a baby’s nail, 

snap the waxen beads off brass, 

every hard-set rivulet. 

 

Gather all into your palm,

breathe in a yellowing meadow

as it yields to your heat,

hold it to your heart awhile,

think of him, miles out on the tide,

a strain of stitch about the shoulders,

his nets, heavy with herring.

 

Take the portion, roll it like bread dough,

whatever skin is shed, let it enter,

tear the morsel in two,

fashion each axis until spindle thin

between your thumb and index finger,

fix them with hemp string.

 

Kiss the north, the south, 

the east, the west of it, 

these limbs are no proxy for his, 

yet tonight they must suffice.

Women will come with their linens,

to drape your smoke-stained walls, 

you will step into your mourning clothes

and sit in this little tent of grief,

accepting time-worn words from all

who dip a sprig in a scallop shell

to bless your labour of love,

as though he has found home.

 

 

*Broella: when a sailor from Ouessant, Brittany was lost at sea, a small waxen cross was kept in place of the body to which all funeral honours were paid.