Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh Biography

I saw a thrush-corpse shriveling
on the woodland's scrabbly floor.
I was busy pitying it
when there came a harrying pack
of strays that set about me;
they bayed and snapped,
growling bare-toothed.
From my throat such roaring;
my every curse and foot-swing
made a bellow-war between us.
Fields of agitated cattle
augmented that wild choir.
Mice and shrewmice shrunk back
into the oakleaf brown interior
as a fox reared upward on a stony ridge,
its stance utterly rigid.
I remembered to run,
felt the four paws under me.

Translated from the Irish by Billy Ramsell
...

He can still hear it:
the glaciers rasping,
their ratcheting in the distance,
the snow-quiet.

And still he remembers
gulping unsullied freshness
to clarify his lungs,
the holy coldness blessing his skin.

He gave his heart
to that stinging brightness,
that taciturn redoubt,
that uncluttered country.

But no choice except a return
to dampness and home.
He had to turn
his back on blankness.

On so many nights
his wife asks him tentatively
to abandon the kitchen
and join her upstairs.

He loves the irregular loneliness
of each tap-drip
and it's music to him
the refrigerator's drone:

basso profundo
slow in the recital,
grinding sighs that call out
to his being's every melting element.

Translated from the Irish
...

No, I'm not so depressed
As to stay
Under the duvet
All day
That would be an exaggeration

It's just that
My eye
Gladdened at the sight of you,
Stranger,
Left behind
Last night

And this morning
There's a taste of stout
And regret
In my mouth.
...

You are not the time of birth
but of its opposite;

your rending winds,
glasses falling from our hands
at the sight of you,

pains sprouting and blooming,
within us, in silent toxicity.

You gulp existences
with your indifferent, scattered rains.

You switch off lives
with one glare
from your unnatural eye.

You excrete the Lamb of God
who takes away the sin of the world.

Have mercy on us.
...

You were driving by the sea
in the dream,
explaining your regret,
why you led us not into temptation.

And I remembered then
the biblical rain
that lashed your conscience
at the doorway of desire.

I woke with my feet
in a puddle of rainwater,
the church-bell
was counting my sorrows.
...