Anam Cara

BLACK MUSIC IN CONAMARA

For John Barry

To travel through the trough

Of this Sunday afternoon,

As mist thickens into a screen

All over Conamara,

Holding the mountains back

From the clarity their stern solitude

Strives after, releasing the spring

Lustre of the long grass, ever further

Into a fervence of indigo, so much

So that the granite rocks strewn about

Seem eventually abstract, afterthoughts

To something that took place before them.

Take the silver bucket

Full of coarse turf cut from under here;

Light its brown shape in the grate

Until it blooms into a red well.

Put on a disc of smooth steel

That slowly builds, yields up a pulse

Of jazz from Roland Kirk,

Who never was here, but somehow

Played a live concert once, so full

Of the withheld litany

Of this shy, Conamara day.

The saxaphone catches onto

Some riff of murmur,

Deep beneath the roots of the mountains,

Where granite relents, giving way

In tears, to the blanket poultice of the bog.