Though lashed to the landscape,
the stones sit up and speak here,
bear the scars and the weight
of their migrations,
the troughing out of hillsides,
the calligraphy that scripts the bounds
of our imaginations. Lithic lines appeal
across the fields, peak and
disappear
into arterial lengths beneath
our feet.

Still walking backwards, uphill,
down the slope of time,
arrowed forward in our progress to the tarn
that reflects the ever-motion of the abundant sky,
hanging and jostling
over our increasingly wet hoods.

Time is broken open out here on these
chapped faces of
stone and irrigated plates,
mapped out by the glacial
gorings, the litterings of scree and shale,
or the pebble-downed drains.

We trip over the unburied life,
solid resurfacings that
lance the top-soil and exude timelessness.
We can kneel at these godless altars,
feel the cooled memories,
savour the rough beastings
of the planet’s depths.

**

Eoin Flannery is a Professor of Irish Literature based in Limerick, Ireland. He has published 12 books of literary criticism on modern and contemporary Irish fiction and poetry, with a special interest in environmentalism. He is currently preparing a collection of poetry entitled, Unshadow.

P76 issue 9: Poetries of place/ displacement/ diaspora/ odyssey: On-line Edition. Table of Contents