The Kiltartan Poetry Book | Page 7

only sitting up at
night and forever drinking. The lamb and the sheep are there; the cow
and the calf are there, fine lands are there without heath and without
bog. Ploughing & seed-sowing in the right month, plough and harrow
prepared and ready; the rent that is called for there, they have means to
pay it. There is oats and flax & large eared barley. There are beautiful
valleys with good growth in them and hay. Rods grow there, and
bushes and tufts, white fields are there and respect for trees; shade and
shelter from wind and rain; priests and friars reading their book;
spending and getting is there, and nothing scarce.
I leave it in my will that my heart rises as the wind rises, and as the fog
scatters, when I think upon Carra and the two towns below it, on the
two-mile bush and on the plains of Mayo. And if I were standing in the
middle of my people, age would go from me and I would be young
again.

His Lament for O'Kelly
There's no dew or grass on Cluan Leathan. The cuckoo is not to be seen
on the furze; the leaves are withering and the trees complaining of the
cold. There is no sun or moon in the air or in the sky, or no light in the
stars coming down, with the stretching of O'Kelly in the grave.
My grief to tell it! he to be laid low; the man that did not bring grief or
trouble on any heart, that would give help to those that were down.
No light on the day like there was; the fruits not growing; no children
on the breast; there's no return in the grain; the plants don't blossom as
they used since O'Kelly with the fair hair went away; he that used to
forgive us a great share of the rent. Since the children of Usnach and
Deirdre went to the grave, and Cuchulain, who as the stories tell us,
would gain victory in every step he would take; since he died, such a
story never came of sorrow or defeat; since the Gael were sold at
Aughrim, and since Owen Roe died, the Branch.
His Vision of Death
I had a vision in my sleep last night between sleeping and waking. A
figure standing beside me, thin, miserable, sad and sorrowful; the
shadow of night upon his face, the tracks of the tears down his cheeks.
His ribs were bending like the bottom of a riddle; his nose thin that it
would go through a cambric needle; his shoulders hard and sharp that
they would cut tobacco; his head dark and bushy like the top of a hill;
and there is nothing I can liken his fingers to. His poor bones without
any kind of covering; a withered rod in his hand, and he looking in my
face....
Death is a robber who heaps together kings, high princes and country
lords; he brings with him the great, the young, and the wise, gripping
them by the throat before all the people. Look at him who was
yesterday swift & strong, who would leap stone wall, ditch and gap.
Who was in the evening walking the street, and is going under the clay
on the morrow.

It is a pity for him that is tempted with the temptations of the world;
and the store that will go with him is so weak, and his lease of life no
better if he were to live for a thousand years than just as if he had
slipped over on a visit and back again.
When you are going to lie down don't be dumb. Bare your knee and
bruise the ground. Think of all the deeds that you put by you, and that
you are travelling towards the meadow of the dead.
His Repentance
O King who art in Heaven, I scream to Thee again and aloud, for it is
Thy grace I am hoping for.
I am in age and my shape is withered; many a day I have been going
astray. When I was young my deeds were evil; I delighted greatly in
quarrels and rows. I liked much better to be playing or drinking on a
Sunday morning than to be going to Mass. I was given to great oaths,
and I did not let lust or drunkenness pass me by.
The day has stolen away and I have not raised the hedge, until the crop
in which Thou didst take delight is destroyed. I am a worthless stake in
the corner of a hedge, or I am like a boat that has lost its rudder, that
would be broken against a rock in the sea, and that would be drowned
in the cold