Red Hands (Celtic)

RED HANDS 73XXXX/OTT

By JC STREET © 2004 all rights reserved


Cold the tunnels of night
creeping to Belfast
stark-set
pale shade of moon-
flecked lough

thousand year cradle for sentries

the CS canister has replaced
the Roman breastplate

They still find Roman
coins on Cave Hill lying
rain-battered
next to British shillings

This is the limit of their story, their
tarnished hue
brackets the land’s destiny, this
pale wild country no-one
ever called home

a port in a storm, a passing
night of wandering strangers . . .
nobody’s destination

II.

Outside Dublin the Wicklow Hills the
night comes down so thick and fat it soul-crushes

a brooding fog of terror no man
can fathom it

Fifty yards beyond the last
house-light the maw
opens like a Hell-gate

Do not be caught there without a friend

it is a strange
pit of demons when day
passes each daybreak
uncertain

no one knows it will come.

My grandmother said a curse was
laid on the land year’s ago a
mass karma the whole waste of it
written off
in some astral accounts book

I can believe it

This is no joke it
was inhabited by animals, half man
half God knows what

they came from east of the sun
Firbolgs
Milesians
the Tuatha de Danaan
with wattle huts, strange religions, cattle
to barter for women, their
poets wrote strange
images of love and battle

One said:

“Blood bursts like snowflakes from their noses,”

watching a rout.

How can one comprehend a mind
like that
fifteen hundred years ago

These were strange people they
clustered in tribes paying
tribute to Tara;

they could not be ruled, can
I find words to tell you how it was?

III.

There is a dull beating
in the west, it is waves
crushing Shannon’s
fruitless shore

Celtic crosses stand
windswept on ‘scarps, eyeless
sockets catch the seawind

You will come of a sudden upon a tale
drifting in firesmoke
curled from an old man’s lips and
know its familiar refrain it
is out of secret Egypt and before

Out along the white roads of Connemara there are taverns
where shepherds gather:

Do not look into their eyes they
will fix you
upon a pin, your words
dead in your throat, your
breath froze up
on an ice-shrammed shore

IV.

There is no cure for it, drink
and be gone and be gone soon if you
value the dawn
pale-wet as it is

Do not talk of religions and battles
won and lost there is
more in that land than reason
can grasp

a harsh claw that
squeezes the heartblood and bids
its will be done

Do not laugh!

no man can
spend a night alone in the back
country
and ever be the same

That island is a crypt, a reliquary
of skulls the last
place of unrest for souls

a warp in the karma cycle

The old women will tell you but
not in those words

how can i say it?

I have seen this with my own eyes and
the memory will not be still

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