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Poetry


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Story and History

By hutmaster

12 January 2008

Some locations have stories in the very air.

The poignant smell of whin blossom
mixed with turf smoke and Atlantic ozone.
We picked our way down a bouldered lane
onto a crunching Mayo beach.
I gripped small hands,
for fear they'd hurt themselves.

'What bird is that?'
Some seabird lay dead among the stones.
I made up a name. Then a story,
of endless ocean flight;
storms no man ever saw,
even brave sailorboys
breasting to America.

'What else?' they asked.
Fiction drained like sand,
I told of Mayo men and Galway men,
whose last-of-Ireland sighs
breezed ashore long ago,
over fatal Western rocks.

Of wizened breasts on Irish mothers
and green-mouthed keening
carried on a gale of hunger.

A sea mist formed on the headland,
dropping silence like a prayer.

Reviews

Ahh
Written by maipenrai (784 comments posted) 12th January 2008

HM, a wonderfull little story poem.
Bernie

Written by petetheverse (164 comments posted) 12th January 2008

Another of your delightfully whimsical, almost throw-away descriptions; the blarney seems to have found a very comfortable home inside your skull. If we're lucky, it'll never leave, and we shall have a plethora of these treats to come!
PTV

I've read it
Written by audrie (454 comments posted) 12th January 2008

through a few times and it seems to me it reads better without the three lines between 'fatal Western rocks'... and 'A sea mist'...

Purely my opinion, but does anyone agree?

Otherwise, great!

Lucky children
Written by Josie (2844 comments posted) 12th January 2008

Lucky children to have you to tell them stories. I love them too, and you set the scene of the story so beautifully with the yellow blossom along your path. It's interesting to note that history and story are the same word in Italian (which comes from Latin languages - la storia). So they are bound together. History and story are much alike in our own language.

Written by petetheverse (164 comments posted) 24th January 2008

HM,
Just revisited this.
I love the beauty of the final line.
Pete
But that's not all, of course!

Irish famine
Written by Fledermaus (3470 comments posted) 24th January 2008

Hm. A warning in advance: This review is very unfair, but it touched a nerve that was probably not intended.

After a visit to the west of Ireland I became a bit allergic of stories about the famines and poor Irish sailing to America. Of course they're part of Irish history, but somehow it feels wrong how the tourist industry uses those sad stories to squeeze money out of people's pockets. Ireland has such a glorious history, yet it seemed that in the west the guides, museums etc. only think about Irish-Americans and the (romanticized) stories they want to hear.

That said, I must say I enjoyed your poem. It captures the desolateness of that region and is very well written. It's good to read something about someone telling such stories to keep them alive rather than to make people pity the (not so very) poor Irish.

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