This week's Poems Of The Week, presented in association with Poetry Ireland, are a pair of new works entitled Iomramh and Nightsky & Butterfly, by Stephen James Smith.
Iomramh
written at Cill Rialaig, Co. Kerry.
(Iomramh (pronounced imram): a journey in space and time (a voyage of discovery).
An iomramh is a class of old Irish tale concerning a hero’s sea journey to the otherworld. Each of these journeys ostensibly takes place in the physical world, but in parallel with this they are, on a deeper level, also journeys to oneself.)
A man goes to the coast of an island to be alone.
He has gone as far as he can,
for now.
It’s called retreat.
A great distance is not always far enough,
when the mind is as restless as the ocean you’re sleeping beside.
This man in seeking solitude
and in doing so has brought the loneliness into his own heart.
Sure he knew this would be the way of it,
but he still put one foot in front of the other.
You’ve to face it sometimes
learn...
The barren landscape has seen worse,
he reminds himself
of the continued struggle and erosion
that is life.
He thinks that's a cliched metaphor,
a famine village is deserving of more.
He looks out at the ocean all too often,
The primal part in him wanting to rage in the deep blue.
Yesterday was Valentine’s Day
and around the table he was told a tragic love story
of a man, who after he buried his love,
climbed to the top of Bolus Head
and through himself to the depths.
After this story, the man made the same trek.
It would be so easy to climb the rock walls,
pass by the sheep in the fields, and dive
never submitting, but knowing it's a fight never to be won
once submerged.
There’s something honest in that though
he thinks,
is there?
Never submitting.
Those rocks are patient hunters,
how much violence have they caused by simple stillness.
Then birdsong called through the air,
like so many times, it has called him away from a dark edge,
like so many times, it is the simple things in his life that save him;
fond memories, curiosity,
he could have sworn
he saw the Fibonacci Sequence in a spider web earlier,
this reminded him.
Those rocks can wait for now.
Instead he’ll walk into the wind,
which numbed his face yesterday,
while a warm heart pounds on beneath all the layers.
You can go so far and it’s never enough.
You can learn to be still and it’ll come to you.
You can think of moving rocks,
battling nature,
or arranging words in some fashion aiming for legacy.
This is redundant.
You fucking know this.
Leave your ego at this pagan peninsula,
echoes of trauma are just that,
time for silence.
You are here.
It’s sunny outside.
The man notices the bruise on his knee is fading,
the salted air is already healing.
Later he’ll eat eggs and light a fire.
Later good things will come to pass.
He remembers this right now,
as he sit still, warming his feet,
ready to wander...
Nightsky & Butterfly
I’ve done more sleeping here then I’d intended to...
The other morning when I went to make coffee,
there was a butterfly
that had somehow found its way into the cottage.
I couldn’t reach to free it.
So, it stayed there fluttering away
pressed against the glass.
I sat alone all the day
burning turf, turning pages
and playing with the pine cone
I found on the path.
I looked up at the darkness of the sky,
they say this area is a Dark Sky Reserve
people come here to gaze.
In-between my navy gazing I saw Orion
hunting in Star Wars above the Skellig Islands.
I wonder, during a clear moonless night
would the gables take the weight?
This here is the ‘core zone’
of the Dark Sky Reserve
There is no ‘critical light’.
A buffer zone protects this ‘core zone’
This isthmus is reaching beyond
and in the distance I saw
a lighthouse flashing, calling us in.
We love only until it we don’t.
The next morning the butterfly
landed on me,
I took it in my hand
and lead it to the door.
Only in going away
can we realise
where home is…
About The Poet: Stephen James Smith is a founder of LINGO Festival, Ireland’s only spoken word festival, and poetry curator of the annual First Fortnight Festival. In 2016, he made a huge impact with his paen to his hometown Dublin You Are, and the following year was commissioned by the St. Patrick's Festival to produce a visual poem, My Ireland. Stephen is performing on the Other Voices stage at this year's Electric Picnic festival - details here.
