Falling Into Monaghan
for Margaret
'No hospitality is dangerous because
of the suspicion of murder.'
- Gerald of Wales
A spirit stung your heel between mists,
laminate hexed will: a Tara evening, morning
in Tyrone. Your family would pluck us back,
you three parts Eurydice. We turned from
Tudor Park to horses, the old railway.
And penetrated high ground. Aeolus loud
with harmonica, falling into Monaghan,
a Land of Cockaigne. Teasing hard at
Newbliss, Aughnacloy: street signs in
bars, their photos of seedsmen fresh
in our minds. The unknown over hills,
far away; switchbridges, lines awry.
Un-British, a giddy vertigo where cars
hobbled off, bicycles waved and colours
ran ill-defined.
Returning up a scabbed border by Drumfurrer
we smelt the dead, the cattle unburied.
People had emptied, dark holding down.
Then shock of reeling light spread copper
over backing plains. Our heads roared with gold;
translated into birds we fell to a drowning moon.
Countrymen's words gripped our clowning, on
through a hundred townlands.
Annaghmakerrig 1996
© Copyright Gerald Hull, 1999
