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Writer's pictureSpike Woods

BURREN. A poem about the strange limestone pavement in the west of Ireland.

The ancient light keels off the Burren,

fading in the rock-cut crosses on the terraced mountain,

crackling with energy sucked up from the crisp drawn flowers.

Beyond the old hills, the deserted moors,

the agonised rend of steelgrey stone

is a lonely movement of a little tribe,

their faces brown, wrinkled,

heavy in the weight of their knowing.

And the ceremony of the dolmen rises

like a spire into the chopped air

and time waits while the banshee claws

the life from the wailing dead.

God sleeps here among the silent folk,

accepted by the body, not the mind;

the old gods smile upon the Burren

and sometimes in the afterdark

a wind walks in from the sea

And behind the wind a great shadow moves,

to settle like a blanket on the beehive hills,

where people group and dance and sing

the old, old songs

with words that mankind never wrote.

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