Poetry

Lines Written on St Patrick's Purgatory Lough Derg

"A clear barometer"

"Towards the bottle-green, still / Shade of an oak"

"A boy was standing like a ballet dancer poised on the rock"

"Beside St. Brigid’s Cross"

"It was said stone dreams and animal sleeps and man is awake"

"Low rocks, a few weasels, lake"

"Monks in convents of coracles"

"Primeval magic among the trees"

"The green islands that were his morning hope and his evening despair"

"The lake waves caught the concrete stilts of the Basilica"

"The little islands of Pan held in the crooked elbow of the lake"

"The middle of the island looked like the memory Of some village evicted by the Famine"

"The penance wheel turned round again"

"The silver strands of the individual sometimes show"

"The turnips were a-sowing in the fields around Pettigo"

"Three boatloads of Dublin’s unemployed came in"

"Water withers from the oars"

"We pray to ourself. The metal moon, unspent"

"For this is Lough Derg, St. Patrick’s Purgatory"

"Their hands push closed the doors that God holds open"

"They come to Lough Derg to fast and pray and beg"

"Women and men in bare feet turn again"

"Lough Derg" by Thomas D'Arcy McGee

The Drowning of the Boat

"Fainting heart and failing eye, Aching head and footstep weary"

"That's the Red Lake unless I mistake"