Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume Four November-December 2024
Lost on Lough Corrib (1965), poems by Art Ó Súilleabháin.
Lost on Lough Corrib (1965)
He tapped tails of copper from pipe ends
fitted a silver streak along the middle
Char-lined the Toby-like body
and his carpenter’s alchemy
produced an action
that teased life into his net – a killer.
I snagged it at White Goat
from a cut he took
too close to the edge
line snapped
and it was lost
with possible salmon
in a murky Corrib gloom.
For years he blamed me and I searched
peered into cloud reflecting glass
dived on calm summer days
to eye the quartzite abyss
that frightened my soul
but I couldn’t find his dreams.
In old age it still haunts me
lying there
tarnishing
like dreams of boyhood.
Aunt Mary was a little different
I asked him where his aunt Mary had lived.
Was it in America somewhere, Boston
New York, Philadelphia or New Hampshire?
Had she passed through Cobh and Ellis?
Perhaps had gone to England first, moved on
sailed from Liverpool or from Southampton.
Researching a family tree for Aoibhinn
I had found Mary in the 1911 Census
living with her family in Cloonbroone.
She was four. Could speak English.
No mention of the home language
Irish smelled of poverty or ignorance.
There were others there that he knew of.
Some had gone to New Jersey or Maine
Boston, Manhattan and Long Island
aways water nearby, memories of a lake
but
my dad swore that he had no aunt Mary.
I had to know. I enquired. Doc told me
in a hushed voice near Grouse Lodge
when he was going home after whiskeys
Sarah told me a little once in Dooras
when we were alone in the back kitchen
and she was making slabs of apple tart.
Mary was different.
Gravel on the long roadway to the house
noisily declared visitors
walking giddy cattle
or pushing black bicycles, too precious
to chance on a potholed narrow boreen.
There was always time for her to be hidden away.
No one could say that the Sullivans were touched
by a dark angel, so shadows veiled her presence
and she was hushed through a door in the wainscot
warned to be silent in her special place, until visitors left.
Mary lived in the darkness under the stairs in Cloonbroone.
© Art Ó Súilleabháin
Art Ó Súilleabháin was born in Corr na Móna, Co. Galway and spent some years in Boston USA. He worked in Dublin and Mayo as a teacher, in Castlebar as Director of The Mayo Education Centre and lectured at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC (as a Fulbright scholar) before returning to Corr na Móna. Art has published collections of poetry as Gaeilge for children. He won North West Words Poetry in 2017 and he has been featured in Poetry Ireland Review, Writing Home, Hold Open the Door, Vox Galvia, Trees, Ropes, Howl, The Waxed Lemon, Salt on the Coals, The Mayo Anthology, The Haibun Journal, and other collections. He now lives in Corr na Móna again, where he enjoys writing (in English and as Gaeilge) and fishing on Lough Corrib.
What a fishing story. Haunted with loss. Aunt Mary, is the sad one, with the family carrying the shame. I imagine her life under the stairs or her room schussed away, dreaming of a conversation, holding her own at table!