Daragh Bradish – Summer Passage

Daragh Bradish LE P&W April 2019

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Summer Passage, poems by Daragh Bradish

Daragh Bradish’s poetry has appeared in literary journals such as the Moth, Cránnog, Poetry Salzburg Review, the French Literary Review, Acumen, Orbis, the North, and Irish Times. His first collection ‘Easter in March’ was published by Liberties Press in 2016 and was reviewed in Poetry Salzburg and the Galway Review among other journals. In 2018 his poem ‘Disclosure’ won the Poetry Ireland Trócaire prize, published poet category. From 2010 he coordinated the ‘Sounding for Simon’ readings in Dublin. Together with fellow poet Paul Bregazzi he runs ‘The Listeners’ a reading group in south Dublin. He is the fourth member of C.B. Quarterman, a poetic collaborative, with Seamus Cashman, Tom Conaty and Paul Bregazzi.


Towards Morning Light

Answer the question,
or begin to write it down.
I have put off my ghost-search long enough.
Where was I going through this sleepless night?

At dawn I dreamt I had gone
back to school, not knowing much,
but carrying a sack of ripened pears, apples,
and plums, that showed the indents of their pickers.

Around me, classrooms vibrated chaos,
lined up possibilities before me,
unmarked doors which I could slip through,
Autumn-gifted, yet still curious.

I ask my woken self;
what do you reach for, Old Testament or New?

This day, believing in surprise,
my thumb and index finger
grip the dial, the radio projecting sounds to latch on:
waves of a world- in-waiting;
confusions of the marvellous, responsive to our touch.


Summer Passage

Five nights ago we heard the cuckoo’s call
as we sat in a garden in Kilshanny, County Clare,
where we left trees for pleasure’s sake
clad in their ivy shrouds which will
in time some cold day choke them.

For now, it is the hearing
and the gaze that settles us.
At this moth hour a last light
fingers on the bottom bower,
all else withdrawing into dark.

Cuckoo, thrush, black bird
and posted lark, bear witness
to our summer’s passing ease,
which seems an open paradise for these
slight pilots with their hurried lives,

whose flights from one side of a haven to the next
alert us to some hidden cleft.  Should we too enter
and with purpose name our cause?
The heart’s flight; with fanfares rushing by us
listeners, to the final call.


© Daragh Bradish