All around, shards of a lost tradition:

From the Rough Field I went to school

In the Glen of the Hazels. Close by

Was the bishopric of the Golden Stone;

The cairn of Carleton’s homesick poem.

Scattered over the hills, tribal-

And placenames, uncultivated pearls.

No rock or ruin, dún or dolmen

But showed memory defying cruelty

Through an image-encrusted name.

The heathery gap where the Rapparee,

Shane Barnagh, saw his brother die —

On a summer’s day the dying sun

Stained its colours to crimson:

So breaks the heart, Brish-mo-Cree.

The whole landscape a manuscript

We had lost the skill to read,

A part of our past disinherited;

But fumbled, like a blind man,

Along the fingertips of instinct.

The last Gaelic speaker in the parish

When I stammered my school Irish

One Sunday after mass, crinkled

A rusty litany of praise:

Tá an Ghaeilge againn arís …*

Tír Eoghain: Land of Owen,

Province of the O’Niall;

The ghostly tread of O’Hagan’s

Barefoot gallowglasses marching

To merge forces in Dún Geannainn

The Rough Field (1972)

* We have the Irish again.