Normandy, 2004
for Ross

by Mary Rose Callan - Dublin (Moore Gold Medal Award Poetry 2004)

i. Fishing at Port en Bessin

Close by, the boy’s father
stacks oblong white cartons,

orderly as rows of carrara crosses.
His son reels your arcing pirouette in air,

slaps you on stone near my paralysed toes. Chipped, red
sunsets convulsing in your eye,

and nothing between us but fear of a boy,
the sudden, over-shoulder snap of his neck,

like a hook in the throat, should my foot start
to push you back over the edge.

ii. American cemetery, Saint-Laurent

Thousands of gull feathers, upright, stone-still,
as if behind a mother’s back

boys fled to pillow-fight in a room
transformed as cliff top for the day,

and the sound of water at boil point downstairs
was ocean spray flittering like cloth,

beyond mending when she scoops
feathers that fall

on a carpet of dust,
each finding its place in the weave.

iii. Garden of the Missing

We stayed so long
in the domed tree-house, roofed

with armfuls of leaves we plugged
into skyholes over our heads, air-borne voices

were thin as a sleepy bird’s song
or the scraping of laurels

sculptured in stone. Names
scribbled on fragments of paper,

or fingered in sand before we were born,
all they have for calling us home.

iv. Bones of Sand

Only a handful of years
between the onset of his sleeping here

and the barefoot hour of castles and sandboats,
between the stroking of hair on a chin

he wanted to bristle like gorse
and a child’s face

smooth as the marble cross
where I rest my fingers now,

seeing an old man retreat from sun,
his profile invisible as a sandman’s bones.

v. Close to the Pointe du Hoc

Side by side, on towels unfurled
like shrouds from a rainbow,

our dead weight bodies
that can climb no more,

even for a glimpse of the ruined battery,
endure thistle and thorn,

but not the disturbed
quiver of ants

heaving like a black shape
cut loose on the shore.

vi. Low Tide at Port en Bessin

This evening, no ice-packed marbled catch,
clinging to seaweed and rock

only shellfish discoloured as bone,
and parents who squint at

small hands dangling
fishnets of clink and spill;

row-boats slither in mud like tipsy old men
who can’t tell why they’re here

with children between them
and shell-song echoing.

vii. Procession at St. Laurent

On waste ground, no struggle
for car-space. Orderly lines retreat

from Overflow Closed
to arms-length rest beside doors eased open

on unguarded grass we’re free
to traverse, their colour metallic

as sea-glaze in sun; a procession
following an anthem of waves,

wing-curve and stretch
of a seagull’s throat.

viii. Apples and Pearls

Voices call our names
but we’re safe in the garden

we entered this morning, with children
who crouch between bramble and hedge

offering apples through a gap
made for hands and pennies.

You’ll find us if you listen
for a shiver of leaves

and copper lightening
to mother-of-pearl.

ix. Some link arms,

baseball caps switched back to front,
combats at half-mast,

and t-shirts noisy
with words they can’t speak –

like children who seem to have grown
in sleep, they weave down side paths of

cypress and pine, close to long lines
of names - Chuck, Jamie and all

those white arms
linked in the distance.

x. Veteran Revisits the Pointe du Hoc

On the tightrope
of his family’s frozen breath,

clinging to their eyes
as far as he dares, he belly-slides

down vertical gorse, to the limit
of his grandson’s cry – a show-stopper

drowning the sea-fall of stones -
it vibrates on a line tight as gut,

familiar as gull-song he cradled all that night,
with both hands he grasps it close to his chest.

Artist's Hut

In the unbelievably blue sphere
of sea and sky she peels an orange

and separates the segments.
Juice splashes the saffron-lichened rocks.

On tiptoe at the artist's hut
she sees a moth trapped behind grimy glass,

a tub of pollyfilla, empty coat hangers
pillows, their ticking all torn.

Linseed oil, paintbrushes stiff with disuse
seem to wait for his ghost

to sweep across canvas
capture the vastness, release the moth.

Legends

Etching the skyline Errigal, Muckish
are robed in bleached denim haze.

Her world is fragrant with ozone and pollen
faded seapinks flutter papery shells.

Chough, cormorants and gulls wheel
by crags unchanged since one-eyed Balor

imprisoned his daughter for daring to love,
or since Columcille blessed a handful of clay.

She finishes her orange, zest scenting the blue
with hints of Morocco, 'African Mariners',

pirates of legend and poem.
She dreams ships laden with gold, spices and silk.

A moth wings past her head,
like a spirit following flight to infinity.

The Ceili

At midnight or so the music starts.
Patsy Dan's accordion sets toes a-twitching.

The Waves of Tory and the Stack of Barley
undulate around the hall.

A sixteen-hand reel gains momentum,
its rhythms spiralling into time.

The human whirligig spins faster, faster
while a bodhran speeds up the beat.

Music spilling out over her head,
she dances towards the lighthouse beam

to the fringe of the world where the artist's hut
stands black and angled against the moon.