Journey in the Third Century

Journey in the Third Century

  (for Grandfather Johnny Igoe,

   From Elphin, Roscommon)

You're sixty years underground,

Voice hanging yet in treble

And pitch, so much of Yeats

On record talking of Innisfree

Or old marble heads.

The poems you read, summerway,

Porched with the moon, liquid,

Turf-cut, spaded, black-buttered

With promise, besieged, sent out

On Ireland's black ships,

Are just alive as you, freed

From the holds of dread crossings,

fed to the fish or buried in the new

land, the escape complete from

turnips, potatoes, drought.

The hunger there is hungered here,

The throat dry and impulsive

Down past recognition, the ache

As sure as echoes when seals

Call across harbors heralding.

I've lost you so many times, let you

Slip into the bare consciousness

Of February or September days, my skin

More at reading than eyes, forgetting

The phenomenon of your voyage –

Ten, alone, family-sanctioned

To be the first of its Irish sailors,

Cast out by rude vegetables, economy;

You must have pained at the coming,

A scout ahead of the horde.

Here you sank a pick in hardpan,

Poured your brow into great red

Neckerchiefs, laid a railroad, a canal,

Built someone's empire in Manhattan,

Thrust nine children into Massachusetts.

A thousand times I've walked the ground

You walked on, trod your rounds,

Your aspirations, found your dreams

Brick-hard at intersections, side roads,

Left you marginally, my own feet tinkered.

Still, the constant pressure's known,

Names falling out of night, children

Of the children of the droughty land,

Here where things seem realized,

At these eyes, by this heart, by hands

That play on infernal machines. I am

In the beginning of your third century,

Have throbbed in your old cottage,

Felt the knots root underground, trebled

My voice where morning calls answers.

Peat, piled behind the house, ingots

Of new tenant's digging, kept the kettle

At a soft steam on a green stove. In the

Corner where you slept before journey,

a small star bore through, called your name.