At Glendalough

I consider Glendalough, Co Wicklow, Ireland (where Iseult Gonne is buried and where some chapters of A Dance in Time are set) to be one of the most inspiring places on earth.  I spent as much time as possible there while writing that novel and I wrote this poem in tribute to all that was given to me there.

Day Away

While walking through the ruins of seven churches
head tilting back to look
to the top of the tower
that took the round of St Kevin’s steeple and thrust it up
three times as high, from earth to sky
to mark the ground you walk upon as holy;

or while circling green lake-paths
that urge you up, then further up,
to top the crashing waterfall, then higher;

or while being stopped and stopped again,
by the sight of bare mountain cut
sheer into the valley and sliced
by a mesh of rivers and falls, ever
rushing to emptying their all
into two, long lakes that – somehow – take
their ceaseless gush and hold it
still,

you will come to know the allure of here,
(as of all the places we call sacred),
is the silence.

You will have come to hear
the voice of your own
blood dropping
into the deep.