A Poem for a Thursday #231

Brendan Kennelly was an Irish poet and novelist. He authored more than fifty volumes of poetry, two novels, and three plays. Kennelly was Professor of Modern Literature at Trinity College Dublin until his retirement in 2005. He was a Gaelic speaker and the vernacular of the small communities he grew up in was very important to him. He said about his own use of language “Poetry is an attempt to cut through the effects of deadening familiarity…to reveal that inner sparkle.”

Because her days were making a garden
She haunted that particular beach
Drawing rocks, sticks, shells and stones,
Random-pitched sea-gifts, over the years,
Bog-oak, sculpted and twisted,
She lugged from the beach up to the garden
That was half-finished when she had to leave it
To go to a place of which I know nothing.

Here is the picture (I have nothing but pictures),
The sea helpless to govern its giving
Through rumble and slither, bang, roar and hiss,
A house on a cliff-top with staring blue windows
And, work of the dead to pleasure the living,
a half-finished garden, epitaph, promise.

A Half-Finished Garden
Brendan Kennelly