Gouden Hoorn literair
by Anthony Kirby

IT WAS KILDARE

It was Kildare
Small, flattened
Under threatening skies
That provoked the elements:
Monastic tower, abbey close by,
Defiant, reaching for a hand
That would never touch its stone.
It was Kildare, wet, bedraggled
After rain had fallen
That silenced footsteps
Hissing through the blades of grass;
Kildare, the last place
In the monastic cycle:
The end of a well-based Belief in order.

1996

ODYSSEUS AND CALYPSO

On this island I have been
Touched only by Calypso's spell
And the longing
To sit once more at the prow
Of my boat whilst reeds bend
Hushed by the zephyr's breath.
Ten years I have been loved
But no love do I find in my heart,
For ten years I have sat on this abandoned shore
Weeping for where my mind is wont to wander.

Lamentations may well issue forth,
But of these countries and tyrants I am bereft;
A decade with its forty seasons
Each with their colours running dry
Whilst rivers running green cannot stop turning red.

I dreamt that in my eleventh year
Calypso would see my limbs grow weary,
Tired and aching for other limbs, other lips;
All my treasures half-remembered
But truly forgotten.

On this isle castaway
Ensnared by an enchantress's spell
Interwoven within a kiss that waves goodbye,
Encircled with the ebb and flow
Of night and day
I await the falling of the sky.

Altinkum, Turkey
1993