A while ago I was asked by the Temenos Academy Review to write a review of a collection of poems by the Irish poet John F. Deane, called Achill Island, which I strongly recommend:
It was a wonderful time, because I got to discover this extraordinary poet. He has just released this new poem, which I would like to share on the blog. It finds great resonance with our times, of health crisis, lockdowns, curfews, and restricted freedoms - a time unique in human history, all the more for it being a planetary event. Deane has responded beautifully to the sense of release brought by openness to the natural world, the sense of "emergence" at last. Here it is:
Emergence
After
the long sorrows and the upset, when
the rains have stopped and the storms
eased, you will
walk out again, the roads still lustrous
wet,
you will breast the rise, and pause;
listen a while
to the burble of excess rainwater along
hidden drains
and the welcoming scold of the wren and
chaffinch;
half-hidden at the base of the blackthorn
hedge,
a fox-run leads towards the secrecy of
a dark wood
and you find, by a solitary ash, where
the new grasses
are disentangling from the old on the
cramped
ditch-top, an early purple orchid, rising lone
towards pyramidal grandeur and enigma. Stand
for a while in mid-morning silence, to
savour
the presence of the world as you knew
it, maternal
though strict, embracing and aloof, till
you feel part
of the insistent and discreet stirring
of new life,
your part being to be yourself,
attentive, open
and quietly expectant, aware of the
simple desire
to be one with the presence, the
stillness, to hold
in acceptance the long sorrows and the
loss.
John F. Deane
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