Five Poems by Marguerite Doyle

 

Lament for Hy-Breasal

 

Here, the Earth flooded; now the land

has merged with the turquoise sea.

 

Leaves surface, slip and sink like forest

canopies; sea ferns sway with the tides,

 

fires brightly burn, pots sputter

on the boil and spit.

 

In the east, the sun glides crimson

from her seagrass cradle

 

treading cirrus waves and seaweed

in our sky.

 

We answer her calling, falling

in with the rhythm of each ancestral

 

heartbeat, tracing the imprint

of their tumbled walls and stones.

 

Along the sunken land their legacy

lies like the weight of oceans;

 

we are the guardians of Hy-Breasal,

the protectors of our underworld.

 

Every seven years the jealous gods

return to mock our paradise,

 

to draw back the curtain of waters

and leave us naked in the world.

 

We go to meet them with courage,

casting our fishing nets as meagre veils

 

against their power, listening in silence

to their savage cries and the blue whale-song.

 

Hy-Breasal: The legendary sunken island in the Atlantic Ocean west of Ireland.

 

 

The Haunting of Loughshinny

 

The clocks are going back tonight,

  Winter rises from her sleep.

Every door is bolted tight

    and Samhain welcomes Halloween.

 

Autumn tempest shakes the trees

    leaves come rushing down the lane.

Whirly gigs climb up the eaves

    and dance along the windowpane.

 

The roads are darker than the night,

    the sea beyond is black as slate.

No soul is seen in step or flight—

    wind sings and plays with churchyard gate.

 

Sickle moon wears solstice crown,

    dying ashes spark and splinter.

Silent sprites watch Autumn’s gown

    brush gently past the coming Winter.

 

 

Snow Globe          After James Joyce

 

On Usher’s Island every door

is a house of the dead.

 

Each a gravestone, shrinking

from the Liffey’s dark mantle,

 

snow-capped, like the statues

in the park of the Phoenix.

 

The river rises and flows

in reverse, an umbilical

 

cord feeding the abdomen

of its origins,

 

chained to the waterwheel

of ages. The tide breaches

 

the banks, flooding the streets,

casting pale wreaths

 

in every dark window. For

a lament someone is singing

 

The Lass of Aughrim over

the petrified metropolis.

 

 

Grandmother’s Alternative Bedtime Tale

 

Once I had a dream of walking in the woods

along a path of fallen fruits of summer.

Early evening, black branches, the moon

a sharp-toothed sickle among the stars

and the air chilled, so I wore my shawl

about my shoulders. I heard voices carried

on the wind; goblins perhaps or a crone

trying to bewitch me but I paid no heed to them.

Suddenly, a wolf across my path, gasping

for breath and wild-eyed; a woodcutter

plunging through the thicket behind her. 

I hid her among the roots of a great oak tree

and fed her apples so she in turn could

feed her young. So it was that I was not eaten

by the mother-wolf; instead I grew up

and she bore the faint memory, or dream

of a girl long ago in the woods with a red cloak.

 

 

Demon Cream             After Bulgakov

 

On Walpurgis Night, over green linden trees

and the bright metropolis,

 

she flies invisible, casting no shadow

on glass or moonbeams.

 

Trams pass below, sparking their light

in windows while figures

slide off bridges into mirrors.

 

The cream smells of mimosa,

pine needles, seaweed.

 

Her sledge is swift and shears hoar frost

from pinhead stars

that crackle like ice on fire.

 

Cities spiral into galaxies and lakes

slip into mysteries.

 

Deep in the forest, fires burn, nymphs

dance in a sylvan universe.

 

In her wake she leaves a torrid scene,

a burned book, a pot of invisible cream.

 

Marguerite Doyle holds an M.A. in Creative Writing from Dublin City University. Her publishing credits include Vallum, Reliquiae Journal, Carousel, The Galway Review, The New Welsh Review, and Dreich. Marguerite’s poetry also appears in the Dedalus Anthology, Local Wonders: Poems of Our Immediate Surrounds and The Ireland Chair of Poetry Commemorative Anthology, Hold Open the Door. Her work is published in The Poetry Collective’s Fear Less in aid of Jigsaw and Art in Mind and in the Dedalus anthology Local Wonders. In 2022 Marguerite was one of the winning poets selected to participate in the Bard of Ballymun Project run by the Axis Theatre in Dublin. Her work was also recently performed as part of a collaboration between Pens of the Earth and the Bench Theatre in the UK.  In 2022 Marguerite was Winner in Category for the Trócaire / Poetry Ireland Competition and she has been shortlisted and highly commended for the Anthology Poetry Award.