Poem for Friday and Grianan of Aileach

Tirconail 

By Patrick MacGill 

Tirconail!

On the hem of the royal Hill, the Hill of Aileach,

I stood —

And the Past, the Present and the Future

Were in my eyes

As nothing —

The light foot in a forgotten dance.

A spark in the air.

Tirconail!

Of the dark-haired passes and star-high peaks,

Depths unknown, heights austere.

What have you to say?

What is the message

In the moan of the winds in your glens,

The wail of the waters on your surf-bitten shores?

In the sun-bright lustre of Croagh-an-Airgead,

The haughty coldness of Errigal,

The drum of the sea on Tory,

The white laugh of the waters in Gweebarra Bay?

Errigal has listened to the light feet

On the dancing floors of Gweedore!

Curving and curtseying

The white bones of the time-forgotten dancers

Are one with the waters

That thresh your shores, Tirconail.

For they were and are not,

They are and will not be!

And thus, I, too,

The onlooker of a moment will go.

My moment as nothing,

The strain of a fiddle in the twilight,

A low wind on the hills.

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Friday was a nice day, but unfortunately I had a dentist appointment to pick up my bite guards, which are so uncomfortable that I had a headache all afternoon just from trying them on -- I have no idea how I'm going to be able to sleep in them. Otherwise, I did some computer work and we took a long walk to make up for a couple of days of shorter walks due to weather. There were lots of ducks and the eagles were out. 

We watched the rest of this season of Nobody Wants This, which I went from disliking a little to disliking intensely and will definitely never watch again. I was sure Sasha was going to cheat on Esther with Morgan, but I guess they're saving that for next season; this just set up all Jewish women as intolerable and intolerant. At least Silo is back, though all we got in the season premiere was a lot more mystery. 

This is the Grianan of Aileach hillfort in County Donegal, dating to the sixth century, a royal site in Ireland before the Normans invaded and the King of Munster nearly destroyed it, then damaged again under the anti-Catholic rule of Henry VIII but originally reputed to have been constructed by the Tuatha Dé Danann over the grave of the god Aedh. It was so cold and windy that we didn't spend a lot of time exploring: