I squinted As the light squandered itself Into three plummets – Like votive spears Cast into the scowling water.

After this, nothing bright; Just a vault of lour- Torn mists on the mountains And three widow crows Quarrelling over a rack of fish bones.

Weed fanned the rocks. A treachery of jag and green tresses Beckoning me out Under trapped echoes –

I tramped the pebbles like a retreating army, The crows cursed And on the far shore a Calvary of wind turbines Stirred the dawn.

I wondered what it must be like under those gibbet gyres- The rain smudging the fields. A creak of oil-famished steel.

I have heard that all times are present. My ancestors are thriving as I speak, And dying. Their now generates against my now, Perhaps divided by no more than the swoop of blades, Or tides we may not cross.

Whatever; I know that it should have been exactly this way When the O’Neill sailed out from Rathmullan-

The dawn as dour as a block of whetstone. Black birds and carrion. Crooked crosses, like milling stars. Shorn wind moaning down to the waves.