From a sequence inspired by a five-page factual report of an Irish Colonel in the Indian Army 1916-1946.

 

IV

‘I have found true being in non-being
So I have wove my selfhood into nothingness’

Rumi

 

Cois na farraige, farraige na cois –
a mantra chipped and flaked by centuries of salt:
the name-plates of houses on the front

giving back to the sea its slurred sound
as it surged over the shingle, looking for sand.

Right way round and back to front.
Moored to timetabled tides, high then low,
he lip-read their curses, cursed their whispers –

escort of mermaids over the scarred land
to his home, Stella Maris, bordering the thin strand.

By a brother who had run away to waves
tall as cathedral spires, he had been taught, always
to respect its force as it shinned up masts.

collected volumes of the winds’ philosophy
on bedrock shelves signed by its buoyancy.

He had interpreted other languages: of moods,
schools of eel-horses, fish-tailed rams, the Bledmall,
in the blue, bottle green, gunmetal-grey swell

of cursives gold-embossed for those still blind,
fathoms deeper than the depth of a mind.

Cois na farraige, farraige na cois
templates of terraces of the old home front
chipped and flaked by Lot’s own salt:

voyages to meanings lost and found in the shadows
of non-being’s being under the undertow.

 

Note: cois na farraige is Irish for ‘beside the sea’

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