Skellig Michael

The ’ vine transplanted out of Egypt ’

The ’ vine transplanted out of Egypt ’

Is, they tell me, Ireland.

I, who did my penance on the mainland,

Now look back

From a lost Atlantic rock

At all those towns named Dysart

Meaning ‘desert’. Surely to Christ

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They knew of us, the Fathers,

Way back then, in the Middle East –

Occluded in our weather,

Or call it a spirit-mist,

Where the selkies bark, the oceans break,

Invisible therefore real

As the books insist.

Eight miles back

Is Ireland, life, temptation,

Sloping green, through its stone-walled fields,

Its solid yellow farmsteads.

Too much milk and honey

The eremite said,

And yes, our crossing was wild

In a blown spume

Of backwash, diesel fumes,

As the sick-bucket’s stomach-trash

Went over with a splash

And the croaked-up devils

Spat themselves out

And the world turned medieval.

Beehive huts, on their high redoubt,

(They grew their own evil )

And the six-hundred-odd steps

Of slabbed atonement

To get there... No, as the engine stops

And the pilgrims stuffed with Quells

in the oily swell,

The guilty, the inadequate,

Each with our middle-aged dread,

Are lifted up, and gently swung ashore,

I feel I have been here, in my head,

Too many times before.

  • Harry Clifton