Cultural

Bog Royal

By John Montague

Again, the unwinding road

Across the Bog of Allen
(a sea of black peat,
our land's wet matrix)
showers mizzling until
over scant brush, necklaced
with raindrops, our reward
a great cloak torn into
tatters of light, the warm
colours of Heather deepened,
dyed to near violet, all
the air trembling, lambent,
- slashes of rain , then sun
with small waves running in
on some reed-fringed island;
Lough Gowna or Sheelin,
Derravarragh of Finnea

Come back, Paddy Reilly
to your changed world;
pyramids of turf stored
under glistening polythene:
chalk white power stations,
cleaned swathes of bog,
a carpet sucked clean!
Here the yellow machines
churned roots of bog-oak
liked lopped antlers
the sunken remnants
of the Great Forests
of Ireland, hoarse hunting
horn of Fianna,
the encumbered elk
crashing through branches,
a houndpack in full cry,

A nomadic world of
hunters and hunted;
beaten moons of gold
a flash of silver,
figures coiling around
a bronze trumpet mouth:
a marginal civlization
shading to the sound
of bells in monastic
sites, above the still
broadening Shannon,
or sheltered on some lake
shore or wooded island:
from Derg to Devenish,
Loughs Gowna to Erne