St. Knut's Day, a poem in response to The Mother and Baby Homes Report

 

Candles Cathedral Pixabay

St. Knut’s Day

‘What about your poor mother’ ‘Your child will be a bastard’ ‘What about the neighbours’ ‘Couldn’t you have it adopted?’ – The things they say, Final Report of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes, 12 January 2021

 

This is a morning after a dark night of the soul,

the release of The Mother and Baby Homes Report,

a difficult to find words for account of suffering women

and children in 20^th century Ireland, though it is the job

 

of the poet to go inward, my silence and sadness simmer.

And you cannot say oh, but it didn’t really affect you –

our way to sweep it all under the carpet, that unspoken

thing in the corners of childhood, that wondering

 

why people were the way they were, that cover up

and put a shine on the gloomiest of weather.

We prayed in the church, looked the part. Some still do.

The Navan Road takes on new meaning, St. Patrick’s

 

a place hushed up aunts went to, mothers of adopted babies

seeking their mothers, went to. Tuam babies are forever crying,

caught in a cold vacuum, a mass, an unmarked grave.

Even animals look after their young, someone said.

 

There must be a saint’s name for every day of the year.

The Christmas Tree is down, decorations and tinsel stored.

To understand our place in time we must listen to history.

We must show light to scars and tears to wounds.

 

Some bird sings chat chat chat on opening the window

to swirling dawn air come in to stir the room

with a new year, fresh faced. When done, she swishes her cloth

and races back out into countryside to find spring.

 

Orla Fay

In Sweden St. Knut's Day marks the end of the Christmas and holiday season. It is celebrated by taking out the Christmas tree and dancing around it. Nowadays, the feast is mainly for children. - Wikipedia

Hold Open the Door

 

The Ireland Chair of Poetry Commemorative Anthology celebrates the 25th anniversary of Seamus Heaney's Nobel Prize Award, and the subsequent legacy created by the Ireland Chair of Poetry. In May last year I responded to a call for submissions of original poems, essays and reflections by emerging poets in response to the work of creative mentors, to celebrate the work of the Ireland Chair of Poetry. One Irish poet whose work I always admired was Michael Longley, and I decided to write a response to his poem The Horses. My original poem is called What Became of the Horses. Sincere thanks to the editors of the anthology for including my piece, especially Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe. Hold Open the Door can be purchased from UCD Press here. The introduction to the anthology can be read in The Irish Times. 

A Poem for Nollaig na mBan

 

Two Women with a Candle, Peter Paul Reubens 1616-1617

I'd like to share this poem with you for Nollaig na mBan (Women's Christmas). I wrote it last year during a writing challenge. The weather was decidedly different to the blast of ice we're getting at the moment. Oíche Nollaig na mBan is a famous Irish poem by Seán Ó Ríordáin. Mostly this piece is dedicated to the women in my life, and to the ancestors. Thanks to The Meath Chronicle for publishing it this week too. May peace, health and happiness be with you in these times of uncertainty and in the coming year. 

Dinner Guests

Bhí fuinneamh sa stoirm a éalaigh aréir

(There was power in the storm that escaped last night)

- Oíche Nollaig na mBan, by Seán Ó Ríordáin

Through the bare fields the wind comes howling in the darkness

of the January pre-dawn, a creature born of the Cailleach’s dreams,

a spilled drop of the thought-cauldron premature of Imbolc,

a storm in a teacup of milky daylight.

There could be rain in its lashing and thrashing about,

soft, mild drizzles as it has not been so cold yet.

The witch barely stirs, turned on her side and dropped

deeply into dormancy, consciousness’ only sign snowdrops.

The making of coffee is a lure into the morning,

its bitter warm flavour a restorative, its taking a ritual

more potent on the sunrise of Nollaig na mBan

that is an ending and a beginning.

Did the old people accept transitions more readily?

Their hours were slower, less in real time, part of a feed. 

Though of course they were in real time, past and future blurred,

the present must have been everything, moments golden

in the fire’s flame, little things noticed, blades of grass,

the appearance of a bird, a tumbled stone. 

All the secret signs of nature they stored as knowledge

and a folklore passed from talk to song to paper. 

She mumbles in sleep, decides to show a bad face

and there is a séance-like static to now driving showers.

The weakness of daybreak casts watery shadows on the wall,

the gridded windowpane an open cell of rippled light.

My Great Grandmother bakes apples with a spoonful of sugar, 

my father’s mother butters toast and cuts it into squares. 

Granny and my mother share leftover pudding together.

Later I will prepare dinner for my nieces and sister.

Orla Fay