Sweep up your shadow
But you can’t turn back.
There is no other way
Through the black glens
Or the lens of an eye.
A keeping, a stride,
Into episodes that arise.
Equidistant:
The interior egg
Until cracked open
To stars some million
Beats away.
How did the chick
With thanks to God
Get yellow in the night
Of its oval chamber.
The fire of its colour
Was not a colour yet.
Now a green grenade
Is tossed on the mighty Shannon floor.
Ahead of its invention, before its time.
I would like an answer
To my answer. I would like more Gods
Than one. In a nutshell
More songs.
I am standing on the Wild Atlantic Way.
My back to the land.
Why is why is my favourite rhyme.
But a child’s word is a rarity
Unless shot down.
Why does an eye evolve in the dark?
Roll back the future perhaps
Of curiosity.
Which comes first?
My daughter is in Derry
Before she has left Letterkenny
To get there.
I am hearing her
Like a bell of war.
The gong belongs
To an idea of a perfect being
Sitting on the rock
Of its own vault
While its funeral is finishing.
Sound preceding the wind.
Song following the iambic.
I feel you, I feel you coming
Seekers are born in disguise
As shepherds wear cloth
To cover their loins.
More comfortable than tight pants
And glorious as signs
Of the soul naked and alone.
A runaway from home.
Recapitulating.
Fanny Howe has lived many lives and returned to the first, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Lucky to have lived during the sixties and through times of turmoil and translation, Howe has seen women poets prevail and now their children.