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Tabhair Dom Do Lámh
by James P. McCarthy
Format: Hardback
Publication date: 20th May 2011
ISBN: 978-1-908282-90-3
Price: €15.00
Like a song, a poem is an intangible moment of thought. It is not factual nor is it a medium for descriptive recording of mentifacts or artifacts. Rather, it is something left in the mind after the facts, experiences and feelings from which it is distilled are forgotten. As the individual singer is to the song, those expressions of impromptu thoughts, those splashings from a waterwheel – an endless cycling of the self, therein the genesis of a poem; a poem where rhythm, concept and colour interweave becoming word-forms which coalesce to form one sentiment, one momentary glow of knowing. This collection of poems is a songlist of faded memories, a resonance of times past fusing and confusing, flowing through that stream of consciousness which is the life one lives.
James P. McCarthy is a former librarian who has had a lifelong interest in the history of books and libraries both in Ireland and abroad. He has published several articles relating to these topics in local and international journals. Now retired and living in East Cork he has renewed his interests in Archaeology, Local History and writing. His poems have been penned over a period of many years and they encapsulate what he would describe as resonances derived from experiences within the urban and rural landscapes of Cork in the course of his life; some of these resonances come from his experiences of archaeological excavations, some from associations with a Cork city now lost to the folds of time.
Other versions of some of these poems have previously appeared in Old Moore’s Almanac, The Black Mountain Review.
Tabhair Dom Do Lámh
In a lullaby between death and birth is
where the mantra of a magus alighted on
the flounced ridge of a petal to rest..
So do we dream.
When I asked its way,
thought with a voice un-lipped did say
“where there is meaning in frost,
there is wisdom in ice.”
Where can I find you on a wet and
stormy day?
“Seek me between the droplets
where death is but a door and
where tomorrow lies dormant in a
seanachai’s lore”.
So I looked for you when there was no
angel in the snow. I looked for you
when the hyacinths began to grow beside
your cottage door.
And in the end I came
to know you for a muse when last summer’s
leaves became the autumn pages
where we compose the poems we choose.
