Contents
1 APPROACHINGS
Thought-Work
First Words
Nest
Black Music in Conamara
The Wound at the Side of the House
Before the Beginning
The Banshee’s Grotto
Wind Artist
Elemental
The Pleading
The Secret of Thereness
Breakage
Inner Circle
Fluent
The Stillness Above is Listening
Mountain Christening
The Night Underneath
Decorum
Imagined Origins
2 ENCOUNTERS: THE ROSARY SONNETS
An Paidrín
The Rosary
THE JOYFUL MYSTERIES
The Annunciation
The Visitation
The Nativity
The Presentation in the Temple
The Finding in the Temple
THE SORROWFUL MYSTERIES
The Agony in the Garden
The Scourging at the Pillar
The Crowning with Thorns
The Carrying of the Cross
The Crucifixion
THE GLORIOUS MYSTERIES
The Resurrection
The Ascension
The Descent of the Holy Spirit
The Assumption
The Coronation
3 DISTANCES
Words
Wings
The Transparent Border
The Angel of the Bog
Placenta
Mountain-Looking
Seduced?
At the Edge
Up the Mountain
Prisons of Voice
The Ocean Wind
Outside a Cottage
Breakage
Double Exposure
Elemental
The Night
Anchor
A Burren Prayer
Author’s Notes
About the Book
Conamara in the West of Ireland has a strange and beautiful landscape – a landscape of intense contrasts uniquely dependent on light and shade. In daylight, a subtle radiance of gentle colours envelops the place. Yet on the threshold of darkness, the fading light reveals an almost haunted vista of mystery.
In this collection of poetry, John O’Donohue evokes the vital energy and rhythm of Conamara, engaging with earth, sky and sea, and the majestic mountains that quietly preside over this terse landscape. As he explores the silent memory of this place, he focuses on the power of language and the vagaries of human need and passion, tenderly revealing the fragile vulnerability of love and friendship.
Written with penetrating insight Conamara Blues offers a unique, imaginative vision of a landscape that is at once both familiar and unknown.
Also by John O’Donohue
ANAM ĊARA
ETERNAL ECHOES
ECHOES OF MEMORY
PERSON ALS VERMITTLUNG
DIVINE BEAUTY
BENEDICTUS
CONAMARA BLUES
John O’Donohue
This ebook is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form (including any digital form) other than this in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Epub ISBN: 9781446437186
Version 1.0
www.randomhouse.co.uk
CONAMARA BLUES
A BANTAM BOOK : 9780553813227
Originally published in Great Britain by Doubleday,
a division of Transworld Publishers
5 7 9 10 8 6
Copyright © John O’Donohue 2000
The right of John O’Donohue to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Bantam Books are published by Transworld Publishers,
61–63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA,
A Random House Group Company.
Addresses for Random House Group Ltd companies outside the UK
can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk
The Random House Group Ltd Reg. No. 954009.
In memory of my aunt
MARY O’DONOHUE
(1896–1923)
from Caherbeanna who died in a tragic
road accident shortly after her
emigration to America
ONE
APPROACHINGS
‘I want to watch watching arrive.
I want to watch arrivances.’
HELENE CIXOUS
‘I think back gladly on the future.’
HANS MAGNUS ENZENSBERGER
‘Think of things that disappear.
Think of what you love best,
what brings tears into your eyes.
Something that said adios to you
before you knew what it meant
or how long it was for.’
NAOMI SHIHAB NYE
Thought-Work
i.m. Joe Pilkington
Off course from the frail music sought by words
And the path that always claims the journey,
In the pursuit of a more oblique rhythm,
Creating mostly its own geography,
The mind is an old crow
Who knows only to gather dead twigs,
Then take them back to the vacancy
Between the branches of the parent tree
And entwine them around the emptiness
With silence and unfailing patience
Until what was fallen, withered and lost
