As soon as we have one issue of The High Window off our hands we immediately like to get cracking on with the next one. So now that our readers have hopefully had a chance to read the current issue, we are offering a taste of things to come. This week’s preview is one of a group of poems we will be featuring by the Irish poet Art Ó Súilleabháin, who is based in the stunning, wild landscape of Connemara, Co. Galway. Art’s poem is  beautifully observed and understated. We hope our readers will also appreciate a particularly stunning view through our window today.

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Art Ó Súilleabháin: Poem

ON CREENILLAUN
(for Jennifer)

The u-shaped bay is a shelter from the west wind,
we lunch in the clearing and marvel at the stillness,

hear only the ‘plop’ of wild brown trout rising to the fly
in a shallow inlet, where submerged trees hide timid fish.

Bird-sound and our personal thoughts disturb the quiet,
the island becomes a third space in our lives,

harbours the mess of our other existence. We breathe,
suspended on a spearmint shore, at one with the place.

In a woody cove we wrap ourselves in an interlude,
to recharge the complications we have generated.

On Creenillaun, we feel the easy passing of time,
envy the eternity of presence, before we push off gravel,

take the boat out around the stony east point,
to ride the waves back into the whisper of living.

Art Ó Súilleabháin lives in Corr na Móna, in north Connemara, close to the Mayo border. He has published a number of poetry books in Irish for children. He is currently working on a collection of poems for adults about Lough Corrib which straddles counties Galway and Mayo.

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