Cold, Like An O'Niall At Crossmaglen

MAIDEN
"Methinks that, of all thy kindled, no friend hast thou living now,
None speaks but to deride thee, none grieves for thy stricken brow;
No hand goes to clasp a comrade's, no eyes to look into thine -
Why tarry in snows of sorrow, when I call to a life divine?"

POET
"Ah my anguish, my wound! We've lost them, the Gael of our true Tyrone,
And the Heir of the Fews, unhonoured, sleeps under the cold gray stone.
Brave branches of Niall Frasach, whose delight were the lays of old,
Whose hearts gave the minstrels welcome, whose hands gave the poets gold".

MAIDEN
"Since at Aughrim all were vanished, and the Boyne - alas my woe!
And fallen the great Milesians and every chieftain low, -
It were better to fairy fortress, to flee, in our love, away,
Than to suffer Clan William's arrows in thy torn heart every day".

POET
"One pledge I shall ask you only, one promise, O Queen divine!
And then I will follow faithful - still follow each step of thine,
Should I die in some far-off country, in our wanderings east and west,
In the fragrant clay of Creggan let my weary heart have rest".
from "Urchill an Chreagain" by Art McCooey

On our first cold day, Caroline Grace wanted to know what the mother bird was on my O'Neill jersey from The Cat and Cage. I have grown fussy about the damp since we grew used to Carolina sun a long time ago. I shivered in this shirt I was first lent (much later given)at the churchyard where the Chieftains are buried. I think about the helicopters and murals I saw in Armagh and about Patrick Kavanagh in Inniskeen. "Between Carrickmacross and Crossmaglen, there are more rogues than honest men." And all the guns are buried by agreement, eh? There are many things buried. Dry bones have, we read, a tendency to rise.