Awakening Ireland

Heliotrope

30November2000
a praise poem for Seán Williams, the Bard of Evergreen

Do you sense the ancestors
crowd around to hear your song?
They press in to get closer
not having heard in so long.

Mirror of the ruddy ones
who listen rapt before you.
We sit silent as the stones
to taste this beauty through you.

Touching the hands that touched hands
which touched hands in a long line.
Sharing songs of other lands
that they not fade in our time.

What separates us from them
- tenuous grasp of memory.
To our sight they appear dim
or do we choose not to see?

Now each of us must stand there
touching hands for tomorrow.
This long line - culture bearers
passing on joy and sorrow.

Across the gossamer veil
come our long lost kith and kin
to tell us farewell and hail
this New Years Day on Samhain.

Out of your bright brow there shines
when you sing in that 'old way'
Light to guide us in these times
out into a new dawn's day.