Quest Of Dead O’Donovans

He stood on the last ledge of rock
Where beats the cold, monotonous wave
Of outer sea; an icy sun
Crept down the wintry peak of heaven.

From tier to tier of cloud it sank,
And seabirds fluttering home to rest
On the last islands passed from sight,
Merged in the gathering weft of grey.

As one afraid he did not turn
Nor take his last glimpse of that shore
In daylight, where the pyramid
Stood hopeless as a blind man's brow.

“Oh, if these dead dream, their one thought
 Is their own utter loneliness,
With no succession by their God,
Abandoned on an alien shore."

Monotonously the long grey wave
That on his deeper silence broke
Like a dead friend's remembered voice
Made wintry music for his dreams.
 
“But what of him who lives?
Is he The happier for the strife or peace
Where the old crafty alien race
And craftier peasant fight it out ?”
 
Beyond the surge the winter sea
Swayed as it were but from the core,
And, darkening, seemed one long low swell
Of mute revolt from west to east.

“Frustration is no man's complaint,
’Tis but a dream the dead must share
Who ask and hear a speech unknown
Fall on the night not answering them."

The grey wave lapped the crags and cried,
” When this cold flood or that bare rock
On lips and eyes resume their sleep,
Shall darkness wake such dreams in you?"
          
And “No," he said, u but I have felt
What some great, ageless song brings back
On waking in an old world town
In Flanders when the moon is up."
             
“We have no thought,” they said, “no more
Than wind or stars or earth of you.
We are the desert where you dwell
And what you dream us," and were still.
             
"O forge of life, the link you break,
The link you forge again are we,
And yet in dreams we forge a chain
Which, broken, brings us death indeed.
             
And as we hope for memory, we
Remember, though ourselves we pass,
And all our loveliness is mixed
With tears whose springs are long-dead eyes”
              
He lingered, but the gradual sound
Of wave on wave, prolonged within
His ear, was voiceless, for the night
Forbade him their cold company.
             
Beside that tomb his choice was made,
And man a time unmade before
The loneliness of these, his kin,
Took up its dwelling in his mind.
              
He stood on the last ledge of rock,
And did not turn, as though he feared
The desolation, or knew not
Which side lay Ireland, which the sea.



Source: O'Connor, Frank; Three Old Brothers and Other Poems; 1936;
London; Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd.; pp.26-27