Excerpt

From Derek Walcott's "Omeros":

The great headstones lifted like the keels of curraghs
from Ireland's groundswell and spray foamed on the walls
of the broken abbey. That silver was the lake's,

a salver held by a tonsured hill. The old well's
silence increased as gravel was crunched by pilgrims
following the monks' footpath. Silence was in flower.

It widened the furrows like a gap between hymns,
if that pause were protracted hour after hour
by century-ringed oaks, by a square Celtic cross...

....

no pebbled language to drink from like a calm horse
or pilgrim lapping up soul-watering places;
the grass was brighter with envy, then my remorse

was a clouding sun. The sorrel swaying its whisk,
the panes of blue sky in the abbey were all set
in a past as old as Glen-da-Lough's obelisk.