Very gratified to have made it into Crannog again, Galway’s long-enduring, top-notch poetry and short stories magazine, edited by Tony O’Dwyer, Ger Burke, Jarlath Fahy and Sandra Bunting. Delighted too to read on the launch night (Oct 31st) in The Crane Bar with the rest of the gala company. The magazine is, as always, well turned out and immaculately proofed, with an arresting cover by Sandra.

This edition (no. 37, autumn 2014) lines up plenty of good stuff. My own favourtite poems (apart from my own one, of course!) are Frank Farrelly’s ‘Everest’, an unrhymed hexameter sonnet which springs a surprise in the sestet; also I liked very much Patrick Chapman’s ‘The Infinite Questionnaire’ with its humanistic take on philosophical questions. Great last line: “A god is not required. In fact it rather spoils the view.” Edward O’Dwyer’s list poem ‘Wall’ is good too: “That day the God of Other Plans/tore up the list of things you were meant to be…”

My own poem is a two-voice, ‘counterpoint’ piece entitled ‘Warrior’:

 

Warrior

 

Who did he leave behind

that morning he set out?

 

“… and as to age, the carbon dating

indicates a lengthy time span

of some nineteen hundred years …”

 

Who prayed for him each night?

Who watched for him by day?

 

“… Our X-rays of the skull, indeed

the actual skull itself, reveal

the arrow struck him from behind …”

 

Who stopped each passing stranger

to ask for word of him?

 

“… The angle of trajectory tells us

much about the victim’s stance

the moment just before he fell …”

 

Who listened every night

to hear his step outside?

 

“… We have here that unfortunate

and not infrequent military

occurrence: death from friendly fire …”

 

Who hoped when hope was dead?

Who mourned for him a lifetime?

 

“… Well, I think we have resolved

the most important questions. Any

from the floor? No? Thank you all.”

 

How many generations

before his name was lost?