Prelude—The Flaggy Shore

If you come here do not call it strange, this stranger land.
The well-trodden roads fray into the abstract
and the sea grass cushions the fall.
You are under the invisible shadow of a stone
hut where a witch dances. In the white houses unseen
stories gather like dust on a red-drop earring.
Down below, where the rock road shelters
pools and coral fossils, the waves come clamouring.
The cormorants hang out their wings like placards.
An occupation of seagulls stirs restlessly.
Lough Murree swallows the mountain in its black jaws.
In the silence of stone and wind you hear
it humming, the beating net of the new millennium,
pulling the deep anger up like silvered mackerel.