I am up to my knees in small men
Travel Location: Tully-Cross,Ireland
Grace O’Malley (Granuaile) 1530-1603
Poems by Mary O’Malley
I am Gráinne, Queen of men
Mistress of a thousand ships
Bunowen’s chatelains.
A working mother,
I keep my maiden name.
This is my favorite:
Gráinne’s Comment On The Annalists
My match, O’Neill, Burke and Flaherty are gone.
I am up to my knees in small men.
They want a dried out virgin, a eunuch in skirts.
I wonder what they’ll make of Eliza Beth
With their small appetites and big notions.
The belt and braces men of the emotions
Tire me. They’ll write history? That’s history’s loss.
Let them decorate their little margins. Scribbling sea lice!
I’ve a good mind to set the peasants, cultured of course,
Loose on them and watch the sport
Or show that this pirate politically shrewd
Can still lose her temper and oblige with a sword.
What’s the use? There is not even one dark
Enough to matter, or tamper with my heart.
I’m up to my knees in small men.
My match, O’Neill, Burke and Flaherty are gone.
Gráinne’s Prayer to the Two Virgins
i
You might master me
in the territory of shared beds
but out here by the brown bog
I will watch and see
if the terror of a sea cave
seduces you, how you will be
when your Spanish city
recedes like a rip-tide.
What comfort will you reach for
in the shore night
when the moon’s accusing light
exposes your secrets,
little naked mollusks
slithering in fright.
This is where I come into my own
having long known
how to harvest green light.
I mesh the phosphorescent flashes
winkle-picking silver fishes
under a net of stars.
Can you keep the compass points
of your finely tutored mind
from flying to opposite poles
of the gyrating planets?
Are you after all a man
that knows Pisces from Scorpio?
ii
If you are I am finished.
The long love poem will begin.
Maria, help me to avoid
the merciless mapping of the end
when every footstep is counted
and the curve of his mouth
turns cruel and burns on my skin.
Since it is the way of women
to talk of love, tell me again
how I will know, how
I will do nothing and nothing
but hunger will grow.
Will it be his eyes, scudding
across my face or his voice
hardening like arteries, the heat
slowly going down and only loss,
a woman’s legacy in this place
true to its promise?
That you may fail me now
while there is still time.
That every vision and rock
in the haunted moonscape of the bog
may stir uneasy in your sleep
and mark you coward,
another Spanish fighting cock
for me to scorn.
That the untender winter dark
may unman you and drive you out.
But what if you stay
gentling the cold moon with your talk,
making me soft, a slave?
O Brid, protect me from love
The treachery stirring in my own heart.
St Brigid’s Windfall
So this is love – your step
on the watery stair,
the sheepskin nuzzling our feet,
a kept flame in a tower
and nothing to repent.
I am the ripening moon
like other women at last
glowing under your hand.
now the hopeless war is past
I sleep content.
Loss
Dead. Slaughtered like a stag
on a hill. Young,
water brought. There will be
No more room for men.
White. What is this
waxen work they bring me?
I will not touch that face
for a dead kiss.
I will not reach for your hands
to hold them and feel them cold.
This torn thing is not
Your breast. Dead?
Where are you gone?
Am I to become the woman
that hath imprudently passed
the part of womanhood
like steel through fire?
The flame has died
and something cold is made.
I will be terrible in old age.
Your breast is torn.
The heat is gone.
Now I haveno-one to mind me
and keep me warm.
Only your dark ghost
and the sea at night singing
of blood and empty orange groves.
Castaway
They call me a pirate queen
a hard woman, mean
as any man. How do they know?
I was born able to read
The weather. What chance had I?
A gift they said. Yes, like a sword.
Didn’t want to sit
with other women by the fire
talking about children and robes,
the best way to play up to a husband?
Women were always too strong
for me. They flashed smiles
laced with messages in code.
I never broke it.
There was some sign I didn’t know
that kept the circle closed.
And the bitches lied. I never had a man
able to mind me since I was a child.
It was mostly fools that tried.
They wouldn’t let me alone
to see would I come to them.
Except one. Brief. Gone.
I snatched him from Achill Sound,
a Spanish Grandee! He rose
out of a storm like a god.
to claim me. I was a queen then
and if the weather left me alone
I took pleasure in my bed.
I slept deep as the swell
Off Dún Aengus that long summer.
Maybe the sea yielded her treasure
jealously. One summer was all I had.
When storms started in my blood again
what could I do but run with them
on every tide or drown.
Gráinne’s Answer to Burke’s Proposal
Take me for one year certain
hot and cold and strong.
What woman will give you
as much for that long?
A year in a wild place.
Take me or leave me as I am.
*Burke’s proposal was marriage ‘ . . . for one year certain.’ This was permissible under Brehon Law.
Prayer
Let my breath rise.
From the gilded contours of the hills,
from the boiling sea,
from the rock of Slyne Head
let the light mesh with wind
and quench hell for me.
That a seventh wave
may pitch and toss and carry me
senseless through the coming storm
but if I am to drown
drink me deep.
Do not take me on the undertow
but rising the steep
green plane of inhalation,
poised to whisper a name,
a plea, a floating incantation.
And this is a poem that I just thought was so enjoyable after spending time in Connemara.
Yank Talk
A Connemara man? Tribesmen.
Oh, they can be fabulous.
That courtesy and charm
All the flair of a matador, and the skill.
They’re dangerous , honey. Even in Brooklyn.
Don’t you forget it.
And the women, Jesus!
They’ll look at you like dirt.
He’ll see exactly
What they’re too polite to point out
And you’ll always ask the wrong questions.
Assassination by conversation is how they do it.
He’ll tease and tell you things
About your eyes –
When all the coaxing eases off
And the compliments end
They don’t talk. Never again.
They sing though and tell stories
Of how the west was won and lost,
And lost. You know the worse?
They only ever really fall for boats.
