The Two Sisters

To my brothers and sisters across the Irish Sea, tha gaol agam ort.

On ends of that paralyzed pall,
Workers toiled with thread.
Beneath, where stars could never fall
Green and Blue retreated from ravenous Red.
Both colors marked a tattoo,
To cry for Red is to cry for sin.
For Red caused Green, and Red caused Blue,
That trembling thread to spin.
And in the dark of winter’s night
Red played chess with clan-like clash
And mustered fear to might;
United behind that dreary sash.
 
Each day, each thread, turned slowly,
Slowly to a well fired glass.
Brittle as bone where blood flowed coldly
And four lungs – that once in days now passed
Sang their tunes that hummed so sweetly –
Held their breath in sparing spite.
Two sisters cried, each tear a crystal memory
Of their father’s ancient might.
The sea battered his lonely sepulchre,
Clad in tartan like some Gaelic bard by the bower,
Where stone heads marked the death of culture
And the crying sisters’ children cowered.
 
Mother, sailing over the Atlantic Ocean,
Could hear her children’s wailing cry.
Despite her maternal deep devotion;
She could not stay to watch them die.
Then when that malicious whim came forth
To build and plot its pall’s partition,
The sisters set adrift on the fourth wind of the north
And were landed across the sea’s division.
One fell like snow on her father’s western shore.
The other’s – on her mother’s east – face,
Fixing eyes like Alexandria to the fore
Of her sister’s lost embrace.
 
From heather hills her sister gazed,
With eyes as bright as stars in bloom,
To where four fields now blackly blazed
With smoke and fire by their father’s tomb.
No light could pierce that Saxon cloth,
No sound free from its winding sheath.
Then the shadow of the threading swath
Cast amnesia on the past beneath.
No one now remembers them.
Only the sisters remain alone.
The final grace of their father’s emblem
And the final love sight of their mother; gone.
 
Centuries have passed since Red’s cruel play,
And the twining pall has loosed its thread.
Now once where darkness made its stay,
The light, in sweet diamonds, shines instead.
The children of the islands sing
Of chapters, to them, now revealed.
And in coming summers the sun will bring
Its warmth upon that tomb once sealed.
The wind will flow and bring its laughter –
With gentle notes that forget the winters –
And mother, to the shores, will sail
To greet the embrace of long lost sisters.