Poem

Richard Murphy

Side by side

Newgrange

Brought to a brumal standstill, here I lie
Obliquely floored, mouth curbed by stones that speak
In pick-dressed spirals, egghead sucked bone dry,
Waiting for dawn inside my skull to streak.

Sungod and riverbride died in my bed
To live as bead and elkshorn under earth.
One cairn eye stayed open to feed the dead
A ray of wintry hope, fixed on rebirth.

Up a dark passage, brightening from far back,
A sunbeam seeks my carved leakproof abode.
As pollen dust ignites my pebble stack
The tomb I’ve made becomes a vivid road.

Once a year it may strike me, a pure gift
Making light work, a mound of greywacke lift.

Richard Murphy

(Ireland, 1927 - 2018)

Richard Murphy was born eighty years ago in the West of Ireland into a Protestant Ascendancy family. He spent much of his early childhood in Ceylon where his father worked in the British colonial service. He was educated at a variety of mostly British private schools and at Oxford where he was tutored by CS Lewis. He later studied at the Sorbonne and taught. In the early Fifties he returned to ...