extract from The Keen

Is ar scath a Chéile a mhaireann na daoine:
It is in the shadow of each other we live.
Watching with the dying. Travelling with the dead.
Phyllida Anam-Áire; The Celtic Book of Dying, Findhorn Press, Vermont, 2022

Àite

MAEVE

I give the big red door to Flanagan’s a hip-shove, close-up long after closing-time, after the Docherty brothers grumble out, see them off up the Strand Road,
tripping on their moon shadows,
locked in each other’s elbows,

open the windows

to wind scrub the stout farts and smoke rind,

drop another tot of the good stuff in the jar for the bar ghosts,

smoor the fire in threes to save, to shield, to surround, the embers chirp and spark and I get the tug,

like the twitch before a bleed
– a soul is getting ready to go.

The last thing I said to my mother was on the phone

—If you want to sleep, sleep, don’t fight it.

And didn’t she go and die on me when I wasn’t there,
how could she do that to me
take me at my word –

That’s how I knew I was Keen.
How out of me came the
under-sound, after the end
of breath, that gives the soul
the wisht to go.
The sound like trying to
speak out loud
a word I’ve only read
– that curlews
shear as daybreak
loud as dew,
deep as milk,
learned from the tongue-root
that briars me to Granny-dead
and all our mothers before us.
I can feel it now,
a soul wants out,
wants me to give the wisht to go,
its bright cord tightening to a snap.

I’ve asked new mammies,
who’ve been the bridge and
know that death and life
walk the same road
the soul catch
felt the babba root
a nip behind the belly button
life twitching in,
switching on
the cord tensing –
though I’ve never made a kid
not so much as sniffed a kiss
and this is just a guess –
it’s the same with death,
I lock the door
follow the cord…

Carmen Marcus  is a working-class, neurodiverse writer who works in spoken word, poetry and prose. She is a full-time writer who lectures, mentors and leads creative community projects to support writers to tell their stories their way. Her play And the Earth Opened Up Under Her is a working-class reimagining of the Persephone and Demeter Myth and it won the Faber New Play Award 2023. Her debut novel is How Saints Die (Vintage 2018).

Notes: Àite (meaning passage) is an extract from The Keen, a lyrical interlocking poetry collection about death that blends poetry, play and prose techniques. It is set in Malin Head, Ireland, 1956.  Nineteen-year-old Maeve is the last and youngest keening woman in Ireland.