November 2018

Untitled

          by Eamon Grennan

Soon enough, of course, the eyes adjust to this huge absence in which

Trees begin wintering, their coloured draperies given over, leaving

Naked shapes, ramifications, a reminder of what’s at the heart: a going

Away, the brilliant vertiginous vocabulary of leaves, of being-in-leaf,

Stripped down to sheer unmitigated syntax, this sense that what begins

In anchorage and rooted thickness will taper till the endmost twigs are only

Hair-wavers wincing in air, tiny cleavers of light, solid shadow-nothings

Of live wood reaching out the way wiry white tendrils of roots go groping

Down in the dark. Now

                             emptiness is all, and you may read what this late

Radiance has left in its wake: signs—stark silent—saying what’s what.

            Reprinted with permission from The Quick of It, Graywolf Press, 2005.

Eamon Grennan taught for many years in the English Department of Vassar College.  His poems are published in America by Graywolf Press, and in Ireland by Gallery Press. His most recent volume is There Now (2015). For the past ten years he has also written and directed short plays for voices on Irish subjects for Curlew Theatre Company in Connemara.  He lives in Poughkeepsie and the West of Ireland.