I am Kerry like my mother before me

And my mother’s mother and her man

Now I sit on an office stool remembering

And the memory of them like a fan

Soothes the embers into flame.

I am Kerry and proud of my name.

My heart is looped around the rutted hills

That shoulder the stars out of the sky

And about the wasp-yellow fields

And the strands where the kelp streamers lie;

Where soft as lovers’ Gaelic the rain falls

Sweeping into silver the lacy mountain walls.

My grandfather tended the turf fire

And leaning backward into legend spoke

Of doings old before quills inked history.

I saw dark heroes fighting in the smoke,

Diarmuid dead inside his Iveragh cave

And Deirdre caoining upon Naoise’s grave.

I see the wise face now with its hundred wrinkles

And every wrinkle held a thousand tales

Of Fionn and Oscar and Conán Maol

And sea-proud Niall whose conquering sails

Raiding France for slaves and wine

Brought Patrick to mind Miolchú’s swine.

Ah! I should have put a noose about the throat of time

And choked the passing of the hobnailed years

And stayed young always shouting in the hills

Where life held only fairy fears.

When I was young my feet were bare

But I drove the cattle to the fair.

‘Twas thus I lived skin to skin with the earth

Elbowed by the hills, drenched by the billows,

Watching the wild geese making black wedges

By Skelligs far west and Annascaul of the willows.

Their voices came on every little wind

Whispering across the half-door of the mind

For always I am Kerry . . .

Sigerson Clifford (1955