Hiraeth

Dom Bury

A homesickness for a home to which you cannot return,

the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past.

– Welsh word for which there is no direct English translation

The town tonight is like a little scuttled ship; the river closed

with ice and each road, each roof, each room frost closeted.

And still in spite of this, in spite of snow the roses push up blade

by blade to shake out their small white fires, and will not close.

And I must confess this stirs in me another road, another

ice-clutched path which, despite the winter, would not close.

Further down it I have walked, past the harbour locked into the hills

to where the sea turns in its sleep, its one white eye half-closed.

And though I name this home I feel it as a roof stripped off –

a scab, an old wound which, despite the years, will still not close.

And still I cannot say which map, which scroll of sky I’d used then

to guide me back, or which alternate life I’d then had to close.

And though it moves in me still; the sea, I know, I know I can’t return

to that same shore the tide, that time has now dragged closed.

Poetry Ireland Review Issue 120:

Edited by Vona Groarke

Vona Groarke's final issue as editor is packed with new poems from leading contemporary poets, including Simon Armitage, Sinéad Morrissey, Colette Bryce, Paul Muldoon, Sean O'Brien and Caitríona O'Reilly. Books reviewed include new work from Derek Mahon, Bernard O'Donoghue, Rita Ann Higgins, Martina Evans, Denise Riley and the 2016 Forward Prize winner Vahni Capildeo. The centrepiece of the issue is an interview with Paul Muldoon in which the Armagh maestro shares his thoughts on subjects as diverse as public surveillance, the economic down-turn, and the exclamation mark. The cover image is by photographer Justyna Kielbowicz, and the issue also contains award-winning artwork from Sven Sandberg, Aoife Dunne, Jane Rainey, and Michelle Hall. Instead of an editorial, Vona herself answers the questionnaire she put to the contributors of Poetry Ireland Review Issue 118: The Rising Generation.