The Horse Came Back But Not The Rider

Gerard Smyth

– On The Lament for Art Ó Laoghaire

The horse came back but not the rider.

There was blood on the saddle

and a cry of lament in the rooms of the house –

a cry they heard in the next parish,

in Macroom and The Gearagh –

the sound of loss in a dying language.

The horse came back but not the rider

who in his haste forgot that the long grass

could hide a sorrow-maker –

the one whose high noon bullet would pass

through the heart of the oral tradition,

killing the horseman but not the horse

that galloped back to the stable yard

and Eileen waiting, the Queen of Keening

whose youthful beauty left no trace

in the days of her long siesta,

when every dream was a playback of the scene

when the horse came back but not the rider.

Poetry Ireland Review Issue 121:

Edited by Eavan Boland

Eavan Boland's first issue as editor of Poetry Ireland Review aims to encourage a conversation about poetry which is 'noisy and fractious certainly ... but a conversation nevertheless that can be thrilling in its reach and commitment'. There are new poems from Thomas McCarthy, Jean Bleakney, Wendy Holborow, Paul Perry, Aifric Mac Aodha, and many others, while the issue also includes work from Brigit Pegeen Kelly, with an accompanying essay on the poet by Eavan Boland. Eavan Boland also offers an introduction to the work of poet Solmaz Sharif, while there are reviews of the latest books from Simon Armitage, Peter Sirr, Lo Kwa Mei-en, and Vona Groarke, among others. PIR 121 also includes Theo Dorgan's elegiac tribute to his friend John Montague – a canonical poet, in contrast to the emerging poets Susannah Dickey, Conor Cleary and Majella Kelly, who contribute new work and will also read for the Poetry Ireland Introductions series as part of ILFD 2017.