Padraig's Fire

Padraig's Fire Hurry! Hurry through the night With windstorms Breathing at your back Before the shadows know You pass their doors - Their darkened, dusty, empty hearths - Before the dawn ascends - Before the pipes awaken; Carry close Precious flint and tinder Next to the wildly beating Warmth - Beneath your flowing cape. Hurry! Hurry down the rolling path, Rising up to meet your feet, Sweetly caressing your rushing steps, Passing sentinels Of ancient oaks, Graveyards Where primeval elms once stood, That guard a narrow door Of the river Boyne Watching over Tara's keep In a valley of wild rushing eddies Shedding superstitions Restraining deep planted longings. Hurry! No faire voices invitation; Only life, held out in promises, Beckons pilgrims here - Pass through the numbing chill Going down to rise up Past myths Into inviting aires and covenants; Pass through the chill of seperation; Pass through the swirling current Gripping to release sandaled feet; Hold high the flint and tinder Then rest within the hollows of a hand In quiet glens of grace. Listen! Listen for the kerry drums Pounding welcome in swirling reels - Ancient dances - Reawakened from Adam's time Released from sleep to circle round and round While sparks from glowing tinder, Brought to life from sharpened flint, Battle winds of haunted years That lived in isolation Pulling up from fiery spindles flaming whorls - New and paschal fire returning; Circles meeting circles thunder In death's shattering death. Listen! Listen as the moan of banshees Banishes forever winter's touch To see the sleeping hills Shake off an exiled life And hear the harps - uilleann pipes, Newborn visions Watch the wind dance of the kells begin With towering fireworks Shooting up from the valley floor In rhythm to the bohdran and the tiompan To seek completeness In the hotly glow of dawning - Vernal offerings in emerald fire. Arise! Arise to cradle emerald fire Dreaming ever softly In fields of clover And timeworn stones, Witnesses To the arrival of winnowing flames When centuries embraced Again Until the days remembering Final meals and crosses - a waiting tomb - Blesses once again The quest of hard flint and soft tender Before a cross - life within a circle.