The Legananny Dolmen
By Patrick Kavanagh
She was understood as something like those stones,
Under and through and into the belly of which
Infants would be passed to be cured of shingles,
Styes, tics, measles – earth ailments in the first instance,
Conflagrations, eruptions, now and in time to come.
On the other side, a cradle of hands was waiting
And a big face, soft and remarkably bearded, smiling,
So that I understood in turn the old tale of Androcles,
The thorn black and rooty as a nail in the paw,
As a simple talisman of fear’s proximity to love:
Under the big top, the bucket filled with confetti,
The high wire strung from a platform to the stars,
No net; the clooty tusk drawn softly from the pad.
In her own case, though, when bed-ridden, her hip
Shrunk to a bloody gel in a wound big as a fist,
There was not even a handful of damp moss,
Scraped from the green side of the boulders,
To settle in the hole: but soggy linens, smoke,
The sweet presence of decay under the sheets,
Her bony hand fast, blindly, in silence, in my own.
