Ciarán O'Rourke
Pieter Bruegel, 1565
Wind in the crags
makes mountain music hum
behind the brow: a winter symptom herders know.
Their bodies
pace the pensive road, a trail
of curdled mud, revealing vistas: five hungry heights,
the gusting valley-fields
a-smoulder, river-stillness hardening
to glass. The elements are catching breath
as the soft-eyed
cattle move among the men,
the peasant woods are stripped. On a lean
top-bough, a bird-
shaped shadow squats –
the painted crow that watches, as darkness fills the sky.
A former winner of the Cúirt New Irish Writing Award and the Fish Poetry Prize, Ciarán O'Rourke is a poet from Dublin. His second collection, Phantom Gang, was longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2023. His third collection, Prophetstown, is published by The Irish Pages Press.
More work by Ciarán O'Rourke
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