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Motte, Granard

In this country you can’t go far without coming
upon a place, like here, where you can stand
on an evening with clouds speckling the blue
blanket above, and below discover a pre-historic
landscape; where you can cast an eye over five

counties, the grey silvered edges of a lake,
view a town, a scattering of farms, a statue of Patrick
planted in defiance and triumph, now a cow-path
for tourists, and note the Convent of Mercy
abandoned, its veiled and pious women forgotten;

hear a group of teenage girls giggling at some gossip,
unaware their grandmothers feared and were
awed by them once; a Midland town shadowed
by a motte rooted to a seam of brittle limestone,
surrounded by a brown swathe of marinating bog.