CURSE OF THE BIRDS
Curse of The Birds evokes a world of myth and dark energies. The flight of the soul in each of the four sections is unsettling. Ghosts abound in a bleak fragmented landscape. Curse of The Birds is a quarrel from within, wrestling with loneliness and uncertainty. It is elegiac, mischievously humorous and satirical. Noel Monahan speaks with compassion about and for the voiceless people whose ghosts haunt him.
SNOWFIRE
Noel Monahan is from Granard, that strange Midland town which has wormed its way into the modern Irish consciousness. He has now moved as far as Cavan, like travelling from Lexington to Concord. He can read the old signs: afterbirth on the hedges; the white kiss of milk into the bucket. But he has to live in a different moral climate from 'the thistle-choking parish', though just as narrow. "The three camels eat silage' now, and exiles throng the christmas bars. It is a chill climate - 'white' is his favourite word, 'The Snowwoman' an unexpected Muse. But he has the energy to transform his region, opening Windows for himself and others, through publications and readings in 'an Ulstertown, in the South.' The ground that Kavanagh once ploughed is being slowly colonised; people like Noel Monahn are reclaiming the bog. John Montague
Curse of The Birds
The boy who robbed the nest, Ate the swallow's eggs, Is plucking
Devil's-bit by night Down in the wetlands On his knees,
Beak to the ground, Curls stretching into feathers, The moon is hatching in his head.
The Corlea Road
After a long silence The bog heaved, delivered a road, So we could see ourselves In a dark mirror.
I've been sleep-walking On The Corlea Road, Listening to iron feet Trod the night, Watching young girls stretch their legs To paint their toe nails.
That grey bearded fellow With his chin on his knees Is a story-teller. He believes The Corlea Road is a highway cover-up For Midir's mad love for Etain.
Others say the road was never walked, It's just there between places For nightmares and dreams.
A road to be abroad on, In a Ringdong Bog, Where corduroy lines await music, Birch lights pole the dark, Black sleepers stave the clatter of wheels. Dream road, wooden road, A road raised up to the light That will talk, If you give it time to speak.
Abbeyshrule
They were all peering At me in Abbeyshrule, Little tonsured men Down at the bridge, up the trees, Behind headstones, gates and gables.
And they inveigled me Down to the ruins Of the abbey by the stream, Leaving the everyday words for Latin.
When I sang Stabat Mater Dolorosa Before an altar of nettles, Blackbirds and starlings Flew from the vestry.
Back in the local I drank Guinness, ’Told them the village was alive With the ghosts of dead monks.
(Copyright Noel Monahan 2000. All Rights Reserved.)
'The Dance' takes place in a real place, a dance-hall in Granard, but the normality of the night is disturbed by the dancer from 'nowhere'.
Long-haired. Dark skinned. A gleam in his eye. He was in such demand.
His erection is something else. When a partner fainted, 'Hysteria broke loose' and the man from God knows where exits through the floor in 'flames and smoke'. The result is as one might expect -- fathers 'up in arms', shut-down, gossip, wild stories of orgies, naked women, some sex-mad.
Monahan has a relaxed touch: exact without being uptight. When he creates a picture, the means are few and simple, as in 'The Swallow's Nest'.
Almost April, Each mud-eye Is a word of mouth Calling them back To patch the wall In the half-way house.
It is hardly surprising that he writes 'Drumlin Haiku'. Rosary of hills Chained to the cold religion Of the ice goddess.
The mythological poems are light and magical; they dazzle the mind and have a comic touch, as in 'Abbeyshrule'.
There are lovely poems in Part III, such as 'The Haymaker', 'The Nuns' Graveyard' and 'Donnelly's Bus'. One hardly expects so much pleasure in a small collection.
(This review is Copyright: Poetry Ireland Review, 2000, A quarterly journal of poetry, articles, and book reviews.)
