Ode to Benbulbin

County Sligo, Republic of Ireland. 

The first sight of this incredible mountain in County Sligo took my breath away. Later some miles distant from Benbulbin, in a stone cottage, sitting by an open log fire, I wrote this as a homage to an awesome natural monument.

Benbulbin was shaped by moving glaciers 320 million years ago. It is a place of history.  and legends. Benbulbin was said to be the hunting grounds of the Fianna, a band of Irish warriors of the third century. Legend has it the giant Fion mc Cumhaill (Fin McCool) tricked the demi-God, Diarmuid Ua Duibhne into fighting an enchanted boar, whose tusk pierces the demi-god’s heart. The mountain is believed to be the resting place of Diarmuid and Grainne. 

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Ode to Benbulbin

Ponder Benbulbin

Yonder over Sligo,

Through clouds pewter dark,

Menacing.

Your brow,

A thousand foot fall,

Black, bulbous,

Thrusting through Winds that shriek,

At your Silence.

Waterfalls rage

scything bones of granite,

Sculpting jaws,

Jutting through mists.

Forests beard your face,

Mirrored in lochs,

Diamond bright.

Our car a speck

On a fly’s wing,

Droning on your skin of stone,

Gouged by the tears of time.

The might of your girth,

Grounded in Heaney’s bogs,

Feeding your arteries,

The blood of ritual

The sacrificial skull

And in your shadow,

Yeats sleeps,

Your presence,

His sanctuary,

Lest others tread on his dreams.

Oh Benbulbin, Benbulbin

Copyright 2010  Kathleen Ayres /Aka Katy Walters

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