#conamara blues

[sustentavelimaginario]

Imagined Origins Nothing between us, so near I hear your skin whisper What you could never tell Of the longing that called us. How through the branches On to the clay beneath the oak, A lace of light came down To wait and watch each day, And the secrecy of the breeze, Dying down over the shiver In the earth, hovering there To blend its voice to breath, How, even then, the rain Through the brow of grasses Could foreshadow tears And the trickle of water change, Or the fright of crows from trees At dusk into the empty paleness, This rush of black words today Searching for you on the white page.

John O’Donohue

[deathswakingdream]

From Conamara Blues, by John O’Donohue

Contemplations 💙

[sleeponrooftops]

Conamara Blues (2000) [John O'Donohue]

Translating the beauty and splendor of his native Conamara into a language exquisitely attuned to the wonder of the everyday, John O'Donohue takes us on a moving journey through real and imagined worlds. Divided into three parts -- Approachings, Encounters, and Distances -- Conamara Blues at once reawakens a sense of intimacy with the natural world and a feeling of wonder at the mystery of our relationship to this world. Whether exploring the silent, eternal memory of Conamara or focusing on the power of language and the vagaries of human need and passion, O'Donohue tenderly reveals the fragile vulnerability of love and friendship. The result is a musical, transcendent, and deeply moving series of poems that exemplifies O'Donohue at his finest. Written with penetrating insight and distilled transparence, Conamara Blues offers a singular and lasting imaginative vision of a landscape of hope and possibility -- powerfully exhibiting the mastery of a poet at the height of his lyric powers.

Notes: I have yet to read a single word by O'Donohue that I don't love with the deepest reaches of my soul, and this is no exception.  He is a master with language, and I am left feeling both terribly sad at the end of my reading and incredibly full of the world.  O'Donohue is a gift to literature.

[riverlust-blog]

Fluent

I would love to live Like a river flows Carried by the surprise Of its own unfolding.

John O'Donohue, from Conamara Blues (Cliff Street Books, 2001)

Painting: Nadia Minic, Tribute to John O'Donohue, 2012