The Evening Land
From Connemara, or the Moher clifftop,
Where the land ends with a sheer drop,
You can see three stepping stones out of Europe.
Anchored like hulls at the dim horizon
Against the winds’ and the waves’s explosion.
That Aran Islands are all awash.
Coastline’s furled in the foam’s white sash.
The clouds melt over them like slush.
And on Galway Bay, between shore and pier,
The ferry plunges to Inis Oírr.
Words: Seamus Heaney (adapted). Image: Elizabeth Rivers, Stranger in Aran (1946).
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