Seán ó Ríordáin
Tuesday 1 January 2013 09:08
Seán Ó Ríordáin (1916-1977) was born in the west Cork village of Baile Mhúirne. Although English was his first language, he chose to write in Irish. Among Irish language writers of his time he was regarded as a poet of European scope and a moderniser of poetic expression in that language. His work is profoundly influenced, on the one hand by Blaise Pascal’s Pensées and on the other by the existentialists, perhaps most controversially by Søren Kierkegaard.

Translation
in your head
alter the form of a cat
to the form of a woman
& see that she is a fine woman
to a tomcat
‘Aistriú’, Seán Ó Ríordáin
These brown eyes
these brown eyes are hers
I see them in her son
it was brightness
when you looked into them
a private room
her mind and body
a year in brief
while they saw you
those eyes that once were hers
are strange to me
I am ashamed to look at her
since she became a man
while they were hers
I little knew
the feminine that called to me
could be in her son
there is no confusion
worse than this
I must reverse the dialogue
I practised once
she was not the first
that watched with them
nor is her son the last
& this is eternity
that a smut of ash
retains the best of us
reinventing itself
between mother and son
‘Súile Donna’, Seán Ó Ríordáin
Dead On Her Feet
she took her death
since last year
I saw it in her face
after the men no more
but something grave she
surrendered to
‘Bás Beo’, Seán Ó Ríordáin
Light
darkness came stripe by stripe
until things were extinguished
night made black of white
chairs became shades
the room declined
& shadow swallowed it
the belly of night is empty
I can feel it under my hand
only memory has the will
to reconstitute the past
a light and at once
a room emerges
the chairs are restored
when I go out eventually
I will leave the world to itself
I will leave in the dark
‘Solas’, Seán Ó Ríordáin
The translations are Creative Commons