Robert Jocelyn returned to Ireland in 1995. With his wife, Ann Henning Jocelyn, he set up the Doonreagan writers’ centre in Cashel, Connemara.
His books and lectures cover a wide range of historical subjects. Once a mountaineer he now sails his own Galway Hooker.
Four poems by Robert Jocelyn
OLD GOIBERT
Skeins of damp mist clung to the hillside
Extenuating the granite crags that
Guard the old booley huts
High up on our land.
Unseen, a raven challenged my presence
In the aerie stillness, as I pictured
The ragged herdsmen sheltering
Behind their stone redoubts.
Suddenly, with a spring-released bound
A russet-brown hare sped ahead,
A powder-puff scut incongruously
Testifying to the Pintail’s Irish ancestry.
While the Ring-o’-the-Hill measured his
Distance with athletic ease, his eyes
Never left mine until he stopped,
Paused monetarily, erect, ears cocked.
Stock-still I returned the Way Beater’s gaze.
For now this Stag of the Stubble will not be
Bagged to Ballyshannon, or
Screaming like a mortally wounded child,
End up on a game-larder’s slab
Long may the White Spotted One survive
And remain the symbol of our bond with
Nature and the archetypal contract
Between man and his gods.
Part universal myth, part folklore, he is
The eastern Hare in the Moon, even
A sign of potency (but beware the
Expectant mother whose path he crosses!)
The Hare Being recharges the associations
Buried deep in our subconscious past
Surpassing the booley huts back to
The ancient lands of legend.
Dismissing my random thoughts, the hare arced up
Into the mist towards Lettershanna
And was gone.
(In the English language alone there are seventy seven known names for the hare.)
PLAYA
Stones
Burnished a glistening black
Are dragged cart-wheeling into the surf
To be tossed, tumbled and dallianced with
Until the next tidal surge
Frog-marches them up onto the sand
Only to undertow them back again
Playthings
THE LAND
I sat by the tide pool down by the shore
And watched the winkles and limpets
Labour their way up the granite rocks,
Motivated by some primeval urge.
Then looked up to where our forerunners
Had edged up the hill, over other ancient works,
To leave their quilted corrugations
As a reminder to those of us who follow.
Not knowing nor seeking any other way,
More owned than owning the land in those fare off days,
Their wheals now wait for a new, stronger skin to grow
And cover the broken-toothed ruins and scars of blinding toil.
The current surged through the pool, while nearby,
An old matted dog got up, stretched, then shook itself.
FREEDOM RECALLED
Only an interfering porcupine
Disputed our right to the hollow trunk
That spanned the neck of the narrow ravine.
No movement slipped our gaze, and
How the scrub or bamboo shimmied
Told us a karkar, the barking deer, or maybe
That self-important wart-hog were coming in to drink.
High above, the watercourse drained from the broken scree
That spewed below Nilkanta’s icy cliffs
Where Tibetan storms force the burrel down.
A langur called as we stretched in the fading sun,
Although it was early yet for the evening kill.
The leopard yawned and with an inner rage
Sloped off once more to pace his cage.
The Galway Review 