Black Shamrock (Shammerdoo): A Poem

By Patrick Slevin

Dermot Healy wrote – ‘We forget what we owe to what we’ve forgotten till we encounter it again out of the corner of the eye, in passing.’ 

Shammerdoo (Seamir Dubh) is a townland near Kilkelly in county Mayo. Its meaning is black sorrel, or shamrock.

BLACK SHAMROCK (SHAMMERDOO)

Image used with kind permission of the Connolly family

I never knew him. Not the black and white

Young man. Not the Kodachrome old. With the 

Good wall behind him and the dog. The face

Ringed with lines like the map of his hill, breezes

From Paul Henry skies. 

Image used with kind permission of the Connolly family

  The grass doesn’t grow

In the mud from Mary Anne’s where he walked

Every day, only cloven prints now outlined

By green dew, and purples and blues clawing 

Out from old stones. 

We search to stoke fires with 

Burnt tongs. 

        Your past and our future collide

In the present behind this barbed wire 

Lock. 

           It reeks of the fields in here.

Old jacket still hanging behind the old 

Door. Springs erupt from the mattress, unslept

And rotted with rust. You say no to opening

The flea ridden hag curtain, the doll’s house

Image: © Patrick Slevin

He built you sits still on the floor. Rain briefly

Cracks on the wrought orange roof but the sleep

In this stead carries on, like all those days

Before. You remind me there was ten of 

Them once fractioned in these three rooms. I 

Stand in a doorway, it comes up to my 

Neck, I almost sit down in his chair for a

Picture, by the damp dresser, by the green

Image: © Patrick Slevin

And red tiles, clinging under the mantel,

Where a flat Christmas card warns about

Turkey, your mother’s handwriting fades in

Those misty old wishes. We both try to 

Say that sweet Irish proverb, under the

White horse and trap, holding it at angles

To the tiny window, 

later we learn 

It reads ‘Made in Japan’. 

    By some leaning

Brown bottles we pick up the tongs and

Think of the fire, the other side of the 

Hill. You sit on the remains, gently, of 

The good wall, for a minute, it all doesn’t 

© Carmel Slevin

Seem that long ago now. I raise the tongs,

Like in Zulu, and we turn in the sun,

Shining over Shammer, treading backwards,

As fields swarm round the Callaghan place.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Text: © Patrick Slevin

Patrick Slevin lives in Stockport. He has been writing poems and stories for many years.

Patrick wrote 'Black Shamrock (Shammerdoo)' for Manchester Irish Writers' event, 'Echoes of Ireland', performed at the Irish World Heritage Centre Manchester on 9 March 2017.