Madelyn Monaghan
Children of Lir
Did it hurt when Lir’s children were turned into swans
There is no comfort in the world of objects anyway
Did fingers sprout feathers or feathers cloak fingers?
(A question of what came first appeared or disappeared)
Did hardening lips form the beak?
The sons found they couldn’t speak—the daughter didn’t notice.
Did veins grow like vines in the neck? Pulling away from the core
Or was it instant? Devoid of feeling and pain
A sea change— so rich, so strange
Cé chomh hálainn is é an toradh pian
How many hours in 900 years?
Ledwidge spoke of the heart’s loud clock
Yeats saw nine-and-fifty swans at Coole none of which could speak
But which were the few with something to say?
No way of knowing to look at their dark-rimmed eyes
Their identical, delicate ivory forms
Moore spoke of Lir’s lonely daughter
Heard her tell to the night-star her “tale of woes”
Or was that the chorus of keening on the shore?
(For what woes, after all, could they have, immortal birds?
Absent for centuries of famine, strife, violence,
And for the price of silence—
The sea-captain’s wife with arms outstretched,
Left with hunger and a child in her belly,
She knows it already.
Something foreign hosts her soul
If I could, I too would give you wings)
Did they remain children, in their minds?
Preserved as they were when it happened?
Feathered changelings in living cages
Exile reversed by the ringing of a bell
Did they know the curse broken meant
withering skin? White feathers to white hairs,
brittle their wanting bones,
throats too dry to utter a word,
and the third change— most rich, most strange
there is victory in
there is comfort in the sound
But was it really the first knell to sound in 900 years?
Or just the first time they listened?
Old News
Listen to the cry of the earth
and the cry of the poor
the cry of
pedestrians stricken—
woman dies bidding son goodbye
waving to youth going to draft board
our soldiers embarking for foreign shores
on a sea-battered ship
to have premature end
It’s war
total war
border war
on the home front
food rationing discussed
duties of civilians stressed
more women train for war industry
While
the man with no answers
tests limits of law and executive power
Truman warns foe of a “rain of ruin”
Trump vows “fire and fury”:
unfit to remain
president omits talk to nation
president is under FBI investigation
president plays his hand
Arrival of troops
attacks from all sides
might of enemy and
need of more sacrifice
teen age added to draft
listen to the cry of
service men and women:
“our blood, his guts”
Americans unearth Nazi murder factory
talk of registry and internment raises Muslim fears
instructions to all persons of Japanese ancestry
tepid condemnation of neo-Nazis
U.S. said to pamper Nazi industrialists
reaction is mild
Listen to the cry of
German Jews pouring into this country
refugees
refuge
the meaning of our flag
yet
rejection
refusal
a flawed asylum system
deportations to begin
for Syrian refugees, there is no going home
Syria’s
Mexico’s
Germany’s
North Korea’s
Moscow’s Children? Just like ours
Dreamers
to be sure they are stuffed with culture
propaganda
but that does not seem to curb their spirit
Fascist law is deplored
violence
reawakens resistance
calls for redemption
Shrinking America
thawing
flooding
on this
swiftly melting planet
America turns its back on the world
disappoints the world
is America withdrawing from the world?
forward is
backward
all the news is
old news
listen to the cry of the earth
we have heard
it before
This poem is written entirely with found language: borrowed from headlines and sub-headlines of newspapers from the 1940s and 2017. Each line break signifies the start of a different headline or headline fragment.