Aimsir

The Ruins

How bright the buildings are, at first sight. Walls turning skyward, splitting from their earthplaces. They are giants, unlearning dirt and singing stone, enfolding themselves in time.

by Ursula O’Sullivan-Dale

Waterways powered this city, once. They opened the gates to oblivion, which had a river passing through it. The water was carrying that fine dust, the atoms of civilisation.

Thirsting for more, the towers found their throats, and tasted the wild air. Dirt was singing again, the sand becoming restless in the writhing glass that glowed with ghosts.

Now look down, where the buried heart browns, to mouths closing with skeleton speech. Repeating only what is spoken— laying words to rest in clay.

This is where a city dies, in the murmuring feathers of nesting birds. With each season passing like a new thought, a dream of some other body.

It hears something, in the blinking dim of eternity. Something that bends spines backwards and returns you to your first home, the one with no walls.

Na Fothraigh

Astriúchán le Aisling Ní Choibheanaigh Nic Eoin

Féach cé chomh geal is atá na foirgnimh, ar an gcéad amharc, Na ballaí casta i dtreo an spéir, ag scaradh ó na háiteanna-domhanda. Is fathaigh iad, ag briseadh an nasc len gcré, le canadh na gcarraigeacha, clúdach ama orthu.

Bhí cumhacht na cathrach curtha ar fáil l’uiscebhealaí, uair amháin. D’oscail said na geataí go dtí an duibheagán, agus bhí abhainn ann. San uisce bhí dusta, an dusta mín sin, na hadaimh a chruthaíonn an tsibhialtacht.

Ag lorg tuilleadh, d’aimsigh na túir a scornaigh, agus bhlais siad an t-aer fiáin, Bhí an cré ag canadh arís, míshocair sa ghaineamh taobh istigh don ghloine sin atá ag croitheadh, lasta le taibhsí.

Breathnú síos anois, ar an áit ina bhfuil an croí adhlachta ag donnú, agus béil ag dúnadh le caint na gcnámh.

Ag rá arís na focail labhartha— agus iad á n-adhlacadh sa chré.

Seo an áit a thiteann cathair, i monabhar na gcleití, lena héin atá ag neadú. Séasúr i ndiaidh tséasúir, ag imeacht mar smaoineamh nua, aisling na colainne, colainn eile.

Cloiseann sí rud éigin, sa tsíoraíocht lag sin. Rud a lúbann an dromlach air féin agus tugann sé ar ais go dtí do bhaile thú, do chéad bhaile, an ceann gan ballaí ar bith.

Aimsir

Teacht an Earraigh

It has been such a long winter. Brittle, British.

Seeds hum beneath the cracked earth planted by parents grandparents greatgrandparents Forgotten, nestled against memories of famine

Waiting.

The prodigal sun finally returns

by Kathrina Farrington

Coaxing forth tender green shoots that make sounds that have lain dormant in generations of bones athléimneacht, marthanaí, buaiteoirí a vast emerald carpet of gaeilge gaeilge gaeilge

Brigid is singing from every newborn blade of grass Spring is coming.