Smithereens Press Chapbooks SP14 - The Lighthouses by Daragh Breen | Page 15

Slyne Head; 1836, 35 metres, 2 white flashes, separated by 2.4
seconds, every 15 seconds
Slyne Head; 1836, 18 metres, inactive since 1898
Inisheer; 1857, 34 metres, white light 6 seconds on, 6 seconds off, red
light is shown over rocks to the East

Across the surface of Connemara bogs
damp bricks of turf are domed in small piles
like worm-casts on tide-receding beaches,
in the coffin-still pools they leave behind
the late summer sun sets, spilling its colours
like a fall of Japanese sacred fish.
These colours, these wind-pigments of loneliness
have been gathered by William’s brother
and layered onto canvasses of rural horse fairs
and archaeological excavations of circuses
rendered in rancid flesh, the soft mushroom flesh
of the clowns’ faces, drowned in earth,
their red make-up smeared like haggish Ophelias.

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