Smithereens Press Chapbooks SP14 - The Lighthouses by Daragh Breen | Page 21

Sheep’s Head; 1968, 83 metres, three white flashes every 5 seconds
Mizen Head; 1959, 55 metres, white light 2 seconds off, 2 seconds on
Galley Head; 1878, 53 metres, 5 quick flashes separated by 2.5 seconds
every 20 seconds

The sea is in its drowning colour,
night can be heard loudly calving storms in its own dark,
the bony dull skull of the moon is struggling
against the black bulk of the clouds.
A crew of fishermen in their frail currach
know that one of them will be re-born
a seal before dawn,
and Harpo Marx is in the Dursey cable-car
swaying in a cabin of weak tin in the November sleet
as he peers through the scratched Perspex,
his nicotine-stained wings stiff beneath his trench-coat
with the haunted Dursey Sound below,
telling anyone that will listen to him that God and all his angels
have flown south for the winter
as the cable-car tumbles towards that tree-less island
shaped like a muddied hoof-print
in the wild snow of the waves,

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