Smithereens Press Chapbooks SP14 - The Lighthouses by Daragh Breen | Page 23

Fastnet; 1854, inactive since 1904
Fastnet; 1904, 49 metres, white flash every 5 seconds
Baltimore Beacon; 1884, not lighted until recently

After the storm there is a wake-moon,
low, glassy and globular. It has come
to sit with the drowned.
Leaving Sherkin Island in the rain
the boat moves beneath us with a slow pall-bearers’ motion,
and Baltimore Beacon is alabaster-like
in the fading wet light above us,
a limb-less torso dragged ashore
and resurrected on the cliff-tops.

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