CUCHULAIN* LOOKS WEST FROM THE CLIFFS OF MOHER

Only now in my old age
have I time to give to the sunset.
Why is it all the rays of light
go left and right,
or straight up into the coming night?
I want a ray to shoot straight out,
a spear I can grab as it passes me.
I would have no surer hope of heaven –
if only the strength in my hands held up.
The sun pulls the day beneath the sea,
as I watch from my seat on these cliffs.
It follows the road to Tir nA nOg,
Land of the Otherwise Living.
And if my bloody palms did not slip,
then tonight Cuchulain
for all the sins of his murderous hands,
would be pulled from this place of cold old age
into the Undying Light,
and darkness would be left behind,
a recurring dream –
longer and longer with every sleep –
for all my aging battle brothers
whose hands have become
too soft and slow.

*Hero of Celtic myth.  The Irish Achilles.