Detail by Eamon Grennan
Detail
Eamon GrennanI was watching a robin fly after a finch — the smaller bird
chirping with excitement, the bigger, its breast blazing, silent
in light-winged earnest chase — when, out of nowhere
over the chimneys and the shivering front gardens,
flashes a sparrowhawk headlong, a light brown burn
scorching the air from which it simply plucks
like a ripe fruit the stopped robin, whose two or three
cheeps of terminal surprise twinkle in the silence
closing over the empty street when the birds have gone
about their own business, and I began to understand
how a poem can happen: you have your eye on a small
elusive detail, pursuing its music, when a terrible truth
strikes and your heart cries out, being carried off.
MARGINALIA
1.
Last night, a flurry of selves.
2.
I was revealing my naked face to people I trust to take care of these truths.
3.
Sometimes even I’m surprised at my deep capacity to be vulnerable. It’s terrifying.
4.
The world chafes, for all its beauty.
KEEP READING
SHARED WITH GRATITUDE
This poem appeared in Still Life with Waterfall: Poems by Eamon Grennan, published by Graywolf Press, 2002. (Available on: Amazon • Bookshop)
ABOUT EAMON GRENNAN
Born in Dublin, Eamon Grennan attended boarding school at a Cistercian monastery. He met Derek Mahon and Eavan Boland as an undergraduate at University College, Dublin, spent a year in Rome, and then came to the United States to earn his PhD at Harvard. He began writing poetry in earnest in 1977 and published his first collection, Wildly for Days, in 1983. He is the author of more than 10 collections of poetry, including There Now (2016), Out of Sight: New and… (more)
Read more poems by Eamon Grennan • Find books by this poet on Amazon • Bookshop • Or view my library
ENDNOTES
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darren
This is such a powerful style of poetry – a simple story, a profound revelation, nothing more. There is so much packed in here.. this scene of “earnest chase”, the hawk’s “simple plucking” of the robin, the eerie silence ensuing. And then, this moment of epiphany, when I realize, I have just witnessed something here of my own vulnerable life. Thanks for sharing.
Polina Utkina
I come to this blog so often. The poems you have here are like a safe haven. You’re such a beautiful person, I wish i had a person like you in my life. Your friends are truly lucky.