Little Sister 12.viii.1987

My home lies in The Maws,
an anglicised Má, a flat place,
where, once, two sparkling little rivers
and three great kingdoms met.

It was a while ago.
The kingdoms are gone,
their only trace the three bishoprics
that meet here.

The rivers no longer meet.
The smaller was cut off
by the Royal Canal, two centuries ago,
and few remark the faint remaining signs
of her primeval course.

The place lies between Maynooth and Kilcock.
Centuries before those vanished kingdoms formed,
for folk round here,
Nuadu was God the Father,
and Cóca God the Mother.
Now both are safely buried,
and Cóca has been sanctified,
made tributary to a greater God.
The shining sacred salmon-stream
that joined their holy places
has been humbled to the colonists' Rye-water,
a dredged, channelled, civilized ditch,
that now rarely raises a smile,
and misses the infusion
of its lost and nameless sister.

As I seem to be her sole afficionado,
I suppose I'm allowed to give her a new name.
I'll call her Little Sister, Deirfiuir Beag.

Never quite dry, in any weather,
her water clear and drinkable,
here and there she laughs and gurgles over stones,
and here and there she slides along,
until at last she's gobbled by
the Duke of Leinster's drain.