Xaviera Ringeling is one of the most promising poetic voices nowadays. Her new collection Alba manages to combine philosophical introspection with a luminous but reflective language where space and place are central parts of her poetic output. Here we publish, exclusively, two of her new poems in English dealing with that never ending source of inspiration: Irish music. Enjoy it.
Irish flute
I love how the Irish flute is always running away
running away trampling upon itself
it turns into gushes of marine oxygen
and it flees into rolling oblivion
and it flees light crisp in the open air
it escapes me
and I escape myself
as if the sea were made of my madness
as if the opening bloom of dawn were
–wings spread–
my forgiveness
Back to the fiddle
the pain of the cord sweet and sour
against the skin of the bow
again past the foothill into the moss
of a secret internal forest
to grow mushrooms in hiding
from the pit of my chest
to let frail creatures
forage round my throat
and be lifted by the compelling
rustle of winged flapped
to be inwardly crisscrossed
by the haste of a starved fox
to be continually broken
and put back together
to ache skin raw
against the last chord
then sink and rest