The Seven Streams – An Irish Cycle

I regard David as one of the great poets of our time, and his new book evokes the spirit of Ireland in terms of ‘the braided grief of exile and homecoming’ involving people, places, history, myth, family, and old friends departed. The tone is lyrical, profoundly human, sensitive to nature, steeped in mystery, soul longing and the sacred. Here as an example is Return:

The day started with a flurry of gulls and a single cry, as if I had spoken and out of the deep cave where my tongue lies, birds were scattering in an open sky.

I went to the rail and watched them rise over the grey clouds as if the sky were a sea and the sea was cold now, full of shapes and the horsetails of winter.

And I spoke, involuntary, out of a delighted mouth, the old, strange, word,

Ireland; joy when uttered, grief when heard.