Paint at night those
stars in a frosty sky,
one brighter than another,
Sirius, Orion, Great Bear.
Accustom eyes to deepest pitch
that delivers the Milky Way.
The more it’s scanned,
this sprawl grows fathomless.
Too late to catch low in the south –
as if the sound made
walking the lane just now
frightened it away –
a star falling and seconds later
another, lit trajectory
scorching headlong
over the western rim.
Yet, up above the heavens are
crammed with constellations like
so many freckles jostling for place.
Could it be some night
we are not there,
gone without trace,
planet earth, an empty house
as the face of night prevails,
unforeseen and certain
from the beginning
as only death is?
© Catherine Phil MacCarthy, from The Invisible Threshold, published here by kind permission of Dedalus Press, Dublin, 2012
Picture 10173286, image copyright Mary Evans / Arthur Rackham
Catherine Phil MacCarthy was born and grew up in Co. Limerick and studied at University College Cork, Trinity College Dublin, and Central School of Speech and Drama, London. She taught at Waterford Institute of Technology (WIT) and at The Drama Centre, University College Dublin, before turning full-time to writing in 1999. She lives in Dublin. Her collections include The Invisible Threshold (2012), Suntrap (2007), the blue globe (1998), This Hour of the Tide (1994), and One Room an Everywhere, a novel, (2003). She is a former editor of Poetry Ireland Review (1998/99). She received the eighteenth Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Award for Irish Poetry from the University of St Thomas Center for Irish Studies at St Paul, Minnesota, in April 2014. Other awards include an artist’s residency at Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris during the Spring of 2013; the Dromineer Literary Festival Poetry Prize in 2012, judged by Fiona Sampson and The Fish International Poetry Prize in 2010, judged by Matthew Sweeney. She worked as Writer in Residence for the City of Dublin (1994), and at the Department of Anglo-Irish Literature, University College, Dublin (2002) and she tutored in Poetry and Creative Writing at Irish Writers Centre; Institute of Art, Design & Technology, Dun Laoghaire; and at St Patrick’s College, Dromcondra. Readings include Poetry Festivals in Ireland and abroad and also at Irish Studies Centres: Glucksman Ireland House, NYU; Villanova University; Boston College; University of Massachusetts at Boston; and Concordia University Montreal. www.catherinephilmaccarthy.com
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