I learned from the Panhala poetry listserv of the recent and sudden passing of Irish theologian - poet - philosopher John O'Donohue, the author of many books including Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom, and Beauty: The Invisible Embrace -- Rediscovering the True Sources of Compassion, Serenity, and Hope. And of the following favorite blessing, sent out by Joe of Panhala yesterday: [Last Friday, Barbara Knight Katz, a member of Panhala, wrote to inform me that John O'Donohue had died unexpectedly. In Barbara's words, "John's life was a blessing to all of us who knew and loved him, and to all who love his poetry and wisdom." His life was a blessing; the world needs all the divinely mad Irishmen it can get....]
"I would love to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding."
-- John O'Donohue
Beannacht
("Blessing")
On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.
And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.
~ John O'Donohue ~
(Echoes of Memory)
John O'Donohue's dear friend, fellow poet and lover of Ireland David Whyte, wrote a warm and sad and loving tribute to his friend, which finishes as, it should, with a poem:...John was a love-letter to humanity from some address in the firmament we have yet to find and locate, though we may wander many a year looking or listening for it. He has gone home to that original address and cannot be spoken with except in the quiet cradle of the imagination that he dared to visit so often himself. As a way of sending a love letter in return, I wrote this poem for him a good few years ago. I hope it can still reach him now, wherever he is to be found and that he finds it as good a representation as he did when he lived and breathed. I remember the bright, surprised and amused intelligence in his eyes when I first read it to him, sitting by his fire in Connemara. It brings him back to me even as I read it now, as I hope it does for you.
Looking Out From Clare
For John O'Donohue
There’s a great spring in you
all bud and blossom
and March laughter
I’ve always loved.
Your face framed
against the bay
and the whisper
of some arriving joke
playing at the mouth,
your lightning raid
on the eternal
melting the serious line
to absurdity.
I look around and see
the last days of winter
broken away
for all those
listening or watching,
all come to life now
with the first pale sun on their face
for many a month,
remembering how to laugh.
But most of all I love
the heft and weight
and swing of that sea
behind it all, some other tide
racing toward the shore,
or receding to the calmness
where no light or laughter
lives for long.
The way you surface
from those atmospheres
again and again,
your emergence seems to make
you a lover of horizons
but your visitation
of darkness shows.
Then away from you
I can see you only alone
on the strand
walking to the sea
on the north coast of Clare
toward the end
of an unendurable winter
taking your first swim
of the year.
The March scald
of cold ocean
even in May about to tighten
and bud you into spring.
You look across
to the mountains in Connemara
framing, only for now,
your horizon.
You look and look, and look,
beyond all looking.
David Whyte
