© 2013 Ilona Martonfi

Ilona Martonfi lives in Montreal, Canada. Author of two poetry books, Blue Poppy, (Coracle Press, 2009) and Black Grass, (Broken Rules Press, 2012). Published in Vallum, Accenti, The Fiddlehead, Serai. Founder/producer of The Yellow Door and Visual Arts Centre Readings, co-founder of Lovers and Others. QWF 2010 Community Award.

“Aran Islands: Éire, 1902” was published in the chapbook, After The Mountain: The A.M. Klein Reboot Project (ed. Jason Camlot. Montreal: Synapse Press, 2011).

Photos from a disappearing world: Inis Meáin, August 1942. June 13, 2012 by Irish History.

 

Aran Islands: Éire, 1902

Slate floor, thatched roof cottage,
white lace curtains,

Cill Rónáin village on Inis Mór.
When you walk along the island,
treeless granite cliffs,

saxifrage blossom, wild roses,
waiting for the tide to turn,

plaintive dirge of the wind harp:

the keening women
in their red petticoats,
and crocheted shawls,

my sister Treasa and I, Maurya,
— I hear her voice,

salt caked on her lips,
her hair,
fields divided by loose stone walls:
cattle grazing

digging potatoes in the rain.

And I go with her,
my younger sister —

who will die in childbirth,

the seaweed gatherer
carrying osier creel on her back
Treasa with her unborn —

hanging from rafters, salt fish and oilskins
wool stained with madder root —

the Aran sweater, a “bridal shirt”
she knitted for Dillon Inisheer —

and I visit with my sister,
baking raisin barm brach over peat fire

a wife unable to sign her name.