Tags

, , , ,

Oremus,
Maria de Petra Fertilis:

May the praise of rain on stone
Recall the child lost in the heart’s catacomb.

May the light that turns the limestone white
Remind us that our solitude is bright.

May the arrival of gentians in their blue surprise
Bring glimpses of delight to our eyes.

May the wells that dream in the stone
Soothe the eternal that sleeps in our bone.

May the contemplative mind of the mountain
Assure us that nothing is lost or forgotten.

May the antiphon of ocean on stone
Guide the waves of loneliness home.

May the spirits who dwell in the ruin of Corcomroe
Lead our hearts to the one who is beautiful to know.

Go maire na mairbh agus a mbrionglóidí
I bhfoscadh chaoin dílis na Trinóide.*

*May the departed and their dreams ever dwell
In the kind and faithful shelter of the Trinity.

_______________

From Conamara Blues (2000) by John O’Donohue.
At the end of this book is a brief section of “Author’s Notes”, wherein basic explanations are offered regarding several terms / names appearing in the poems. To this poem, we read: Corcomroe is the ruin of a twelfth-century Cistercian monastery in the Burren. It was dedicated to Maria de Petra Fertilis: Mary of the Fertile Rock.

The Burren (Irish, Boireann,”great rock”) is, in O’Donohue’s words, “…an ancient kingdom of limestone sculptures carved slowly by rain, wind and time.” It is an area of lunar-like—but surprisingly fertile—landscape on the western coast of Ireland, bounded by the Atlantic Ocean and Galway Bay. O’Donohue was a member of the Burren Action Group which, in the 1990s, opposed the building of a large interpretative center on the spectacular Mullaghmore (Mullach Mór) mountain area of the Burren. They argued that “visitor facilities should be sited in villages – where there are already existing services and where economic benefits can accrue to the local populations – and not in the sensitive core area of the Burren National Park”. (http://www.iol.ie/~burrenag/)

Nan Shepherd, writing in the 1940s about Scotland’s Cairngorm mountains:
“The inaccessibility of this loch is part of its power. Silence belongs to it. If jeeps find it out, or a funicular railway disfigures it, part of its meaning will be gone. The good of the greatest number is not here relevant. It is necessary to be sometimes exclusive, not on behalf of rank or wealth, but of those human qualities that can apprehend loneliness. (The Living Mountain, 14)