The Sister (by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin)

Griffin Prize for Excellence In Poetry, The (2001 - 0)

Original Text

Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, The Sun-fish (Oldcastle: The Gallery Press, 2009). This poem is reproduced on the Griffin Prize Web Site (from the winning volume on the 2010 International Shortlist).

1How on earth did she manage

2That journey on her own?

3When she was a young woman

4They had plenty to keep them busy,

5They were small, they felt queasy,

6They gripped a pillar in the shade

7And held on,

8And as for leaving home –

9Still, the trains have never changed,

10They thunder up the valleys,

11Built for strapping fellows

12Flinging their big bundles

13Easily on to high shelves –

14Real men.

15She turned up at the station,

16Small, her clothes, once elegant,

17All black. Past the train window

18Slid the suburbs, a fast river.

19She saw a white-haired man, waist-deep,

20Ducking under and rising again –

21A cormorant.

22A lump of a lad handed her bag down to her.

23Lopsided she walked as far as the convent door.

24They greeted her with a leathery kiss, they told her

25Where to find her bed and the hour of dinner.

26They knew the silent meal would be no surprise,

27No more than the hard bread, tougher at every slice,

28Nor the dead silence of night until the first train

29Troubled the valley. She would know, lying there,

30Others were sitting up, working in pairs,

31To finish the stitching, tacking the last of the lace.

32But the cold woke her, and a subtle mist, as fine

33As gauze, hung on the glass. In the freezing dawn

34She dragged a web just as light across her skin,

35Veiling herself for good, and she slept on.

RPO poem Editors

Ian Lancashire

RPO Edition

2011