DISSIDENT EDITIONS
POETRY

poems of the month

the diogenes sequence

where to store furs

i am and am not:
      fragments of rumi

destiny and destination

the zen of no-enlightenment

already backwards

a light in ruins

the iraqi monologues

separate amputations

the sexy jihad

awaiting the barbarians

the smell of possibilities

ultimate leaves

rejoice in the dog

post-millennium maggot

the book of nothing

dispatches from the war against the world

albanian poems

french poems in honour of jean genet

the hells going on

suicide for
non-beginners

fearful symmetry

book disease

foreground trouble

the transcendental hotel

cinema of the blind

uranian poems

haikai by okami

haikai on the edge

black hole of your heart

jung's motel

leda and the swan

confession from belgrade

gloss on rilke's ninth duino elegy

jewels and shit: poems by rimbaud

villon's dialogue with his heart

vasko popa:
a shepherd of wolves ?

the rubáiyát of omar khayyám

genrikh sapgir:
an ironic mystic

the love of pierre de ronsard

imagepoem

DISSIDENT EDITIONS
TRANSLATIONS

DISSIDENT EDITIONS
BETWEEN POETRY AND PROSE

400
revolutionary maxims

a holocaust near you

nice men and
suicide of an alien

vacuum of desire:
a 'gay' correspondence

anti-fairy tales

the most terrible event in history

DISSIDENT EDITIONS
SHORT STORIES

godpieces

with mrs.dalloway in ukraine

DISSIDENT EDITIONS
ESSAYS

running on emptiness

a holocaust near you

a note on the cathars

happiness

londons of the mind
& dealing death to the caspian

genocide

a muezzin from the tower of darkness

being or television

satan in the groin

womb of half-fogged mirrors

tourism and terrorism

the dog of sinope

shoplifting
in britain & america

this sorry scheme of things

the bektashi dervishes

a holy dog
& a dog-headed saint

fools for nothingness

death of a bestseller

field guide
to megalithic ireland

houses for the dead:

court-tombs

portal-tombs

passage-tombs

wedge-tombs

stone circles

petroglyphs
(rock art)

standing-stones

ogam-stones &
cross-pillars

stone forts, crannógs & souterrains

cross-pillars
& cross-slabs

sweathouses

ireland
& the phallic continuum

satan in the groin

east of brittany:
megaliths of western and southern france

génie
française

a small town in france

links

Download an e-Book of over 180 poems by Anthony Weir, indexed, in PDF format.

THE EARTH MOTHER'S
LAMENTATION

translated from the Old Irish

by

Anthony Weir

original version published 1975
this vsrsion published 1994

with photographs from
the translator's archive

click for a high-resolution picture

My life is ebbing: let it drain -
unlike the sea which flows again,
The boiling, unbegotten sea.

I whose gown was always new
am now so pitifully thin
that this old shift will outlive me.

They want only money now.
When I was young, love was what
I wanted - and so richly got.

People then were generous,
and in return they asked a lot.
They ask and give so little now.

5. I had chariots and horses then,
given by admiring kings.
I drank mead and wine with them.

Now among old onion-skins
of withered women I drink whey,
myself a withered onion-skin.

My hands are bony now, and thin;
once they plied their loving trade
upon the bodies of great kings.

My hands are bony, wasted things,
unfit to stroke an old man's head,
much less a young man's glowing skin

Young girls are happy in the Spring,
but I am sad and worse than sad,
for I'm an old and useless thing.

10. Nobody round me is glad;
My hair is grey and going thin.
My veil conceals what is well hid.

I once had bright cloth on my head
and went with kings - now I dread
the going to the king of kings. 
 
The winter winds ravish the sea.
No nobleman will visit me –
no, not even a slave will come. 

It's long ago I sailed the sea
of youth and beauty wantonly.
Now my Passion too has gone.

Even in Summer I wear a shawl
It's many a day since I was warm.
The Spring of youth has turned to Fall.

15. Wintry age's smothering pall
is wrapping slowly round my limbs.
My hair's like lichen, my paps like galls.




I don't regret my lust and rage,
for even had I been demure
I still would wear the cloak of age.

The cloak that wooded hillsides wear
is beautiful; their foliage
is woven with eternal care.

I am old: the eyes that once
burned bright for men are now decayed:
the torch has burned out its sconce.

My life is ebbing; let it drain
unlike the sea which flows again,
the man-torn and tormented sea.

20. Flow and ebb: what the flow brings
the ebb soon takes away again
- the flow and the ebb following.

The flow and the ebb following:
the flow's joy and the ebb's pain,
the flow's honey, the ebb's sting.

The flow has not quite flooded me.
There is a recess still quite dry
though many were my company.

Well might Jesus come to me
in my recess - could I deny
a man my only hospitality?

A hand is laid upon them all
whose ebb always succeeds their flow,
whose rising sinks into their fall.

25. If my veiled and sunken eyes
could see more than their own ebb
there's nothing they would recognise.

Happy the island of the sea
where flow always comes after ebb:
What flow will follow ebb in me?

I am wretched. What was flow
is now all ebb. Ebbing I go.
After the Tide, the Undertow.