The Gaelic tradition doesn’t indulge in the schmaltz of St Valentine. I don’t suppose a marriage could amount to much if it didn’t have a pair of infatuated teenagers hidden in it.Īilbhe Darcy’s two collections are Imaginary Menagerie (2011) and Insistence (due May 2018), both with Bloodaxe
There are many fine poems about the grown-up parts of love, but it’s as infatuated teenagers that we learn romance, and as infatuated teenagers that we practice romance, all the rest of our lives. I should probably feel embarrassed at telling Ireland that this is my favourite love poem, but am unabashed. (Love is monomaniacal, love is appalling, love is secret, love is childish, love rips you from the bosom of your family, love is woozy, love is ravishing, love is scrumdiddlyumptious.)
By then it had already been echoing around inside me for years, telling me the truth about love. I met my future husband at 19, and I wrote this poem in a notebook for him. What other words could there be for what I felt, at 13 or so, when I laid eyes on a certain “gold, dark boy”, but Chimborazo, Cotopaxi? Sure, these words may at times have been arbitrarily attached to other, more mountainy objects, but here, in this poem, they find their true home.
