Today we are thrilled to present a frosty poem that brings us to the trains of Ireland. Irish poet Aibhe Ní Ghearbhuigh beautifully weaves together locomotive travel with the more abstract movement of reading.
Reading on the Tram
The morning tram
I go unseen
in the concertina of life,
in the articulation
between two cars
(out with your book)
I can feel
every soft turning
every
rounding of the bend
(I read your poem)
because the loveliness of frost
is woken,
during the day,
at the bus stop
the staccato poetry
of noticeboards
Returning to my afternoon
a pale autumn sun illuminates
the tramline
and to a fine-tuned eye
there are
jewels in the tarmac.
Translated from the Irish by Matthew Ryan Shelton
Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh was born and raised in Tralee, County Kerry, in the Republic of Ireland. She attended University of Ireland, Galway, and studied abroad in France. She spent a year in New York as a Fulbright scholar teaching the Irish language. In 2012 her poem “Deireadh na Feide” won the O’Neill Poetry Prize. “Filleadh ar an gCathair” was chosen as Ireland’s EU Presidency poem in 2013 and was shortlisted in 2015 for RTE’s “A Poem for Ireland.” She is the author of two collections of poetry, Péacadh (2008) and Tost agus Allagar (2016), published by Coiscéim, as well as The Coast Road (2016), a bilingual volume of selected poems translated by thirteen Irish and Northern Irish poets.
Matthew Ryan Shelton is a poet and translator born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He holds degrees from Carleton College, Queen’s University Belfast, and the University of Connecticut where he is currently pursuing PhD studies. His work has appeared in Scotland and Northern Ireland in such publications as Abridged, Poetry Proper, Causeway/Cabhsair, and The Open Ear, and in the United States in An Gael, Mantis, The Swarthmore Review, and Coldfront. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut.
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