Tracking through frosted grass
to the bright stony silence
of the cairn at Newgrange,
we enter behind a spiralled curbstone,
an interior, dim and dreamy,
our lungs devouring chill air,
our footfall a bodhrán’s beat
on this mid-winter floor,
before darkness lifts
and sun creeps along the passage,
probes those innermost recesses
where ancient dead lay softly
for secret millennia,
and we a hair’s breath away,
painfully scooping out words
to explain what we understand of then and now,
pilgrims on the same inarticulate journey.
