East Coast Sea Kayaking Club

POSTSCRIPT by Séamus Heaney

And some time make the time to drive out west
Into County Clare, along the Flaggy Shore,
In September or October, when the wind
And the light are working off each other
So that the ocean on one side is wild
With foam and glitter, and inland among stones
The surface of a slate-grey lake is lit
By the earthed lightning of a flock of swans,
Their feathers roughed and ruffling, white on white,
Their fully grown headstrong-looking heads
Tucked or cresting or busy underwater.
Useless to think you'll park and capture it
More thoroughly. You are neither here nor there,
A hurry through which known and strange things pass
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

Not a poem but I love this bit from the film the lighthouse:

Hark Triton, hark! Bellow, bid our father the Sea King rise from the depths full foul in his fury! Black waves teeming with salt foam to smother this young mouth with pungent slime, to choke ye, engorging your organs til' ye turn blue and bloated with bilge and brine and can scream no more - only when he, crowned in cockle shells with slitherin' tentacle tail and steaming beard take up his fell be-finned arm, his coral-tine trident screeches banshee-like in the tempest and plunges right through yer gullet, bursting ye - a bulging bladder no more, but a blasted bloody film now and nothing for the harpies and the souls of dead sailors to peck and claw and feed upon only to be lapped up and swallowed by the infinite waters of the Dread Emperor himself - forgotten to any man, to any time, forgotten to any god or devil, forgotten even to the sea, for any stuff for part of Winslow, even any scantling of your soul is Winslow no more, but is now itself the sea!

The Overhaul.

Look- it's the Lively,
Hauled out above the tideline
Up on a trailer with two
Flat tyres. What-

14 foot? Clinker-built
And chained by the stern
to a pile of granite blocks,
but with the bow

still pointed westward
down the long Voe,
down toward the ocean,
where the business is.

Inland from the shore
a road runs, for the crofts
scattered on the hill
where washing flaps,

and the school bus calls
and once a week or so
the mobile library;
but see how this

duck-egg green keel's
all salt-weathered,
how the stem, taller
- like a film star-

than you'd imagine
is raked to hold steady
If a swell picks up
And everyone gets scared...

No, it can't be easy,
when the only spray to touch
Your boards all summer
is flowers of scent less mayweed;

when little wavelets leap
less than a stone's throw
with your good name
written all over them-

but hey Lively,
it's a time-of-life thing,
it's a waiting game-
patience, patience.

By Kathleen Jamie.

It always brings me back.

For Joseph Conrad

Not of the dust, but of the wave

His final couch should be;

They lie not easy in a grave

Who once have known the sea.

How shall earth’s meagre bed enthrall

The hardiest seaman of them all?

Countess Cullen

I think that this has to be included, a poem set to music, I think we can call lots of songs poetry put to music.....it is in in Irish,some of ye might remember that, lots do I know, ye can look up a translation if ye wish but its about Feilimi's boat going to Gola Island with fish and it may not have a happy ending, somewhere near Tory Island.
I have often sang it whilst out in the kayak, especially with some members, others say im wrecking the peace, you cannot win them all, BUT, if you do not have a song in your heart, well...............


Báidín Fheilimí d’imigh go Gabhla,
Báidín Fheilimí is Feilimí ann.
Báidín Fheilimí d’imigh go Gabhla,
Báidín Fheilimí is Feilimí ann.

Refrain
Báidín bídeach, báidín beosach,
Báidín bóidheach, báidín Fheilimí
Báidín díreach, báidín deontach
Báidín Fheilimí is Feilimí ann.

Báidín Fheilimí d’imigh go Toraí,
Báidín Fheilimí is Feilimí ann.
Báidín Fheilimí d’imigh go Toraí,
Báidín Fheilimí is Feilimí ann. Refrain

Báidín Fheilimí briseadh i dToraí,
Báidín Fheilimí is Feilimí ann.
Báidín Fheilimí briseadh i dToraí,
Báidín Fheilimí is Feilimí ann. Refrain

Báidín Fheilimí briseadh i dToraí,
Iasc ar bord agus Feilimí ann.
Báidín Fheilimí briseadh i dToraí,
Éisc ar bord agus Feilimí ann.

The Sea by Pablo Neruda

I need the sea because it teaches me.
I don’t know if I learn music or awareness,
if it’s a single wave or its vast existence,
or only its harsh voice or its shining
suggestion of fishes and ships.
The fact is that until I fall asleep,
in some magnetic way I move in
the university of the waves.

It’s not simply the shells crunched
as if some shivering planet
were giving signs of its gradual death;
no, I reconstruct the day out of a fragment,
the stalactite from the sliver of salt,
and the great god out of a spoonful.

What it taught me before, I keep. It’s air
ceaseless wind, water and sand.

It seems a small thing for a young person,
to have come here to live with his own fire;
nevertheless, the pulse that rose
and fell in its abyss,
the crackling of the blue cold,
the gradual wearing away of the star,
the soft unfolding of the wave
squandering snow with its foam,
the quiet power out there, sure
as a stone shrine in the depths,
replaced my world in which were growing
stubborn sorrow, gathering oblivion,
and my life changed suddenly:
as I became part of its pure movement.