Nil sa saol ach gaoth agus toit.* 

©2005 Jeff Streeby 

You, Bard of Armagh, bravely booted and spurred,

ghost yet abroad down the long boardwalks of Laredo, are you?

A melody (there perhaps a fife is playing lowly),

a phantom phrase of Ireland come unbidden,

seems to linger here in the air like smoke;

a memory (there perhaps a drum is beating slowly),

a muted Gaelic word that whispers itself forever,

rides down the wind of Tombstone, Ogallala, Deadwood... 

An old Ambrotype in a dusty archive

shows you sitting on a wooden bucket, a self-conscious Irish lad,

(A strange pied knowledge flickers in the firelight,

tugs upward toward a smile that might linger there along the curve of your lip.)

throat mantled and bannered by a bold bandanna

hat a-tilt (a jaunty angle)

(How must the jinglebobs and heelchains at your bootheels ring and jangle

as Oh! once in the saddle you used to go dashing!)

holstered Colt heavy hanging at your hip                 

and resting on your knee an Irish fiddle.              

(That sweet screech! The tune refrains you; still shivers the air!)  

Above you ever hangs a silver summer moon.

Behind, your nighthorse in silhouette and a wagon.

There a bright lantern depends from a rear axle? a wheel spoke? 

This relic of a moment long ago remains unchanged

though that night passed and the next sun rose and the next, the next.

So many things drifted away down the wind over the green valleys

where once the great wild herds of longhorn cattle ranged

until at length everything has become passing-strange

and insubstantial as history

                                  as smoke of that long-cold Texas cow camp fire. 

Yet does your ancient fiddle bow that scrapes the deathless strings

tell us that anywhere, among the many ordinary-seeming things--

perhaps the chance that haunts the green felt where the bright cards fall,

perhaps the hollow echoes of dramhouse glasses that clink together in mock regard,

perhaps the sudden concussion, the pistol's report, the flame, the smoke pall--

there waits, to be bard-borrowed, fiddle-fashioned and guitared,

all the stuff of ballad and of legend, still whole, hale, hearty, and alive. 

In melody,

in memory,

the muted Gaelic word, the phantom phrase of Ireland,

and you, immortal Bard of Armagh,

all, all, all survive. 

*(In life there is only wind and smoke.  Irish proverb)