This is a gate to the underworld, they used to say,
and it’s easy to think so when the mist floats up at dusk,
a guardian spirit hiding secrets in a cloak,
and the earthy smell grows richer in the dampening air.
Places like this are Ireland’s unconscious, storage rooms
lasting millennia, so somewhere down there –
maybe right near the bottom – must be a bit of me
locked in acidic stasis, patiently waiting
while my ancestors left and I at last returned.
I will not go digging, afraid of what I’d find,
as I learnt to think of underworlds as Hell
and I know already how that might feel:
the clawing anguish and need to escape
that leave you gasping for breath, groping for the surface,
desperate to cross back to the other side,
a shattered hermit emerging from seclusion
after battle with the Devil; I hurry on.