Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin is an Irish poet and translator. She specially provided her acceptance speech after winning the 1573 International Poetry Award to the Literary Network of Belt and Road, and recited three of her poems.
Acceptance Speech
The poems she recited in her acceptance speech：
In Gaelic:
Cuirim mo dhóchas ar snámh
i mbáidín teangan
faoi mar a leagfá naíonán
i gcliabhán …
féachaint n’fheadaraís
cá dtabharfaidh an sruth é,
In English:
I send my hope afloat
in the small boat of a language
as you might lay a baby
in a basket cradle
….. watching, wondering
where the stream will take it,
The first poem:
A Bridge Between Two Counties
The long bridge
Stretched between two counties
So they could never agree
How it should be kept
Standing at all
(In the mist in the darkness
Neither bank could be seen
When the three-day rain
The flood waters
Were rising below).
On that day I looked
Where the couple walked
A woman a small child
The child well wrapped
Becoming less visible
As they dodged left
Then right, weaving
Between the barrels and the planks
Placed there to slow the traffic
And something came
A brown human shape
And the woman paused and passed
The child’s hand
To a glove and a sleeve
And very slowly
At first they moved away, were gone,
There was the mist,
The woman stood and seemed
To declare something
To the tide rocking below
And for the second time
In all my life I saw
The dry perfect leaf
Of memory stamped in its veins
The promise I heard
Val Kennedy making
At my sister’s funeral
In his eightieth year: She will live
Forever in my memory. So her words
Floated out on the water consonants
Hardly visible in the mist vowels
Melting and the scatter of foam
Like the pebble damage
On a sheet of strong glass.
I watched the woman,
Memory holding the bridge in its place,
Until the child could reach the far side
And the adjoining county.
The second poem:
Vertigo
Shaped like a barrel with asthma, her black skirt
Bunched at her waist, she kneels or squats
At every spot reputed to be holy.
Her two daughters wait and gossip until
She scrambles up and they move a few yards on.
How did such smart women acquire such a mother?
She insists on doing the next bit barefoot. ‘Nobody
Does that any more, Mama.’ But she’s down,
One haunch on a pointed stone, handing the shoes
To the younger one, hauling off the black stockings
Which she adds to the black bag already encumbered
With rosary beads tangled in keys, all the stuff
She’s dragged from home. She struggles ahead,
Joining the queue to climb the staggered steps
Along the cliff edge. A puffin lands beside her;
She yelps in surprise. Then she reaches out in her turn
To stroke each of five crosses cut in the slab,
One for the saint, four for his four sisters, named
In the early Life. (It was here that he overcame
The crooked landlord and set all the tenants free.)
Then off again. The daughters are resigned
To the last sharp ascent. From below, they keep her
In sight. The mainland spreads in the wide distance;
The clouds are scattering, and above them stands
The stony north face of the abbey, the great door —
But photography barely exists. The lighthouse-men
Have news of the Russian war. The daughters fret,
Watching the bumblebees trample the sea pinks
In the spot where last year a man fell and smashed,
How will they ever get her back down to the boat?
She is terrified of heights. The seagulls’ diving call,
The foam at the foot of the cliff, make her feel sick,
But she does look down, and at last sees what is there,
The dimensions, the naming. Yes.
A broad slick widening, an anachronism,
Ambiguous like a leaf floating where never
A leaf has blown, like a word, a calque, swimming
Up into sight through the tides of speech, like a seal
Who plays on the deep ocean: the gate of her days left open,
Her daughters like armed angels guarding each side
Of the path to the edge, where everything pours away.
Extended reading: Six poems by Irish poet Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin
Source: International Liaison Department of China Writers Association
