Barry Clifford: The Wayfarer

By Barry Clifford

This day in Oughterard I was fortunate enough that all the seasons seemed aligned, all shadows perfectly cast, when an overwhelming feeling of spirituality came over me. That was when I took this photograph from where I stood. My mind then remembered without invitation the lines of a poem  that a poet called Padraic Pearse wrote on the evening before his execution in 1916, and what he meant like never before his love of life and being happy.

                                              THE WAYFARER

The beauty of the world has made me sad.
 This beauty that will pass. Sometimes my heart has shaken with great joy
 to see a leaping squirrel on a tree or a red ladybird upon a stalk.

Or little rabbits, in a field at evening lit by a slanted sun.

Or some green hill, where shadows drifted by, 
some quiet hill,
 where mountainy man has sown, and soon will reap, near to the gate of heaven.

Or little children with bare feet 
upon the sands of some ebbed sea, or playing in the streets 
of little towns in Connacht.

Things young and happy.

And then my heart has told me -
these will pass,
 will pass and change, 
will die and be no more.

Things bright, and green.
Things young, and happy.

And I have gone upon my way, sorrowful.

Barry Clifford