Wake Forest University Press

Irish Poetry

Paula Meehan - Dharmakaya (clothbound)

"Meehan's Dharmakaya shows an Irish poet extending her tradition with courage and wit. … [Her] voice is unmistakable now, and thrilling." Thomas D'Evelyn, Providence Journal

"…we should read this volume as the revelation of the consciousness of a woman and a poet, trying to deal with a past 'to change the future of it.' The poem 'Fist' directly addresses this idea as the speaker imagines the fist of a child, cupped in two adult hands, and pried open, finger by finger, to release pent up anger. The hand then becomes a poem presented to us, 'spread wide open in a precise / gesture of giving, or welcome, / its fate clear and empty, like the sky, / like the blue blue sky above the square.' Patricia Haberstroh, Irish Literary Supplement

Dharmakaya
for Tom McGinty

When you step out into death
with a deep breath,
the last you'll ever take
in this shape,

remember the first step on the street –
the footfall and the shadow
of its fall – into silence. Breathe
slow-

ly out before the foot finds solid earth again,
before the city rain
has washed all trace
of your step away.

Remember a time in the woods, a path
you walked so gently
no twig snapped
no bird startled.

Between breath and no breath
your hands cupped your own death,
a gift, a bowl of grace
you brought home to us –

become a still pool
in the anarchic flow, the street's
unceasing carnival
of haunted and redeemed.

$18.95
2002   52 pages
clothbound
ISBN 978-1-930630-05-5