Filleadh ar an gCathair
by Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh
Anocht
ag filleadh dom,
blaisim allas na cathrach faram.
Deas liom a taiseacht.
Preabann an Aimsir Láithreach
gan aire ó gach balla
i mbrothall an tráthnóna.
Admhaím go músclaíonn
gás sceite
sceitimíní ionam.
Is fíor nach gcítear
luí na gréine
i bhfairsing’ spéire:
Cacann an oíche
idir foirgnimh arda
gan rabhadh.
Ach lasann soilse neon
cúinní coimhthíocha mo chroí.
Faoiseamh a gheobhadsa
ar mo ghrianán gealaí,
mo chluas le hamhrán tráchta.
Filleadh ar an gCathair / Citybound
Translated by Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh
Returning tonight
I can taste the city’s sweat
around me.
I like its sweetness.
The Present Tense bounces
recklessly off walls
in the heat of the afternoon.
I admit toxic fumes
intoxicate me.
Although you don’t see
the setting sun here
in the vast expanse of sky:
Night plunges
between tall buildings
without warning.
But neon lights light up
the foreign corners of my heart.
Faoiseamh a gheobhadsa
on a moonlit ledge,
my ear tuned to traffic’s song.
From Péacadh (2008) reproduced by kind permission of Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh and Coiscéim.
About the poem
More people worldwide now live in urban than in rural areas. In Ní Ghearbhuigh’s poem she unapologetically celebrates the immediacy, the liveliness and the buzz of city life. It’s a sensuous experience – I taste its sweat [‘blaisim allas na cathrach’], I like its sweetness [‘deas liom a taiseacht’] and a grammatical term – ‘an Aimsir Laithreach’ [the Present Tense] is used to convey the excitement of the moment. We read that ‘The Present Tense bounces/ recklessly off walls’. Sweat is usually seen as something unpleasant but the speaker responds to ‘the city’s sweat’ positively. There’s a playful and refreshing use of language in the lines ‘admhaím go músclaíonn/ gás sceite/ sceitimíní ionam’ [I admit toxic fumes/ intoxicate me’].
The poem was written in Bordeaux but it could be any city anywhere with tall buildings, neon lights, traffic. A city is an enclosed space, a place where you cannot see what Ní Ghearbhuigh calls, in a beautifully musical phrase, ‘luí na gréine/ i bhfairsing’ spéire’ [the setting sun in the vast expanse of sky] but that doesn’t trouble her. The drama of city life is captured in a word like ‘cacann’ and the image it creates is exciting with a hint of danger: ‘cacann an oíche/ idir fhoirgnimh arda/ gan rabhadh’ [Night plunges/ between tall buildings/ without warning].
The voice here is very direct and personal. She speaks of ‘the foreign corners of my heart’ [cúinní coimhthíocha mo chroí] and how the city lights up such strange and private places. And the light is neon [‘solise neon’].
Towards the end of the poem Ní Ghearbhuigh echoes a feeling from a very different poem. In ‘Faoiseamh a gheobhadsa’ [I will find solace] by Máirtín Ó Direáin he describes the respite he feels upon returning to his island home of Inis Mór. Ó Direáin is returning to his own people in the West and there he finds comfort and ease. She quotes that very line but the irony here is that Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh finds her solace in the middle of a city. The image of a young woman ‘on a moonlit ledge’, in the heart of a city, is in stark contrast to Ó Direáin feeling very much at home in his birthplace on the Aran Islands but the feeling is the same. Máirtín Ó Direáin [1910-1988] belongs to a very different world to Ní Ghearbhuigh [born 1984] but the younger Irish poet pays tribute to an older one while her ear is ‘tuned to traffic’s song’ [‘mo chluas le hamhrán tráchta’].
Ailbhe Ní Ghearbhuigh was born in Tralee, Co. Kerry in 1984 into an Irish-speaking family and was educated through Irish at Scoil Mhic Easmainn and at Gaelcholáiste Chiarraí. She studied Irish and French at NUI Galway and she lived for several years in France, after graduation, where she taught in the language programme at Bordeaux University.
Returning to Galway, she did a Masters Degree in Modern Irish. In 2007 she taught Irish in the CUNY Institute for Irish-American Studies at Lehman College in the Bronx as part of the Fulbright Programme. Her first collection. Péachadh, was published by Coisceim in 2008. In 2014 her doctoral thesis [‘An Fhrainc lathghlas? Tionchar na Fraince ae Athbeochan na Gaeilge. 1893-1922’] was awarded the Adele Dalsimer Prize for Distinguished Dissertation.
Her poetry frequently has an urban setting - Bordeaux, New York, Galway - and she celebrates the busyness and energy and sounds of the city. ‘Filleadh ar an gCathair’ was written when she was living in Bordeaux and is one of the few poems she has translated into English. She says: ‘I find it incredibly difficult to translate poems to English; writing in English doesn’t spark any creative impulse in me. I acknowledge that translation is vital when writing in a minority language and am pleased that my poems have been translated to English, French, German, Czech, Spanish and Galician.’
‘Filleadh ar an gCathair’ is ‘one of the many poems inspired by the city. Although the Irish language tradition is often considered pastoral in outlook, I believe in its capacity to render the frantic swirl of modern urban living.’
She also writes about the decline of the Irish language. In ‘Laethanta Lagmhisnigh’ [‘When One Despairs’] she speaks of the Irish language as being on its deathbed and, in a translation by Gabriel Rosenstock, says:
Some days, let’s admit it,
I tire
of rallying to her defence
. . . . And when I see
her rotting bones
calcifying
I know that
one day
there will be nothing left
nothing but dust, mute . . .
like myself, come to think of it.
She writes an occasional ‘Beocheist’ column in the Irish Times. In 2012, she was named winner of the bilingual poetry competition, Comórtas Filíochta an Choirnéil Eoghain Uí Néill.
‘Filleadh ar an gCathair’ was selected as the EU presidential poem in 2013.
