Certain phrases in the text derive from the following sources:
In the Interim Time: “The old is not old enough to have died away and the young is still too young to be born” is from Gramsci.
In “The Eyes of Jesus”: “Back home in the house that we have never left” is from Meister Eckhart.
For Citizenship: “Turn anger into anxiety” is from James Hillman; Turn anxiety back into anger” is from Robert Bly.
About the Author
JOHN O’DONOHUE is the author of several books, including, most recently, Beauty, and the international bestsellers Anam Cara and Eternal Echoes, as well as two collections of poetry, Echoes of Memory and Conamara Blues. He lives in Ireland and frequently travels to the United States to give lectures and conduct workshops.
ALSO BY JOHN O’DONOHUE
Beauty: The Invisible Embrace
Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
Eternal Echoes: Celtic Reflections on Our
Yearning to Belong
Conamara Blues: Poems
Divine Beauty
ALSO BY JOHN O’DONOHUE
Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
Eternal Echoes: Celtic Reflections on Our Yearning to Belong
Conamara Blues: Poems
Beauty: The Invisible Embrace
To Bless the Space Between Us
Copyright © 1994 by John O’Donohue
All Rights Reserved
Published in the United States by Three Rivers Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Originally published in paperback in Ireland by Salmon Publishing, a division of Poolbeg Enterprises, Ltd., Dublin, in 1994.
Three Rivers Press and the Tugboat design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
O’Donohue, John, 1956–2008.
Echoes of memory / John O’Donohue. — 1st pbk. ed.
p. cm.
Originally published: Dublin : Salmon Pub., 1994.
1. Ireland—Poetry. 2. Spirituality—Poetry. I. Title.
PR6065.D574E24 2011
821′.914—dc22 2010045523
eISBN: 978-0-307-71759-7
v3.1
Dí féin, anam-ċara
Mo smaoínte agus mo shaol
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
I
Air Holds Echo
Nowhere
Taken
After the Sea
Raven
Beannacht
November Questions
Uaigneas
Lull
Fossil
Woman and Steel
II
Hungers of Distance
Purgatorial
Exiled Clay
Instead of Kissing the Cross
Anything Can Come
Young Mind
Broken Moon
Expectation
Nothingness: The Secret of the Cross
Self-Distance
Ich wünsche mir
Cottage
The Voyage of Gentians
Betrayed by Light
Voices at the Funeral
i Body
ii Grave
iii Coffin
iv Forgetfulness
III
Clay Holds Memory
Exposed
Origins
Raid
Damage: A Conamara Cacophony
Gleninagh
Selves
Tropism
Outside Memory
Chosen
IV
Icons of Love
Nets
The Grief of Love
Invocation
Frail Shelter
Afterwards
Jealousy
Skeletal
Messenger of Sight
Moon Blessing
Nothing Else Matters
Love Notes
Found
From the Womb Before the Dawn
Conamara in Our Mind
Arrival
First lines
About the Author
I—Air Holds Echo
Not on my lips look for your mouth,
not in front of the gate for the stranger,
not in the eye for the tear.
PAUL CELAN
Nowhere
They are to be admired those survivors
of solitude who have gone with no maps
into the room without features,
where no wilderness awaits a footstep trace,
no path of danger to a cold summit
to look back on and feel exuberant,
no clarity of territories yet untouched
that tremble near the human breath,
no thickets of undergrowth with deep pores
to nest the litanies of wind addicted birds,
no friendship of other explorers
drawn into the dream of the unknown.
No. They do not belong to the outside worship
of the earth, but risk themselves in the interior
space where the senses have nothing to celebrate,
where the air intensifies the intrusion of the human
and a poultice of silence pulls every sound
out of circulation down into the ground,
where in the panic of being each breath unravels
an ever deeper strand in the web of weaving mind,
shawls of thought fall off, empty and lost,
where only the red scream of the blood continues unheard
without anonymous skin, and the end of all exploring
is the relentless arrival at an ever novel nowhere.
Taken
i.m. my father, Paddy O’Donohue,