Skellig Rock
Standing at the edge of dawn
As daylight matches dark,
I see a shape far out at sea:
It is a basking shark.
But is it one or is it two?
The morning mist unveils:
These shapes, I thought at first some sharks
Are ships with billowed sails.
But no! The larger of these ships
Stands still: a giant haycock;
Eight hundred feet of stone and crag,
Archangel Michael’s rock.
Oh Skellig Rock! Oh Skellig Rock!
You stand secure and grand,
An outpost and a haven
Three leagues from where I stand.
Your cliffs, a nesting place for birds
When spring migration brings
From all those South Atlantic shores
Five hundred thousand wings.
The puffin and the razorbill,
The guillemot, the auk,
The storm petrel and shearwater
And hear those gannets talk.
Of all the sounds these birds emit
There’s one you can’t mistake:
It’s all through summer, screaming out
A loud, clear “kitt-i-wake”.
And as these birds surround your skull
Below your skirts of green
There is an underwater world
That is so rarely seen.
See jellyfish and coral cup
Where leather turtles roam
Or search the nooks and crannies where
The grey seals make their home.
But back on land, two thousand steps
To climb into retreat,
A monastery with corbelled huts
Where Fionán held his seat.
Where many pilgrims come in prayer,
In veneration, try,
To walk the Stations of the Cross
Then kiss the “Needle’s Eye”.
Two hundred years, your lighthouses
Have shone out through the night,
And many sailors’ lives been saved
By virtue of your light.
Oh Skellig Rock! Oh Skellig Rock!
You stand secure and grand,
An outpost and a haven
Three leagues from where I stand.
So cast your rope, kind fisherman
And sail your ship for me
That I may visit Skellig Rock,
That mountain in the sea.
– Peter Howarth
