Texts for Translation
  Rebecca Jan Lane

Curving curving curving streets, seeing my first stop sign in seven months, in Ireland. Sitting in the back of a car humming 'The Flower of Scotland' while cows wander and low behind crosses that mark where a motor crash victim took his last strangled breaths, tiny buds dare the cold, bleak world with hope of another Spring. Gray black clouds hang low, touching my cheek, rousing my spirit to bathe me in rain and green beyond emeralds and hallucinations, guarded by magick and faerie forts.

We are hunting for pecans and molasses. Pecan pie is wanted for Easter in Cavan. I would never have imagined to get pecans in Ireland. But Janet and Mary say it is possible so we hunt Mum and Pop's upper class grocery still personable enough to grin and blind me by their piercingly genuine hearts and smiles.

It is a hundred years behind here, I stand between Heaven and Earth, caught happily where spirits and mortals intermingle among midnight green air. Heath, and moors cradle my feet, recognising my old soul. Let me in, lift the veil, sensing the bloodlines - i've seen her face before - speak to me in Gaelic, my soul will understand. Let me kneel next to your poets, no sod to be spoken of but piled upon and upon, venerating stones placed by your brethren....Selah Pray for him who walked alone, along the hills Loving life's miracles. Yea and pray for one who came across, wandering lost to be found in you, Amen.

Voices, eyes deathless, resurrect, reinact still battle 'gainst the betrayals of brothers, English, blood staining the heather a deeper shade of crimson.

Longing, loving, listening for a home I only came to for a few months. I am homesick. I listen for bagpipers who still echo in my memory, not knowing what I am, passing as a Scot, Irish, English, all but American. I return to the states and Immigration doesn't believe my passport because of my voice, but let me pass for they can't prove otherwise. I return, interweaving all to be sure, whole, still no one is sure what to make of me, the accents, the words, the growth, and the hollow aching homesickness that doesn't let go. Once a child of Scotland or Eire, the land yearns for your return, a Mother... hills, cathedrals, farms. All are ghosts here, imprinting fire, emblazoning ice returning altered. I close my eyes and see you, open my ears - dreaming - to hear you from across an ocean hissing, making my blood shiver. Haste ye back my darlin' petal, haste ye back.

Rebecca Jan Lane
(the italicized part is something that Patrick Cavanagh wrote.)