Diarmuid Johnson: Music - Literature - Art
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    • Rún na mBradán 2016
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    • for Desmond Egan
    • The Arados Society >
      • Translating Lucian Blaga
  • Prose
    • Pen and Plough 2016
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      • Books Translated
  • Visual Art
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    • Oak-Shadow
  • Music
    • Bríd Harper and D. Johnson
    • The Ebb Tide Reel 2011
    • Éire 2009
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  • Gallery

                               

Picture
 

   Another Language

We speak another language
Time has made it smooth
As the river makes the stone smooth.
It is a language teeming with light
But the light pales
The words become wooden
When spoken in translation
Because the river will flow
In one bed only
The light will teem
Only in droplets
From a single source.
We speak another language
And when we do
Skylarks fly off the tongue
The sounds are purple berries
‘Abhainn’ ‘solas’ – ‘River’ ‘light’
The words tell us things  
As words will
But in their meaning
There is a journey
To a continent rich in harbourage
And when we sing
The boats race homeward
          On a quick tide.     

                                                                                   DJ  2006




Listen to Beverly Evans read Another Language below. (Recording from the album Yscolan by Ceri Rhys Matthew.
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Another Language