Endangered Species

By Eamon Grennan b. 1941 Eamon Grennan

Out the living-room window

I see the two older children burning

household trash under the ash tree

in wind and rain. They move

in slow motion about the flames,

heads bowed in concentration

as they feed each fresh piece in, hair

blown wild across their faces, the fire

wavering in tongues before them

so they seem creatures

half flame, half flesh,

wholly separate from me. All of a sudden

the baby breaks slowly down

through the flexed branches of the ash

in a blaze of blood and green leaves,

an amniotic drench, a gleaming liver-purple

slop of ripe placenta, head first

and wailing to be amongst us. Boy and girl

look up in silence and hold gravely out

flamefeathered arms to catch her,

who lands on her back in their linked

and ashen hands. Later,

when I take her in my arms

for a walk to that turn on the high road

where the sea always startles, I can see

how at intervals she's thunderstruck

by a scalloped green leaf, a shivering

jig of grassheads, or that speckled bee

that pushes itself among

the purple and scarlet parts

of a fuchsia bell. And her eyes are on fire.

Eamon Grennan, "Endangered Species" from As If It Matters. Copyright © 1992 by Eamon Grennan. Reprinted with the permission of Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org.

Source: As If It Matters (Graywolf Press, 1992)

Biography

Born in Dublin, Eamon Grennan attended boarding school at a Cistercian monastery. He met Derek Mahon and Eavan Boland as an undergraduate at University College, Dublin, spent a year in Rome, and then came to the United States to earn his PhD at Harvard. He began writing poetry in earnest in 1977 and published his first collection, Wildly for Days, in 1983. He lives in the United States but returns frequently to western Ireland, . . .

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