The masters of medicine had told her

She could not outlast the night

Nor see the light of morning

Move up the hillside by the Shannon shore.

She did not deny them,

But asked to be carried to her high-backed throne

And when they placed here there

Demanded her husband's great sword

Be placed before her across the arm rests.

This they did.

Resting her elbows upon the broad bronze blade,

Her twisted hands folded beneath her blood-drained face,

She called her dancers that they might dance

The long night through.

They danced.

As one group grew tired, another took its place.

There was a great weariness in her flesh,

A numbness growing in her hands and feet,

About her heart a hard cold pain,

Before her eyes an image of Dunseverick,

Dunseverick and the great sea-roaring in her ears.

Darkness as the great sword fell down upon the floor.

The dancers continued to obey her will.

March 1969