The Hawks Rock - Michael Farry

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The Hawk's Rock

Sligo-born artist Conor Gallagher set up an exhibition of his paintings on the Hawk's Rock theme in a hut specially erected for the occasion in Kinnagrelly Forest on the southern side of the Ox Mountains, near Coolaney, County Sligo in September 2010.

I compiled a chapbook of poems dealing with places and sites in the vicinity as a collaboration with Conor for the event and I distributed the chapbook and read some poems from it there.

This place and nearby Tullaghan Well gave W.B. Yeats the title of his play, 'At The Hawk’s Well'.

See the article on the project in Crann magazine Winter 2010.

See some of Conor Gallagher's artworks on the theme on these pages.


    The Hawk’s Rock

We left it alone for millennia
erratic outcrop in bog waste
looked at it over left shoulders
as we piled cairn over bones
prayed to new gods at the well
died of hunger at the gap.

Its monumental bulk leaned
complacent against futile winds
ignored the sweeps of fashion
the altered forms of worship
constant except for changing
cloud shadows and wheel
of ruthless predators eyeing
small temporary things
scuttling between ditches.


 
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