On Killuran Hill I heard the curlew’s cry As its slender, strong wings rowed the air waves ‘twixt Violet Hill and Doon Lake. It’s call echoed one I saw fall To my father’s gun fifty years or so ago, In a marshy field near Killavoy. A tractor starts up in a potato field close by And the grubbers turned up the main-stay spuds I was thinking of Walter Raleigh long ago – He brought tobacco too – smoking now branded a killer joy! A car strained up the roadway towards Bodyke, It’s engine taking the hill in second gear. I was remembering Uncle Mattie’s white horse clip-clopping there, No pop drummer could beat out rhythm sounds the like. How come that in this Clare hill country that I love Every sound heard there or movement observed Sends my thoughts back to people, things and times long past – Are these mind echoes catapulted back from up above? Or is it simply that today is today, plus the past Subtotalled in the mind’s memory bank? And the simplest happening causes instant evocation of earlier events, Casts up certain memories that, beyond all others, outlast.