Simon Maddrell

 

Foddeeaght 

 for Mari Hughes-Edwards

 

He asks if I yearn for it,

if we have a word for it, like Hiraeth,

 

how he feels when away from his other

Celtic home, and I brush it off

 

like a bit of fluff, as if it’s obvious                

a queer would hate being kept

 

in a beautifully busy cottage, tucked away

in a private bay below Milner’s Tower —  

 

it’s a folly, to think I want to be

where he is, to think I could 

 

add anything to this, like my pride 

in having scuba-dived the world over,

 

in the marine biology station here at Port Erin.

How it’s now closed.

Foddeeaght [Manx Gaelic], Hiraeth [Welsh]: Homesickness, nostalgia and longing.