In the fields of love

Sean O Tuama, seminal university teacher, literary scholar/critic, poet, dramatist, authority on amour courtois, when asked at an international seminar at Harvard in the late Sixties what his "field" was, is reported to have replied: "My field? I suppose my field is love." As father figure to my own generation of young poets who chose to write in Irish, he always demonstrated what is perhaps the purest form of artistic love: gentle, honest, tough:

Lig di, aduirt an file,

is na smachtaigh i,

lig di fas gan bac ar bith

go dtina hairde cheapaithe:

ta an taerfas bog os a cionn.

Let her be, said the poet,

do not chastise her,

let her grow unimpeded

to whatever height she is meant for:

the air is still soft above her head.

("A Gaeltacht Rousseau")

O Tuama's poetry displays a characteristic sometimes attributed to gifted traditional musicians: discernment. There is no place in an O Tuama poem for lazy rhythm, too obvious rhyme, lumpy syntax, rhetorical flourishes, intrusion of dogma or philosophy, or emotion pampered into sentimentality. O Tuama wants "to observe things as if we were the first generation on the planet".

In one moment of raw frenzy

as his playing days ran out,

he summoned Cu Chulainn

to aid him on the pitch:

his trunk swelled up

in sight of thousands,

one eye bulged

and danced, demented,

through clash and crash

hue and cry

men were toppled

hot blood spurted

and as he rammed in

three lethal goals

all the gods of ancient Ireland

lent his hurley a guiding hand.

("Christy Ring")

The following are the last two verses of a poem written on a Greek island, one of a beautiful and elegant series, "A Tourist in Greece", which forms the fourth section of the book.

Maidin ghorm ins an Ghreig

(an leathchead scoite agam),

ag cuimhneamh ar an luisne a bhi,

sin e mo namhaid anois.

A blue mid-morning here in Greece

(my fiftieth year passed by)

thinking of the glow that was -

that's matter for the dying.

Anois an t-am don rince aonair

ar ghainimh bheo na tra -

na cosa a chaitheamh go haifeiseach

is lea d'aonghno sa teas.

Better rise up now, a solo-dancer,

on the hot sands of the beach,

throw out both legs absurdly,

and melt down in the sun.

("Besides, who knows before the end what light may shine.")

"The glow that was" is that of Sean's four brilliant Cork contemporaries: his mentor, Daniel Corkery (a sage who trembled at the brightness/in the forge of ancient poets); composer, Sean O Riada (a druid who released our damned-up music/and perished in the flood); Sean O Riordain (a tortured poet who fashioned for us/ new Irish-language lungs); and sculptor, Seamus Murphy (who set headstones dancing/with his care- free lore):

Musician, poet and sculptor,

and before them master-sage,

I happened to occur amongst them,

it will not occur again.

Now retired as Professor of Modern Irish at UCC, Sean O Tuama has never courted the limelight. The main focus of his life has been to give rather than receive critical attention. While championing, as critic, the poetic genius of O Riordain (whose work sadly remains inaccessible to the non-Irish-language reading world), O Tuama, as poet, never got the full critical and popular attention he richly deserves. This attractive selection will show both English-language and Irish-language readers that his poems are among the best-crafted in either language since the Forties.

Peter Denman's translations on the whole achieve an accomplished balance between faithfulness and independence. Robert Welch says in an illuminating introduction that "O Tuama, as a writer, carries the authority of a man who has taken the trouble to know about death and celebrate life".

Michael Davitt is a poet and producer with the RTE books programme, Undercover; his new collection of poems will be published next year