When you woke at first light and sat up
Out of the dream you'd been having

To ask straight out about Tír na nÓg
The where and when of it all,

Whether Niamh might be waiting there still
I did not know what I should say.

Fairytale? Folktale? Tall tale?
At that unearthly hour the house

Lay still around us
Hanging, like you, on my every next word.

'Land of the forever young, eternal youth,'
I heard myself half-heartedly begin,

Struggling, like a man fallen instantly old
Bewildered by the enormous weight

Of his own disbelief
By the bolting hooves, their absent clatter,

By the moment galloping riderless
And irretrievable into the dawning distance.

.

Liam Cleary lives in Germany. His poems have been published widely, and in 1999 he published Echoes, a collection of short stories for teenagers.