Mangan's Bay by Hans van den Bos

Mangan's Bay From Moord a boreen skirts a white cottage hidden by fuchsia and goes down to the rocks  of Mangan's Bay. Swallows skim  along the path, foursome  twitter on a wire. Just before the strand a hen harrier, surrounded by  three angry magpies sits stoical on a paling. The field  above the cottage is full of flowers and shows an immense  view across the bay where gannets  like javelins cut the water. Slowly, the red sun  disappears behind the hills  of East Cork and makes the sky into a sea of flames. Cormorants fly low as black shadows over the ebbing tide to their nocturnal perch in the mouth  of the Blackwater. The lighthouse  gives its first light to a passing tanker and a fishing boat bound for Youghal. (Original title: 'De Baai van Mangan' - published in English in Southword - issue number 8 - New Writing from Ireland - December 2004, The Munster Literature Centre, Cork, Ireland)

Hans van den Bos [1948]