Poetry From Ireland

Tommy

Thank you for the lovely poem!

Perhaps we can stretch out this thread with some more Irish poems.

Here's a lovely-sad poem by Paula Meehan:



"Child Burial"

'Your coffin looked unreal,
fancy as a wedding cake.

I chose your grave clothes with care,
your favourite stripey shirt,

your blue cotton trousers.
They smelt of woodsmoke, of October,

your own smell there too.
I chose a gansy of handspun wool,

warm and fleecy for you. It is
so cold down in the dark.

No light can reach you and teach you
the paths of wild birds,

the names of the flowers,
the fishes, and the creatures.

Ignorant you must remain
of the sun and its work,

my lamb, my calf, my eaglet,
my cub, my kid, my nestling,

my suckling, my colt. I would spin
time back, take you again

within my womb, your amniotic lair,
and further spin you back

through nine waxing months
to the split seeding moment

you chose to be made flesh,
word within me.

I'd cancel the love feast
the hot night of your making.

I would travel alone
to a quiet mossy place,

you would spill from me into the earth
drop by red drop.'

***********************


Earlier this year, just before St. Patricks day, I started an abuzz thread called: 'Will You Taste'some Irishness?',named after a short introductory poem (and plea) by yours truly.

Here in the U.S. many people haven't a clue as to the richness of Irish culture and literary history, and once a year too many 'celebrate' Ireland ánd the Irish by drinking green beer!

The intent of the thread was to do a little 'Consciousness Raising' and, at the same time, to enjoy some poems by Irish authors.

We had a nice conversation and shared some wonderful poems. Here's the link for anyone who may be interested:

http://nytimes.abuzz.com/interaction/s.254882/discussion

Love both poems, thank you.

Paul Muldoon was interviewed for an hour today on NPR, 'The Connection'. He is an Irishman who has been in the U.S. since the late 80's. He lives in New Jersey and directs the creative writing program at Princeton.

Although I have a few poems by him in an anthology, I didn't really know his work. He read from his latest collection of poems, "Moy Sand and Gravel". What he read today I liked.

Did anyone else hear the program? Any thoughts on Muldoon?

do lyrics to songs count Tommy?

Of course mikey - most songs - Irish anyway - were poems.
Thomas Davis' poems particulary went from poetry to song, as did Percy French's.

But here is a poem by Sean O'Riordan which has been translated from the Irish.

DEATH

Death was at hand
I said I would go
With no grief or delay.
I looked at myself and said:
"So that's all I was....
Goodbye then my friend'.

I look back now
Upon that time
When death came up
In his hurry to take me
And Yield I must -
And I think I know
The delight of a maid
As she waits for her love,
Though I am
No woman.

I've been doing a bit of research on Crazy Jane, a character created by Yeats. Thought it might be interesting to someone who likes Irish Poetry.

(the following notes were taken from a Van Morrison website)
FYI -- William Butler Yeats was a fantastic poet of the modern era, (June 13, 1865 - January 28, 1939). A celebrated Irish poet and nationalist, was born in Dublin, and educated in London and Dublin. While studying at the School of Art in Dublin he developed an interest in mystic religion and the supernatural. Yeats received the 1923 Nobel Prize in literature.

There were about a dozen or so "Crazy Jane" poems which Yeats put under the heading, "Words For Music Perhaps" (published in The Winding Stair and Other Poems). Yeats wanted them sung, or read to music...."

.................
Here are some of the Crazy Jane Poems:


CRAZY JANE AND THE BISHOP

Bring me to the blasted oak
That I, midnight upon the stroke,
(All find safety in the tomb.)
May call down curses on his head
Because of my dear Jack that's dead.
Coxcomb was the least he said:
The solid man and the coxcomb.

Nor was he Bishop when his ban
Banished Jack the Journeyman,
(All find safety in the tomb.)
Nor so much as parish priest,
Yet he, an old book in his fist,
Cried that we lived like beast and beast:
The solid man and the coxcomb.

The Bishop has a skin, God knows,
Wrinkled like the foot of a goose,
(All find safety in the tomb.)
Nor can he hide in holy black
The heron's hunch upon his back,
But a birch-tree stood my Jack:
The solid man and the coxcomb.

Jack had my virginity,
And bids me to the oak, for he
(All find safety in the tomb.)
Wanders out into the night
And there is shelter under it,
But should that other come, I spit:
The solid man and the coxcomb.


CRAZY JANE REPROVED

I care not what the sailors say:
All those dreadful thunder-stones,
All that storm that blots the day
Can but show that Heaven yawns;
Great Europa played the fool
That changed a lover for a bull.
Fol de rol, fol de rol.

To round that shell's elaborate whorl,
Adorning every secret track
With the delicate mother-of- pearl,
Made the joints of Heaven crack:
So never hang your heart upon
A roaring, ranting journeyman.
Fol de rol, fol de rol.


CRAZY JANE ON THE DAY OF JUDGEMENT

'Love is all
Unsatisfied
That cannot take the whole
Body and soul';
And that is what Jane said.

'Take the sour
If you take me,
I can scoff and lour
And scold for an hour.';
'That's certainly the case'; said he.

'Naked I lay,
The grass my bed;
Naked and hidden away,
That black day';
And that is what Jane said.

'What can be shown?
What true love be?
All could be known or shown
If Time were but gone';
'That's certainly the case'; said he.


CRAZY JANE AND JACK THE JOURNEYMAN

I know, although when looks meet
I tremble to the bone,
The more I leave the door unlatched
The sooner love is gone,
For love is but a skein unwound
Between the dark and dawn.

A lonely ghost the ghost is
That to God shall come;
I --love's skein upon the ground,
My body in the tomb --
Shall leap into the light lost
In my mother's womb.

But were I left to lie alone
In an empty bed,
The skein so bound us ghost to ghost
When he turned his head
Passing on the road that night,
Mine would walk being dead.


CRAZY JANE ON GOD

That lover of a night
Came when he would,
Went in the dawning light
Whether I would or no;
Men come, men go;
All things remain in God.

Banners choke the sky;
Men-at-arms tread;
Armoured horses neigh
Where the great battle was
In the narrow pass:
All things remain in God.

Before their eyes a house
That from childhood stood
Uninhabited, ruinous,
Suddenly lit up
From door to top:
All things remain in God.

I had wild Jack for a lover;
Though like a road
That men pass over
My body makes no moan
But sings on:
All things remain in God.


CRAZY JANE TALKS WITH THE BISHOP

I met the Bishop on the road
And much said he and I.
'Those breasts are flat and fallen now,
Those veins must soon be dry;
Live in a heavenly mansion,
Not in some foul sty.'

'Fair and foul are near of kin,
And fair needs foul,' I cried.
'My friends are gone, but that's a truth
Nor grave nor bed denied,
Learned in bodily lowliness
And in the heart's pride.

'A woman can be proud and stiff
When on love intent;
But Love has pitched his mansion in
The place of excrement;
For nothing can be sole or whole
That has not been rent.'


CRAZY JANE GROWN OLD LOOKS AT THE DANCERS

I found that ivory image there
Dancing with her chosen youth,
But when he wound her coal-black hair
As though to strangle her, no scream
Or bodily movement did I dare,
Eyes under eyelids did so gleam;
Love is like the lion&'s tooth.

When she, and though some said she played
I said that she had danced heart's truth,
Drew a knife to strike him dead,
I could but leave him to his fate;
For no matter what is said
They had all that had their hate;
Love is like the lion's tooth.

Did he die or did she die?
Seemed to die or died they both?
God be with the times when I
Cared not a thraneen for what chanced
So that I had the limbs to try
Such a dance as there was danced'
Love is like the lion's tooth.


CRAZY JANE ON THE MOUNTAIN

I AM tired of cursing the Bishop,
(Said Crazy Jane)
Nine books or nine hats
Would not make him a man.
I have found something worse
To meditate on.
A King had some beautiful cousins.
But where are they gone?
Battered to death in a cellar,
And he stuck to his throne.

Last night I lay on the mountain.
(Said Crazy Jane)
There in a two-horsed carriage
That on two wheels ran
Great-bladdered Emer sat.
Her violent man
Cuchulain sat at her side;
Thereupon'
Propped upon my two knees,
I kissed a stone
I lay stretched out in the dirt
And I cried tears down.

My father named his new sailboat "Fiddlers Green" after these lyrics. It's a good sailor's resting place - otherwise, they go to Davy Jones' Locker

FIDDLER'S GREEN
(By John Connolly/Bill Meek, 1960s)

As I went a walking one evening so rare
To view the still waters and taste the salt air
I heard an old fisherman singing this song
Sayin', "Take me away boys, my time is not long"

Wrap me up in me oil skins and blankets
No more on the docks I'll be seen
Just tell me old shipmates, I'm takin' a trip mates
And I'll see you someday on fiddler's green"

Now fiddler's green is a place I've heard tell
Where fishermen go if they don't go to hell
Where the weather is fair and the dolphins do play
And the cold coast of Greenland is far far away

Where the weather is fair and there's never a gale
Where the fish jump on board with a swish of their tail
You lie at your leisure there's no work to do
While the skipper's below makin' tae for the crew

I don't need a harp nor a halo not me
Just give me a breeze and a good rollin' sea
I'll play me old squeeze box as we sail along
And the wind in the riggin' will sing me this song.

Nice poem, Sugar... the sentiment is a good one for sea-farin' folk everywhere.

"I don't need a harp nor a halo, not me!"

Sugar, I remember "Fiddlers Green" as a song but dang I am drawing a complete blank on the lyrics - they weren't the same as the poem, except for "I'll see you someday on Fiddlers Green". 'Course I learned it in summer camp, which I attended during the Cretaceous Period.

There's another poem that was used by thw US Cavalry called Fiddlers Green

FIDDLERS GREEN



Halfway down the road to hell
In a shady meadow green
Are the Souls of all dead Troopers camped
Near a good old-time canteen
And this eternal resting place is
Known as Fiddlers Green

Marching past straight through to hell
The Infantry are seen
Accompanied by the Engineers
Artillery and Marines
For none but the shades of Cavalry
Dismount at Fiddlers Green

Though some go curving down the trail
To seek a warmer scene
No Trooper ever gets to hell
Ere he's emptied his canteen
And so rides back to drink again
With friends at Fiddlers Green

And so when man and horse go down
Beneath a sabre keen
Or on roaring charge of fierce melee
You stop a bullet clean
And the hostiles come to get your scalp
Just empty your canteen
And put your pistol to your head
And go to Fiddlers Green

What a concept! Thanks for posting the other Fiddlers Green, Tommy. Obviously, the cavalry is the right place to be!

Odd that both "Greens" relate to death. Can you explain?

Fiddlers Green is a 'mythical' place that is a bit like a piece of heaven - wherever the name appears, it will have to do with death because it is a place of teh afterlife.

And it is Irish of course? Celtic? Related to the Green Man?

THE TROUT

Flat on the bank I parted
Rushes to ease my hands
In the water without a ripple
And tilt them slowly downstream
To where he lay, light as a leaf,
In his fluid sensual dream.

Bodiless lord of creation
I hung briefly above him
Savouring my own absence
Senses expanding in the slow
Motion, the photographic calm
That grows before action.

As the curve of my hands
Swung under his body
He surged, with visible pleasure.
I was so preternaturally close
I could count every stipple
But still cast no shadow, until

The two palms crossed in a cage
Under the lightly pulsing gills.
Then (entering my own enlarged
Shape, which rode on the water)
I gripped. To this day I can
Taste his terror on my hands.
(John Montague, b. 1929)

The Medieval Irish Poetry website belongs to Maureen S. O'Brien. My translations are copy-permitted for educational purposes, if I am given credit. Let me know about it, though; it's good for my ego!

Medeival Irish Poetry in Gaelic with Translation