'Will You Taste Some Irishness' redux 2006

For Friday March 10, 2006:


A Prayer For My Daughter


Once more the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
But Gregory's wood and one bare hill
Whereby the haystack- and roof-levelling wind,
Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;
And for an hour I have walked and prayed
Because of the great gloom that is in my mind.

I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour
And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower,
And under the arches of the bridge, and scream
In the elms above the flooded stream;
Imagining in excited reverie
That the future years had come,
Dancing to a frenzied drum,
Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.

May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger's eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch,
Consider beauty a sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness and maybe
The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend.

Helen being chosen found life flat and dull
And later had much trouble from a fool,
While that great Queen, that rose out of the spray,
Being fatherless could have her way
Yet chose a bandy-leggèd smith for man.
It's certain that fine women eat
A crazy salad with their meat
Whereby the Horn of Plenty is undone.

In courtesy I'd have her chiefly learned;
Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned
By those that are not entirely beautiful;
Yet many, that have played the fool
For beauty's very self, has charm made wise,
And many a poor man that has roved,
Loved and thought himself beloved,
From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.

May she become a flourishing hidden tree
That all her thoughts may like the linnet be,
And have no business but dispensing round
Their magnanimities of sound,
Nor but in merriment begin a chase,
Nor but in merriment a quarrel.
O may she live like some green laurel
Rooted in one dear perpetual place.

My mind, because the minds that I have loved,
The sort of beauty that I have approved,
Prosper but little, has dried up of late,
Yet knows that to be choked with hate
May well be of all evil chances chief.
If there's no hatred in a mind
Assault and battery of the wind
Can never tear the linnet from the leaf.

An intellectual hatred is the worst,
So let her think opinions are accursed.
Have I not seen the loveliest woman born
Out of the mouth of Plenty's horn,
Because of her opinionated mind
Barter that horn and every good
By quiet natures understood
For an old bellows full of angry wind?

Considering that, all hatred driven hence,
The soul recovers radical innocence
And learns at last that it is self-delighting,
Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,
And that its own sweet will is Heaven's will;
She can, though every face should scowl
And every windy quarter howl
Or every bellows burst, be happy still.

And may her bridegroom bring her to a house
Where all's accustomed, ceremonious;
For arrogance and hatred are the wares
Peddled in the thoroughfares.
How but in custom and in ceremony
Are innocence and beauty born?
Ceremony's a name for the rich horn,
And custom for the spreading laurel tree.
-William Butler Yeats

http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/

Requiem for the Croppies
by Seamus Heaney.


.

The pockets of our greatcoats full of barley -
No kitchens on the run, no striking camp -
We moved quick and sudden in our own country
The priest lay behind ditches with the tramp.
.
A people, hardly marching - on the hike -
We found new tactics happening each day:
We'd cut through reins and rider with the pike
And stampede cattle into infantry,
Then retreat through hedges where cavalry must be thrown.
.
Until, on Vinegar Hill, the fatal conclave.
Terraced thousands died, shaking scythes at cannon.
The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave.
They buried us without shroud or coffin
And in August the barley grew up out of the grave.

Coming to a computer near you, I see. <smile>

The Rose of Tralee
C. Mordaunt Spencer
The pale moon was rising above yon green mountain,
The sun was declining beneath the blue sea,
When I strayed with my love to the pure crystal fountain,
That stands in the beautiful vale of Tralee.

She was lovely and fair, as the rose of the summer,
It was not her beauty alone that won me.
Oh no, t'was the truth in her eye ever dawning,
That made me love Mary, the Rose of Tralee!

The cool shades of evening their mantles were spreading,
And Mary, all smiling, stood listn'ng to me,
When all through the valley her pale rays were shedding,
When I won the heart of the Rose of Tralee.

She was lovely and fair, as the rose of the summer,
It was not her beauty alone that won me.
Oh no, t'was the truth in her eye ever dawning,
That made me love Mary, the Rose of Tralee!

This is so lovely. I am Irish on both my mother and father's sides. Although I don't have a poem right now, I will try to work in some of my Grandmother's sayings in a fashion that will paint a picture of her. She was a grand old gal, with a warm heart and never took any guff, and managed to pull it off with a great deal of humor. I miss her a great deal but it always makes me smile when I think about her.

(I was looking for "If ever you go to Dublin town" but this will do quite nicely, I think...)

In Memory Of My Mother
by Patrick Kavanagh

I do not think of you lying in the wet clay
Of a Monaghan graveyard; I see
You walking down a lane among the poplars
On your way to the station, or happily

Going to second Mass on a summer Sunday-
You meet me and you say:
'Don't forget to see about the cattle-'
Among your earthiest words the angels stray.

And I think of you walking along a headland
Of green oats in June,
So full of repose, so rich with life-
And I see us meeting at the end of a town

On a fair day by accident, after
The bargains are all made and we can walk
Together through the shops and stalls and markets
Free in the oriental streets of thought.

O you are not lying in the wet clay,
For it is harvest evening now and we
Are piling up the ricks against the moonlight
And you smile up at us - eternally.

Paddy's Green Shamrock shore (traditional)

From Derry Quay we sailed away on the 23rd of May
We were boarded by a pleasant crew bound for Americay
Fresh water there we did take on, five thousand gallons or more
In case we'd run short going to New York far away from the Shamrock Shore


So fare thee well sweet Liza dear and likewise to Derry town,
And twice farewell to me comrade boys who dwell on that sainted ground
If fortune it ever should favour me or I to have money in store
I'll come back and I'll wed the wee lassie I left on Paddy's Green Shamrock Shore


Well we sailed three days and we were all seasick, not a man on board was free
We were all confined unto our bunks with no one to pity poor me
No father dear nor mother kind to hold up me head when t'was sore,
Which made me think more on the lassie I left on Paddy's Green Shamrock Shore


Well we safely reached the other side in three and twenty days
We were taken as passengers by a man and led round in six different ways,
We each of us drank a parting glass in case we might never meet more,
And we drank a health to Old Ireland and Paddy's Green Shamrock Shore


So fare thee well sweet Liza dear and likewise to Derry town
And twice farewell to me comrade boys who dwell on that sainted ground
If fortune it ever should favour me or I to have money in store
I'll come back and I'll wed the wee lassie I left on Paddy's Green Shamrock Shore

Nice to see you Imur, Letty, Glitterbag, D'artagnan, and - from the 'Irish Riviera' - Mikey!
Thanks for your postings.

For Saturday, March 11 here's a moving poem by Sara Berkeley, an Irish-born writer who now lives in the U.S. (see link below)



The Mass is Over

The mass is over, they have gone in peace
But wind flays the church's side's
I fear my frail cover will be blown
Despite the sunlight on confessional doors,
Desultory coins,
The urgent reaching of the women's prayers.

I have taken refuge from a bitter shower
And find myself at Christ's fire
Yearning for things I've had
And won't have again
Because I have done wrong;
He passes - and a shudder of sparks
Ignites the recognition,
A dark object in a field of light
Where I have come for shelter
And in the warm eye of the wind
My twenty Easters wash me in their milky sun.
-Sara Berkeley

for more on Sara Berkeley go to:

http://www.thepedestalmagazine.com/Secure/Content/cb.asp?cbid=4814

http://www.irishwriters-online.com/saraberkeley.html

Turas (Journey) - Michael Davitt

(Davitt wrote mainly in the Irish language. His style was somewhat ... quirky! The English translation is below).


idir mé is tú míle cnámh seanchaí á gcneá ag tíogar álainn/míle Walkman
gan chluas/míle Swatch gan aghaidh/míle bodhrán gan chraiceann/míle
ghéinathraithe/míle de Valera is a nGaeltacht féin acu/míle Ronan Keat-
ing in aibíd Sheathrún Céitinn/míle mainicín ar E ag smearadh fuil a gcroí
1000 Ronan Keatings in Seathrún Céitinn habits/
ar fhísfhalla teilifíseán digiteach carntha in airde sna scamaill/míle feithid-
eolaí ar thóir feithid-ar-líne ár linne/míle Atlantach Guinness á n-urlacan
anuas ar míle Rinceoir Riverdance/míle comhartha bóthair ag scaoileadh
urchar le/míle logainm/míle camán stáin/míle sliotar siúcra/míle urlabhraí
oifigiúil thar ceann/míle cúis/míle cros gan asal/míle port gan seinm/míle
píobaire gan uillinn/míle timpeallán craosach ag sú na tráchta chucuisteach go leac na bpian/míle lorraí bruscair ag leathadh a gcuid stuifear fuaid na dúthaí/míle ollmhargadh olagónach lán de chónraí fármaidhce/míle pleidhce ina saoithe suite ar shreangán deilgneach/míle lia ag sluaisteáil piollaí suain isteach in otharcharr critheaglach/míle bó mhire ag déanamh waltz na bualtraí/míle iriseoir d'ord na míthrócaire ag cogaint a gcuid fón póca/míle próca cóla/míle seangán sean-nósach i sclaig stáit/ míle áit gan ainm




between you and me 1000 shanachie bones gnawed by a beautiful tiger/
1000 Walkmans without ears/
1000 Swatches without faces/
1000 bodhrán without skin/
1000 Corrs at half price/
1000 Roadwatch Babes eaten alive by genetically modified dipthongs/
1000 de Valéras in their own Gaeltacht/
1000 models on E smearing their hearts blood onto a videowall of digital televisions stacked up into the clouds/
1000 entomologists searching for the on-line bug of our times/
1000 Atlantics of Guinness vomitting down on a thousand Riverdancers/
1000 roadsigns shooting at a 1000 placenames/
1000 tin hurleys/
1000 sugar sliotars/
1000 official spokesmen for a thousand causes/
1000 crosses without donkeys/
1000 unplayed jigs/
1000 pipers without elbows/
1000 ravenous roundabouts sucking the traffic towards them into the flags of hell/
1000 rubbish lorries spreading their stuff over the countryside/
1000 wailing supermarkets full of formica coffins/
1000 fools posing as sages on a barbed wire fence/
1000 doctors shovelling tranquillizers into a terrified ambulance/
1000 mad cows doing the cowdung waltz/
1000 journalists of the no-mercy order chewing their mobile phones/
1000 crocks of cola/
1000 oldworld ants in a state pothole/
1000 places with no name.

Hi Imur, Thanks!

Yeh, I guess 'quirky' describes it...

this is a democratic, 'big-tent' thread though.
All styles, tendencies, predilections, schools, etc. are welcome. :-)

Imur, I like Davitt better in the Irish language. Celtic?

jjorge, I guess no Irish poetry would be complete without Yeats:

THE INDIAN TO HIS LOVE

by: William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

HE island dreams under the dawn
And great boughs drop tranquillity;
The peahens dance on a smooth lawn,
A parrot sways upon a tree,
Raging at his own image in the enamelled sea.

Here we will moor our lonely ship
And wander ever with woven hands,
Murmuring softly lip to lip,
Along the grass, along the sands,
Murmuring how far away are the unquiet lands:

How we alone of mortals are
Hid under quiet boughs apart,
While our love grows an Indian star,
A meteor of the burning heart,
One with the tide that gleams, the wings that gleam and dart,

The heavy boughs, the burnished dove
That moans and sighs a hundred days:
How when we die our shades will rove,
When eve has hushed the feathered ways,
With vapoury footsole by the water's drowsy blaze.

For Sunday March 12 2006:


RAIN
(Donegal)


All day long
The gray rain beating,
On the bare hills
Where the scant grass cannot cover,
The gray rocks peeping
Through the salt hebage.
All day long
The young lambs bleating
Stand for covering
Where the scant grass is
Under the gray wall,
Or seeking softer shelter
Under tattered fleeces
Nuzzle the warm udders.
All day long
The little waves leaping
Round the gray rocks
By the brown tide borders,
Round the black headlands
Streaming with rain.
-Seumas O'Sullivan
[from: 'The Twilight People' 1905]

http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Seamus_O'Sullivan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seamus_O'Sullivan
http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/The_Dublin_Magazine

Well - I'm here!

jjorge - that Donegal poem is great - such an accurate description of Donegal - it was just like tht when I was there a cuppla years back!

Hi Margo!

...seeing as you liked that, here are two more rainy day poems...


For Monday March 13, 2006:

A SOFT DAY


A soft day, thank God!
A wind from the south
With a honeyed mouth;
A scent of drenching leaves,
Briar and beech and lime,
White elder-flower and thyme
And the soaking grass smells sweet,
Crushed by my two bare feet,
While the rain drips,
Drips, drips, drips from the eaves.
-Winifred M. Letts
[from: 'Songs From Leinster' 1913]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winifred_M._Letts








RAIN IN MAY

O rain in May, and I recall
You and May and the evenfall;
And every garden drenched and sweet,
And the laburnum drowned in it;
The patter of rain is musical.


You and I in the wet May weather,
You and I and the Spring together.
And in the long suburban road
No other creature walked abroad.
Wildly sweet is the wet May weather
-Katherine Tynan
[from 'Ballads and Lyrics' 1891]

http://www.irishcultureandcustoms.com/Poetry/Tynan.html

What action did Bloom make on their arrival at their destination?

At the housesteps of the 4th of the equidifferent uneven numbers, number 7 Eccles street, he inserted his hand mechanically into the back pocket of his trousers to obtain his latchkey.



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Was it there?

It was in the corresponding pocket of the trousers which he had worn on the day but one preceding.



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Why was he doubly irritated?

Because he had forgotten and because he remembered that he had reminded himself twice not to forget.



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What were then the alternatives before the, premeditatedly (respectively) and inadvertently, keyless couple?

To enter or not to enter. To knock or not to knock.



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Bloom's decision?

A stratagem. Resting his feet on the dwarf wall, he climbed over the area railings, compressed his hat on his head, grasped two points at the lower union of rails and stiles, lowered his body gradually by its length of five feet nine inches and a half to within two feet ten inches of the area pavement, and allowed his body to move freely in space by separating himself from the railings and crouching in preparation for the impact of the fall.



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Did he fall?

By his body's known weight of eleven stone and four pounds in avoirdupois measure, as certified by the graduated machine for periodical selfweighing in the premises of Francis Fraedman, pharmaceutical chemist of 19 Frederick street, north, on the last feast of the Ascension, to wit, the twelfth day of May of the bissextile year one thousand nine hundred and four of the Christian era (jewish era five thousand six hundred and sixtyfour, mohammedan era one thousand three hundred and twentytwo), golden number $, epact 13, solar cycle 9, dominical letters C B, Roman indication 2, Julian period 6617, MXMIV.



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Did he rise uninjured by concussion?

Regaining new stable equilibrium he rose uninjured though concussed by the impact, raised the latch of the area door by the exertion of force at its freely moving flange and by leverage of the first kind applied at its fulcrum gained retarded access to the kitchen through the subadjacent scullery, ignited a Lucifer match by friction, set free inflammable coal gas by turning on the ventcock, lit a high flame which, by regulating, he reduced to quiescent candescence and lit finally a portable candle.



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What discrete succession of images did Stephen meanwhile perceive?

Reclined against the area railings he perceived through the transparent kitchen panes a man regulating a gasflame of 14 C P, a man lighting a candle, a man removing in turn each of his two boots, a man leaving the kitchen holding a candle of ICP.



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Did the man reappear elsewhere?

Alter a lapse of four minutes the glimmer of his candle was discernible through the semitransparent semicircular glass fanlight over the halldoor. The halldoor turned gradually on its hinges. In the open space of the doorway the man reappeared without his hat, with his candle.



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Did Stephen obey his sign?

Yes, entering softly, he helped to close and chain the door and followed softly along the hallway the man's back and listed feet and lighted candle past a lighted crevice of doorway on the left and carefully down a turning staircase of more than five steps into the kitchen of Bloom's house.



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What did Bloom do?

He extinguished the candle by a sharp expiration of breath upon its flame, drew two spoonseat deal chairs to the hearthstone, one for Stephen with its back to the area window, the other for himself when necessary, knelt on one knee, composed in the grate a pyre of crosslaid resintipped sticks and various coloured papers and irregular polygons of best Abram coal at twentyone shillings a ton from the yard of Messrs Flower and M'Donald of 14 D'Olier street, kindled it at three projecting points of paper with one ignited lucifer match, thereby releasing the potential energy contained in the fuel by allowing its carbon and hydrogen elements to enter into free union with the oxygen of the air.



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Of what similar apparitions did Stephen think?

Of others elsewhere in other times who, kneeling on one knee or on two, had kindled fires for him, of Brother Michael in the infirmary of the college of the Society of Jesus at Clongowes Wood, Sallins, in the county of Kildare: of his father, Simon Dedalus, in an unfurnished room of his first residence in Dublin, number thirteen Fitzgibbon street: of his godmother Miss Kate Morkan in the house of her dying sister Miss Julia Morkan at 15 Usher's Island: of his mother Mary, wife of Simon Dedalus, in the kitchen of number twelve North Richmond street on the morning of the feast of Saint Francis-Xavier 1898: of the dean of studies, Father Butt, in the physics' theatre of university College, 16 Stephen's green, north: of his sister Dilly (Delia) in his father's house in Cabra.



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What did Stephen see on raising his gaze to the height of a yard from the fire towards the opposite wall?

Under a row of five coiled spring housebells a curvilinear rope, stretched between two holdfasts athwart across the recess beside the chimney pier, from which hung four smallsized square handkerchiefs folded unattached consecutively in adjacent rectangles and one pair of ladies' grey hose with lisle suspendertops and feet in their habitual position clamped by three erect wooden pegs two at their outer extremities and the third at their point of junction.



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What did Bloom see on the range?

On the right (smaller) hob a blue enamelled saucepan: on the left (larger) hob a black iron kettle.



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What did Bloom do at the range?

He removed the saucepan to the left hob, rose and carried the iron kettle to the sink in order to tap the current by turning the faucet to let it flow.



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Did it flow?

Yes. From Roundwood reservoir in county Wicklow of a cubic capacity of 2,400 million gallons, percolating through a subterranean aqueduct of filter mains of single and double pipeage constructed at an initial plant cost of #5 per linear yard by way of the Dargle, Rathdown, Glen of the Downs and Callowhill to the 26 acre reservoir at Stillorgan, a distance of 22 statute miles, and thence, through a system of relieving tanks, by a gradient of 250 feet to the city boundary at Eustace bridge, upper Leeson street, though from prolonged summer drouth and daily supply of 12 1/2 million gallons the water had fallen below the sill of the overflow weir for which reason the borough surveyor and waterworks engineer, Mr Spencer Harty, C.E., on the instructions of the waterworks committee, had prohibited the use of municipal water for purposes other than those of consumption (envisaging the possibility of recourse being had to the importable water of the Grand and Royal canals as in 1893) particularly as the South Dublin Guardians, notwithstanding their ration of 15 gallons per day per pauper supplied through a 6 inch meter, had been convicted of a wastage of 20,000 gallons per night by a reading of their meter on the affirmation of the law agent of the corporation, Mr Ignatius Rice, solicitor, thereby acting to the detriment of another section of the public, selfsupporting taxpayers, solvent, sound.



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What in water did Bloom, waterlover, drawer of water, watercarrier returning to the range, admire?

Its universality: its democratic equality and constancy to its nature in seeking its own level: its vastness in the ocean of Mercator's projection: its umplumbed profundity in the Sundam trench of the Pacific exceeding 8,000 fathoms: the restlessness of its waves and surface particles visiting in turn all points of its seaboard: the independence of its units: the variability of states of sea: its hydrostatic quiescence in calm: its hydrokinetic turgidity in neap and spring tides: its subsidence after devastation: its sterility in the circumpolar icecaps, arctic and antarctic: its climatic and commercial significance: its preponderance of 3 to 1 over the dry land of the globe: its indisputable hegemony extending in square leagues over all the region below the subequatorial tropic of Capricorn: the multisecular stability of its primeval basin: its luteofulvous bed: Its capacity to dissolve and hold in solution all soluble substances including billions of tons of the most precious metals: its slow erosions of peninsulas and downwardtending promontories: its alluvial deposits: its weight and volume and density: its imperturbability in lagoons and highland tarns: its gradation of colours in the torrid and temperate and frigid zones: its vehicular ramifications in continental lakecontained streams and confluent oceanflowing rivers with their tributaries and transoceanic currents: gulfstream, north and south equatorial courses: its violence in seaquakes, waterspouts, artesian wells, eruptions, torrents, eddies, freshets, spates, groundswells, watersheds, waterpartings, geysers, cataracts, whirlpools, maelstroms, inundations, deluges, cloudbursts: its vast circumterrestrial ahorizontal curve: its secrecy in springs, and latent humidity, revealed by rhabdomantic or hygrometric instruments and exemplified by the hole in the wall at Ashtown gate, saturation of air, distillation of dew: the simplicity of its composition, two constituent parts of hydrogen with one constituent part of oxygen: its healing virtues: its buoyancy in the waters of the Dead Sea: its persevering penetrativeness in runnels, gullies, inadequate dams, leaks on shipboard: its properties for cleansing, quenching thirst and fire, nourishing vegetation: its infallibility as paradigm and paragon: its metamorphoses as vapour, mist, cloud, rain, sleet, snow, hail: its strength in rigid hydrants: its variety of forms in loughs and bays and gulfs and bights and guts and lagoons and atolls and archipelagos and sounds and fjords and minches and tidal estuaries and arms of sea: its solidity in glaciers, icebergs, icefloes: its docility in working hydraulic millwheels, turbines, dynamos, electric power stations, bleachworks, tanneries, scutchmills: its utility in canals, rivers, if navigable, floating and graving docks: its potentiality derivable from harnessed tides or watercourses falling from level to level: its submarine fauna and flora (anacoustic, photophobe) numerically, if not literally, the inhabitants of the globe: its ubiquity as constituting 90% of the human body: the noxiousness of its effluvia in lacustrine marshes, pestilential fens, faded flowerwater, stagnant pools in the waning moon.


Joyce
Ulysses

Weeping Winds

Oh! Cold March winds your cruel laments
Are hard on prisoners' hearts,
For you bring my mother's pleading cries
From whom I have to part.
I hear her weeping lonely sobs
Her sorrows sweep me by,
And in the dark of prison cell
A tear has warmed my eye.

Oh! Whistling winds why do you weep
When roaming free you are,
Oh! Lonely winds that walk the night
To haunt the sinner's soul
Pray pity me a wretched lad
Who never will grow old.
Pray pity those who lie in pain
The bondsman and the slave,
And whisper sweet the breath of God
Upon my humble grave.

Oh! Cold March winds that pierce the dark
You cry in aged tones
For souls of folk you've brought to God
But still you bear the moans.
Oh! Weeping wind this lonely night
My mother's heart is sore,
Oh! Lord of all breathe freedom's breath
That she may weep no more.

Bobby Sands

Thank you Edgar! Thank you Mikey!




For today, Tuesday March 14, 2006:



The Sunlight on the Garden


The sunlight on the garden
Hardens and grows cold,
We cannot cage the minute
Within its nets of gold;
When all is told
We cannot beg for pardon.

Our freedom as free lances
Advances towards its end;
The earth compels, upon it
Sonnets and birds descend;
And soon, my friend,
We shall have no time for dances.

The sky was good for flying
Defying the church bells
And every evil iron
Siren and what it tells:
The earth compels,
We are dying, Egypt, dying

And not expecting pardon,
Hardened in heart anew,
But glad to have sat under
Thunder and rain with you,
And grateful too
For sunlight on the garden.
-Louis Macneice

http://www.irishwriters-online.com/louismacneice.html

http://members.aol.com/carrickman/macneice.htm

I have Irishness in my genes, just don't really know how much.

Well Edgar, you definitely have a way with words...

...that's a widely acknowledged Irish trait!

Through the years
Through the troubles
The Blarney Stone has eroded
And its dust is everywhere.