Cutting the Holly

Cold and Frigid
like the graves
we trod upon
Indecent in our haste
to leave their mortality behind us
We clamber over the bough and sometimes fence
that divide the living and the dead in Carrig

"Be Still!"
In the quietness
"Can you hear it?"
"Like the running of a bath!"
Our young ears questioning
the sound domestic so familiar
"out here?"
"In the wild?"

Strange looking bushes
with leaves so sharp
as sharp as daggers
and berries so red
just begging to be eaten

"Don't!" warns Dad
as he tips the back of my
small and reaching hand
with a nicotine stained finger..
"poison to us but food for the fairies"

"We're here now.."
all the gang
Cathal & Len & Esther and Barry and Tommy
Reuby too and our Dads
out to cut the holly
for our street doors
....a Wexford tradition

..then I see it
as big as Niagara
and wider still
to my young eyes

Roaring forever into my consciousness
Carrig River
tumbles and falls
upon moss draped rocks
rushes past us on it's way to the sea

desperate like all of us to get away
though we don't know it yet
aching to return....

a Wexford tradition

A pilgrimage from the Republic of Davitt Road South....
I was barely three when I was first brought out to Carrig River by my Dad and Charlie Golden. Jimmy Whelan and Thomas, Jackie Kirwan and Barry as well while our next door neighbours Andy Nolan and Reuby came out too If I recall...it was an honour for us "out of towners"..the Kiernans (Dublin) and the Nolans(Kilkenny/Laois)to be included in this Christmas pageant that generations of Wexfordians had done....particularly in the hallowed confines of the Carrig River demense where Mother Nature is at her finest at any time of the year but particularly so in Advent.

The Graveyard is a shrine to our fallen of 1798 and the turbulent and sad history of those times before and since where rebel and yoeman deep in slumber lay, side by side, comrades in death if not in life.

This little brook rushes out to Wexford Harbour just above Ferrycarraig (pictured)....so many memories I have of this place, all of them happy but now tinged with sadness as the mortality we never dreamt of reaches out to take us home.

"Weaving olden dances"

The most precious poem to me is Yeat’s “The Stolen Child”.
It is precious for personal reasons that I will not go into here only that it speaks to me and sings solace to my heart.

I wrote earlier of the Other crowd. The poem tells of the child that crosses over with the “good people”. Maybe it was our way of dealing with a very emotional subject yet are we not a very emotional race?

The picture above I took at Hook Head on Nov 30th, 1998 at 5pm....the sun was setting and the placement of the couple on the foreshore was one of those miraculous occasions when everything comes together for the perfect picture. The picture fits the poem in my mind.


The Stolen Child

Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water-rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berries
And of reddest stolen cherries.

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping
than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances,
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping
than you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping
than you can understand.

Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal-chest.

For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
From a world more full of weeping
than he can understand.

Poetry Corner pt.1

Rudyard Kipling,

You may know him as the writer of the "Jungle Book", "Kim" or "The Man Who Would Be King". He wrote some interesting poetry too

There is much the man & I do not have in common; Namely his imperialism and his antipathy to all things of a nationalist Irish hue but you cannot deny that this paean, written (allegedly) to his young son - John, later to die in the terrible conflict that was WWI, is simply a sublime & profound work....

"IF"

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you

But make allowance for their doubting too,

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,

Or being hated, don't give way to hating,

And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,

If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breath a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;

If all men count with you, but none too much,

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

There is a great deal of derision amongst his fellow British poets & writers about this poem in particular, notiicably TS Elliot who dismissed him as a versifier & George Orwell who regarded him as basically a "Colonel Blimp", a prophet of Imperialism.

Read it for what it is, a series of aphorisms in verse, by happenstance, a very fine work of poetry which has endured a century now and will no doubt endure a while yet.

Simply put, enjoy it's wisdom.

Deadbeat poetry contest winner 2001

A sort of Irish peace . . .

Beyond the mute TV Screens
Beyond the limp handshakes
Beyond the forced hilarity
Of false bonhomie
And goodwill to all men
through gritted teeth
Beyond the bland smiles
and empty posturing of graceless politicos
lies a peace process
that took two score more years
and then some to discuss
the blood of three thousand martyrs
cries out the grave
"We died for this peace
-- Make it work!"

5 years ago I entered this “masterpiece” in the local Citybeat…jayze, didn’t they put it in the paper as a winner despite some whining from them about people not putting in as much as the year before.

Well 5 years on and I am still awaiting my prize/s , We’ve had 911, the war on terror, war in Afghanistan, war in Iraq, the Muppets join Disney, Chelsea win their first league Championship in 50 years, I become a dad!...and still no prize!

No wonder people weren’t bothered sending in stuff…they never got anything back!

That is why I refer to Citybeat amongst polite company as Deadbeat!

http://citybeat.com/2001-06-28/cover9.shtml