Patrick Kavanagh 21/10/1904-30/11/1968

[Diane]

L, all I seem to do is pop into this thread periodically to add superlatives.

Your last post I have read a number of times, and somehow those words have me right in that "country heart", and bring tears to my eyes.

[imaginary friend]

Hi Lonndubh and Diane,

I was playing hooky at my computer today, found The Energy of Slaves online and re-read the entire book. No doubt you already know this poem, but posting it here seemed apropos

On hearing that Irving Layton was kissed
by Allen Ginsberg at a Toronto poetry
reading

Not to alarm you Irving
but I have it
from a friend of
the deceased Irish poet
that soon after
he received
the blessings of
Allen Ginsberg
Patrick Kavanagh died

LC

[Diane]

You should play hooky more often - I hadn't remembered that from The Energy of Slaves at all, Imaginary. Nice touch of humour ...

[Grecian man]

I'm halfway through "P Kavanagh A Biography " What a talent , what a moody git

[Diane]

Grecian Man, long time no see:-)!!
Hmm talent and moody-gitness do sometimes come as a package ...

[Grecian man]

Hi right back at you Diane
I suppose you're right about that , I think thats why I'm a cheerful git all the time
its because I totally lack talent . What about you did you get the balance right ?
Hope alls well in Wales anyway I'm known for my short posts so I'd better log off ,
I've used up my forty words for today ...

[lonndubh]

Wishing all who visit here a bountiful harvest

On an apple-ripe September morning
Through the mist-chill fields I went
With a pitch-fork on my shoulder
Less for use than for devilment.

The threshing mill was set-up, I knew,
In Cassidy's haggard last night,
And we owed them a day at the threshing
Since last year. O it was delight

To be paying bills of laughter
And chaffy gossip in kind
With work thrown in to ballast
The fantasy-soaring mind.

As I crossed the wooden bridge I wondered
As I looked into the drain
If ever a summer morning should find me
Shovelling up eels again.

And I thought of the wasps' nest in the bank
And how I got chased one day
Leaving the drag and the scraw-knife behind,
How I covered my face with hay.

The wet leaves of the cocksfoot
Polished my boots as I
Went round by the glistening bog-holes
Lost in unthinking joy.

I'll be carrying bags to-day, I mused,
The best job at the mill
With plenty of time to talk of our loves
As we wait for the bags to fill.

Maybe Mary might call round...
And then I came to the haggard gate,
And I knew as I entered that I had come
Through fields that were part of no earthly estate.

[Grecian man]

He seems to confess in this poem that he was all talk and no action when it came to farming duties .

The threshing mill was set-up, I knew,
In Cassidy's haggard last night,
And we owed them a day at the threshing
Since last year. O it was delight

To be paying bills of laughter
And chaffy gossip in kind
With work thrown in to ballast
The fantasy-soaring mind.

Maybe thats why he was so good at his poetry

[lonndubh]

Maybe thats why he was so good at his poetry

Was it him who said that 'hard physical labour kills the creative spirit '

[Grecian man]

Don,t know , but it sounds like him alright .

I remember Walter Macken writing about it though ,
Think thats why they used to give prisoners hard labour as it take creativity to come up with an escape plan .
Bring back hard labour , in Ireland hard labour can mean only one of two things now , either you're on the dole or in the coombe

[lonndubh]

October

O Leafy yellowness you create for me
A world that was and now is poised above time.
I do not need to puzzle out Eternity
As I walk the arboreal street on the edge of a town,
The breeze too,even the temprature
And pattern of movement is precisely the same
As broke my heart for youth passing.Now I am sure
Of something.Something will be mine whereever I am.
I want to throw myself on the public street without caring
For anything but the prayering that the earth offers.
It is October over all my life and the light is staring
As it caught me once in a plantation by the fox coveret.
A man is ploughing groung for winter wheat
And my ninteen years weigh heavily on my feet.

[lonndubh]

Advent

We have tested and tasted too much, lover-
Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder.
But here in the Advent-darkened room
Where the dry black bread and the sugarless tea
Of penance will charm back the luxury
Of a child's soul, we'll return to Doom
The knowledge we stole but could not use.

And the newness that was in every stale thing
When we looked at it as children: the spirit-shocking
Wonder in a black slanting Ulster hill
Or the prophetic astonishment in the tedious talking
Of an old fool will awake for us and bring
You and me to the yard gate to watch the whins
And the bog-holes, cart-tracks, old stables where Time begins.

O after Christmas we'll have no need to go searching
For the difference that sets an old phrase burning-
We'll hear it in the whispered argument of a churning
Or in the streets where the village boys are lurching.
And we'll hear it among decent men too
Who barrow dung in gardens under trees,
Wherever life pours ordinary plenty.
Won't we be rich, my love and I, and please
God we shall not ask for reason's payment,
The why of heart-breaking strangeness in dreeping hedges
Nor analyse God's breath in common statement.
We have thrown into the dust-bin the clay-minted wages
Of pleasure, knowledge and the conscious hour-
And Christ comes with a January flower.

[merton]

Hi lonndubh,

I remember it well from Soundings and we reflected upon the poem at an Advent workshop/retreat last weekend. A beautiful poem. I was also introduced to a nice piece by Raymond Carver:
Late Fragment:
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

All the best,
Merton

[lonndubh]

To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

Great line Merton.
I think these are Carver's most powerful words in all his work.

[lonndubh]

A Christmas Childhood

One side of the potato-pits was white with frost—
How wonderful that was, how wonderful!
And when we put our ears to the paling-post
The music that came out was magical.

The light between the ricks of hay and straw
Was a hole in Heaven's gable. An apple tree
With its December-glinting fruit we saw—
O you, Eve, were the world that tempted me

To eat the knowledge that grew in clay
And death the germ within it! Now and then
I can remember something of the gay
Garden that was childhood's. Again

The tracks of cattle to a drinking-place,
A green stone lying sideways in a ditch
Or any common sight the transfigured face
Of a beauty that the world did not touch.

My father played the melodeon
Outside at our gate;
There were stars in the morning east
And they danced to his music.

Across the wild bogs his melodeon called
To Lennons and Callans.
As I pulled on my trousers in a hurry
I knew some strange thing had happened.

Outside the cow-house my mother
Made the music of milking;
The light of her stable-lamp was a star
And the frost of Bethlehem made it twinkle.

A water-hen screeched in the bog,
Mass-going feet
Crunched the wafer-ice on the pot-holes,
Somebody wistfully twisted the bellows wheel.

My child poet picked out the letters
On the grey stone,
In silver the wonder of a Christmas townland,
The winking glitter of a frosty dawn.

Cassiopeia was over
Cassidy's hanging hill,
I looked and three whin* bushes rode across
The horizon — The Three Wise Kings.

An old man passing said:
'Can't he make it talk'—
The melodeon. I hid in the doorway
And tightened the belt of my box-pleated coat.

I nicked six nicks on the door-post
With my penknife's big blade—
There was a little one for cutting tobacco,
And I was six Christmases of age.

My father played the melodeon,
My mother milked the cows,
And I had a prayer like a white rose pinned
On the Virgin Mary's blouse.